Downsizing for better mental health

Ever wonder how you accumulated the life you are currently living?

Do you go home at night and think to yourself “ my life is like a repeating cycle that I don’t like”?

Are you experiencing anxiety and depression due to overwhelm?

Maybe it is time for a downsize.

Recently I made the decision to take a good hard look at my life and decide if it was one I was enjoying or not.

Being a deep thinker since childhood, I often take stock in what I have or am doing.

As I looked around my life, I realized I was not really living my own kind of personal happiness. The people and things that I loved were being overshadowed by the things and people I had filled my life with that didn’t match my goals and values.

I am a believer in the collective unconscious described by Carl Jung. I believe how I am is deeply connected to everything and everyone in this world. If I am feeling like this, maybe others are too.

I did a little research and found the minimalist lifestyle and downsizing to live in a van or RV .

These seemed a bit extreme for me, while surrounded by 1800 SQ feet of stuff, things and obligations.

I became intrigued.

What in these pages of happy and hopeful people was standing out for me? The sense of community for sure. That is an important part of anyone’s life. I checked in with myself about my sense of community and where my most important people were in that mix. Not a complete failure but there were definite signs of a need for change.

Then I took a look at all of my “STUFF” crimany, where did all of this stuff come from? I thought back over the last 8 years and could see a clear pattern of gaining stuff to fill some sort of need. That isn’t the interesting part. What was interesting was that even when the need passed, I kept the stuff. Why was I doing this?

Next was work. Did I truly feel like I was doing the work I loved with the people I loved most working with? What needed to change for me. I am and have always been a very independent person. I follow rules but I don’t always agree with them if I feel they do not serve the greater purpose. Where in my work was this a problem for me?

I took more than a year to discover some really deep understandings about myself:

!. I hated keeping up with a big home and a big caseload of really challenging clients.

2.I was not happy with how I had been running my business and my life.

3. I missed my children and my grandchildren and needed to make myself more available for them.

4. My office was beautiful, huge and unnecessary.

5. I was spending more on my business than was necessary to run a successful practice.

6. I didn’t really want to own all of that stuff and was feeling like it weighed a lot on my life.

7. I wasn’t taking very good care of my health. I had stopped walking, I wasn’t eating right and I was watching too many shows on Prime.

8. I needed to ride my motorcycle more.

The universe has a funny way of showing up in my life to help me make the changes I need to make to feel better. I didn’t suffer a catastrophe but my entire life has been doing a makeover of epic proportions.

Gone is about 75% of the property I owned. Gone is the big house, the big office and the big bills that came along with them. I made a scary choice to change the way I do business and the clients I want to focus my attention on. I have increased my interactions with family and people I love dearly. I have been working on taking back my business responsibilities that I had farmed out to so called professionals. I made some hard and scary choices about taking time off to do things that keep me healthy. Being a workaholic, taking time for myself seemed frivolous . Well, not at my age it isn’t……probably not at your age either.

I began to pray for the universe to remove people and things that were not supposed to be in my life and to bring those people and things in to my life that were supposed to be there. Swish, and tada change.

I have been very lucky to have been able to adapt to one change after another slowly over the past couple of years. I would not have made it if I had to make quick changes.

The change won’t stop and I am fine with that. It isn’t suppose to stop I figured out.

Life is an ever changing series of events and lessons to learn. There is an opportunity to grow in experiencing things we like and those we don’t. I have faith in all things working toward my greater good.

For today, life is good. It more closely matches who I am and what I want. I have more freedom and am working on better choices in my health. I have found that I am no longer afraid of making mistakes and have a much better understanding of my business. I am getting excited about some shaky first steps in providing different supports for clients and those interested in using free gifts to improve their lives.

I am not perfect but I am becoming more perfectly myself than I have ever been.

If you would like supports to evolve I highly recommend therapy or coaching.

Namaste’

Karen Van Acker LPC

counseling and therapy in Salem Oregon