Coping mechanism: cleaning
13th October 2021
If you take this journey, you will get to the state in which you see exactly how the unfolding moments bring up a sense of fear. From this place of clarity, you will be able to experience the powerful tendency to protect yourself. This tendency exists because you truly have no control… But if you really want to break through, you have to be willing to just watch the fear without protecting yourself from it.
– The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer p.214
My mum’s visiting after almost two years of Covid restrictions. I’ve got a massive urge to clean the shit out of my house, and I don’t mind a little tidy up, no I mean scrubbing every skirting board, every tile, hoover every corner and organise each drawer and cupboard… and the reason that I feel that way is because I’ve used cleaning as a way of protecting myself against feelings of inadequacy, nervousness and generalised anxiety.
But here’s the breakthrough, I’ve realised that in going ahead and actioning on what my mind is telling me I should do in order for it to feel quieter and less disturbed by those uncomfortable feelings, I’m tiring myself out, so much that by the time my mum comes I feel worse, my emotions are all over the place and the tiredness doesn’t allow me to even enjoy the encounter in truthful and joyful way.
And as Michael singer put it so beautifully, the cleaning is actually the ‘powerful tendency to protect myself’ and so for the first time in my life I’m outside of my self looking in and I can see that the way I’ve been coping with uncomfortable feelings is actually counterproductive if not plain destructive.
So, my plan is for the first time in my life, I’m not going to touch the hoover or the mop, or any other cleaning utensil today. I’m going to leave the house alone, it feels counter-intuitive but I feel it’s a powerful statement that is going to take me to a whole new level, because even that it may seem silly to some, not cleaning my house after my mum hasn’t been in it for two years it’s a huge, huge step towards realising that I don’t need anything in the outside to make me feel good.