CLEANING OUT THE FRIDGE OF LIFE

Problems are like moldy food. I know it sounds weird but let me explain.

You know when something starts to smell funny from the fridge? You don’t know which leftovers it may be but the longer you leave it, the smellier it is going to get. So you start taking lids of off Tupperware’s to begin investigating. You start at the front of the fridge to begin eliminating the suspects closest to you and work your way to the back of the fridge. You find the leftovers responsible for the smell but keep digging through the fridge and find other potential contributors to throw out that you would rather catch now then have to go through the process again.

So here is how your gross food in your fridge connects to your problems you are running in to in your personal life or relationships. The longer you leave them, the more they stink, the further back they get pushed, and the more they make everything around them stink.

Let’s talk about how to clean out your fridge of life:

1.       Recognize that somethings stinks. This is the most important step because if you cannot have enough insight that there something going on with you, you cannot move forward through the process. This stink may come from little behaviors: getting frustrated easily, isolating yourself, arguing with others in your life constantly or being in a constant state of dissatisfaction with your life.

2.       Start looking through your “fridge”. You have realized something is going on, now is time to start looking at what is happening that is leading to this behavior or “stink”. Is it something recent or are you going to have look in to the back of your fridge, or in other words in to your history, to understand and deal with what is going on.

If this seems like an overwhelming step, this may be a good time to reach out to someone for support. Whether you have found “stink” in your relationships or individually, finding a good therapist or professional support may be your best tool in working through the rest of this process.

3.       Clean out the “fridge”. It is important to not reach all the way to the back and expect to have everything fixed. Since you are doing the hard work to look at your “fridge”, you might as well start cleaning the whole thing out so you don’t have to do it again any time soon. I know, it is more work, it is going to take longer, AND IT IS WORTH IT. You owe it yourself and your relationships to really look at what is going on and take care of the things that you need to.

4.       Take care of your “fridge” on a more regular basis. Once you have cleaned out your fridge, you need to make sure that you are checking it more regularly. Develop a process and schedule for checking your fridge to make sure nothing is getting bad again. After all of the hard work you did to clean out fridge, you owe to yourself to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!

You cannot take back the things that were put in your life but you have COMPLETE control of recognizing what is not serving you or affecting you negatively, working through it and MOVING FORWARD! You owe it to yourself and the people around you!

Written by Chantel Landeros, MS, LMFTC
Thrive Marriage & Family Counseling