Sometimes the Closet Overflows

One of the analogies I use with my clients is that of the stuffed closet.

Imagine that as a child, a person learns to clean up the items in their room by throwing them in their closet. And then, as they grow older, everytime they need to clean their room, they simply open the door and throw more things in. This works for years, say, and then there is just too much in the closet. Nothing else can be thrown in. And so the person doesn't know how to deal with the odds and ends they have lying around. If they open the closet, everything comes tumbling out. And if they don't open the closet, they don't know what else to do with their problems.

This is just the problem that many of my clients face. As a child, they learned to deal with problem feelings and thoughts by stuffing them deep down, out of awareness. This worked, more or less, for years and years. But finally, there is just too much stuffed down. In psychology, we call this repression.

Eventually, it starts to come out as depression, anxiety, anger, flashbacks, physical symptoms, etc. Now they have a dilemma. Their only mode of coping is to stuff things. But there simply is no more room for things to be repressed. And if they try to sort through the things in the closet, they feel overwhelmed.

This is where the therapist comes in. At this point, there really is no choice but to start sorting through the years of accumulated issues which were not dealt with. Perhaps not every one of them has to be looked at, but the big ones at least. The therapist can help guide the client through this sometimes rather arduous process. But in the end, the closet is cleaned out. The symptoms are reduced. And the client is no longer hiding from their own thoughts and feelings.