S2:EP5- Emotional Spring Cleaning: You Keep Calling It Strength… But It’s Emotional Hoarding

You’ve been holding it together for everybody… but who’s holding space for you?

In this episode, we’re unpacking what it really looks like to carry unprocessed emotions, unresolved pain, and old survival habits that no longer serve you. Just because you’ve learned how to function through it doesn’t mean you’ve healed from it.

This is your wake-up call to stop romanticizing your resilience and start releasing what’s been weighing you down.

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, easily triggered, emotionally tired, or disconnected… this episode is for you.

We’re not organizing the mess this month.
 We’re clearing it out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey y'all, welcome to the Quietest Kept Podcast. Welcome back. This is Shanti Refuge. I am a master certified mental health coach, author, and your favorite reminder that healing is hard, but staying stuck ain't cute. And listen, this month we are not playing small without with our healing. We're not playing small. Y'all excuse this frog in my throat. Allergy season has come upon us. So there you have it. April is about emotional spring cleaning. Not the cute version, not the aesthetic version. I'm talking about the real kind, the kind where you gotta open drawers you've been keeping shut on purpose. Because a lot of y'all aren't overwhelmed because life is just so hard. You're overwhelmed because you're carrying too damn much emotionally. So we're gonna call it what it is. You call it strength, you call it I got it, you call it, I don't need nobody. But what it really is is emotional hoarding. That means you've kept conversations you never had, feelings you never processed, boundaries you never enforced, grief you never gave yourself permission to feel. And now it's showing up as instability, emotional shutdown, overthinking, burnout, snapping on people who didn't even deserve it. And you confused because you're like, why am I acting like this lately? Baby, you're not like this lately. You've been like this, you've just been managing it well enough to not fall apart publicly. Yes, I'm talking to you. So let me tell you something that might sting a little bit, might sting a little. Just because you can function does not mean you have healed. Yeah, you go to work, you gotta go to work because you gotta pay your bills. You still showing up for everybody else, but emotionally you are tired, you are triggered, you are re you you're reactive, you disconnected because you've been surviving your life, just surviving it instead of actually processing it. And survival mode will have you thinking, okay, if I'm not falling apart, I must be okay. No, baby, that is not what that means. It just means that you haven't slowed down long enough to feel what's actually there. So let me tell you what you've been avoiding. Well, let me ask you what you've been avoiding, and you you could uh confirm or deny. Was it the breakup that you never fully grieved? The friendship that ended weird and you never got closure, that childhood experience you kept saying, it is what it is, or that version of you that you had to abandon just to survive. Because the truth is, what you do not process, it does not go away, it don't disappear, it just stores, and you know where it stores, it stores in your body, literally, it stores in your reactions, how you interact with people and in your relationships, no matter kind, no matter what kind of ship it is. It could be a you know, a romantic relationship, a friendship, acquaintanceship. It doesn't matter. Family ship, it doesn't matter, and then you wonder why little stuff sets you off, like every little thing sets you off. I'm here to tell you that it's not the little stuff, it's the overflow. You are about to combust, and we don't want you to do that. If you do not clear it, you're gonna carry it, and you're gonna carry it into your next relationship, your next opportunity, your next level, your next version of yourself, and then you sabotage things that actually feel good because your nervous system is used to chaos, and that's why when you are in a state of peace, it feels boring sometimes. That's why healthy love feels uncomfortable. Oh, yes, it feels uncomfortable because what is this? Why is it so healthy? Are we too healthy? Let's throw some toxicity in here to make it feel normal. That's what you're gonna do because you haven't cleared out what taught you dysfunction in the first place. And I guarantee you, it goes back to your childhood. Guarantee you. I was in a therapy session today before I uh did this episode, and my therapist told me, you know, I told her that, you know, about what right now we're working through my uh emotional things that I'm going through, especially with my recent divorce and how I am triggered by some things. And, you know, she brought it all the way back to my mama. Because I told her, she asked me, does my mom know what happened? And she knows the gist of what happened, she doesn't know the full details, and you know, there's some times where I want to go crawl up in my mama's lap and cry and you know, get that compassion and that you know love that a person needs when they go through something life-changing. But I told my therapist that I wasn't getting that from her. All I'm gonna get is girl, please move on. You're beautiful, you're smart, you can have anybody that. Okay, I know all of that, but you know, sometimes when you want your mama, you want your mama to fall, baby. I know it hurts, it's gonna be okay. That kind of stuff. But I know I'm not gonna get that from my mama, so I don't go to it with it. That and on top of, I don't trust that she won't go in. She didn't even know the whole story, she just knows what like we divorced. That's all she knows. She don't know the nobody knows the in-between of it, the bits and pieces of it. Nobody knows. And I told my therapist that I wouldn't tell my mom what happened because I didn't trust that she would hold that kind of space for me and not go and tell everybody. That's why she don't know. That's why a lot of people don't know because I don't trust that they would hold that for me. So get off of me now. If you don't clear it, like I said, you're gonna carry it into your next relationship, your next opportunity, your next level, or your next version of yourself. And then you're gonna start to actually sabotage things that feel good because your nervous system is used, like I said, to the chaos. So it is important that you clear out what taught you dysfunction in the first place. Don't mask it, don't cover it up, don't bury it down. Actually, face it, acknowledge it so you can heal and move through it, so you won't sabotage your future relationships or your interactions. So here is your guided journaling moment. Go ahead and grab your journal. We are not writing cute. We never write cute, but I'm gonna emphasize we're not writing cute. We're gonna be honest. So here are your journal prompts, and at any time that you need to pause and rewind and replay the question, the prompt, please do so. Number one, what emotions have I been avoiding dealing with? Number two, what situation am I pretending I'm over, but I'm not? Where in my life am I overwhelmed because I haven't released anything? What am I still carrying that no longer serves me? And number five, what would it look like to finally let it go for real? What would that look like? And take your time with each of these prompts, don't rush it, and please do not filter it. This is where you get raw and honest and tell the truth because this is where the real work starts. So let me leave you with this: you don't get extra points for suffering and silence, you don't get rewarded for carrying emotional weight you never meant to hold forever. Because none of us mean to hold that forever, it just happens, right? Before you know it, you know that I'll deal with it later, I'll talk about it later. That'll turn into weeks, months, and years and even decades of you holding on to emotional weight, and you definitely don't have to keep proving how strong you are. Stop that. If that's what you're doing, stop it. Because you don't get to you don't prove how strong you are by how much you can endure. Strength is choosing to release what's breaking you. If you've got something on your spirit, on your heart, on your mind that is breaking you, baby, it's like the time to release it. If this helps, if this episode hit you, and I already know it did, somebody should it hit me, do something with it. Go grab one of my guided journals from shantierefuge journals.com because this is exactly the kind of work we where we walk through in there. If you feel like you know you don't want to talk to anyone, you want to start with yourself, go grab one of my guided journals. I have topics for different issues. And if you can't find the topic, or if you have a question about what topic you want to work on and which guided journal will fit you best, I'm only a DM or an email away. Just ask. Close mouths, don't get fed. And if you're ready to go deeper, apply for my coaching program, Staying Stuck and Cute or join the group coaching, The Audacity of a Healing Woman. Staying Stuck and Cute is my one-on-one, and the Audacity of a Healing Woman is my group. You can join it. And if you need community for being estranged from your children or from your parents, no, let me take let me take that back. I don't have one for uh parents yet. Well, yeah, I kind of do. If you are a mother who has estranged from your children, or your children have estranged from you, or you are a mother who has estranged from your mother. Yes, that's what mothering in the dark is for. That's who it's for. If you want more information on that, go to my website, shantirefuge.com, or you can go to motheringintheark.com to get the full gist of what we're doing there. Same thing for staying stuck and cute. You could go to staying stuck and cute coaching.com or go to my website, shantirefuge.com, and you can go to the Audacity of a Healing Woman on shantirefuge.com. The information is there for you, the tools are there, the resources are there. You just have to decide that you want to use it. So listen, don't just listen to this podcast and nod your head and agree with what I'm saying. I want you to subscribe to it and come back next week because next week we're talking about emotional clutter in your relationships and why you keep attracting the same patterns. And baby, we're gonna clear that out too. I love y'all. I'm rooting for your healing, but more than anything, I want you free. I'll see you in the next episode of Quiet as Kept Combat. I'm tongue tied today. I will see you in the next episode of the Quiet as Kept podcast with Shanti Refuge. See you next time.