The Psychology of Purging

I am having a slight issue with things. Getting rid of some of them, to be more specific. When I first started purging, I tossed and flung stuff away like it was nobody’s business. I donated 80% of my wardrobe, and boiled my stuff down to things I liked.  I was a vocal advocate for cleaning out. It was easy and liberating, I pontificated. Like skimming off unwanted fat.

But now, I’m scraping bone. And it hurts.

So apparently, there is this deep relationship between our possessions and ourselves. Part of being human is the ability to contemplate our identities – who we are, how we fit in, what makes us unique. We individuate ourselves through our provenance and our religion, and also through our relationships, our interests, our qualities, our social status. Having a sense of place in the world underpins our self-esteem and happiness.

Our belongings play an important role in the formation and reinforcement of these self-concepts. They are the tangible embodiment of our identity, defining and reminding ourselves and others of who we are. As adolescents finding our voice, for example, we placed so much emphasis on what we owned. The clothes we wore, the music we listened to, the stuff we carried signaled who we were to our peers. This does not change in adulthood. Our bookshelves, our wardrobes, our cars, our homes — they are the curated stories we want to tell: I am successful. I am an artist. I am a successful artist. I am a loving mother. I am an intellectual world-traveler. “I, a (fill-in-the-blank) individual, am here”.

Purging and Our Fluctuating Identities

Since our possessions are vessels of our selfness, purging can feel extremely liberating. When we go through identity upheavals — end of relationships, change in status, etc. — purging can symbolically (and maybe literally) shed a part of us that no longer serves. We then give ourselves the space to evolve into someone else.

In a limited way, once I threw out my martial arts trophies, my relationship with martial arts shifted from that of stress and needing-to-compete to that of the pure joy of practice. On a larger scale, it was no coincidence that my urge to do a deep purge coincided with my thoughts of changing career. I slowly started letting go of my corporate clothes, my high heels. The act of doing so manifested the internal change that was occurring, and at the same time, boosted my courage to finally effect the change.

In the same way, when we lose possessions that we consider materializations of our current selves, we feel gutted. Like when we are robbed, we feel violated — as if there was an actual intrusion into our deepest selves.

Right now, I am having difficulty letting go of a certain smattering of things that on the surface may seem ridiculous — my martial arts gear, a few pieces of art and pottery, a handful of letters from friends and family. To me, they embody my current “selfhood”: a martial artist, a budding (hopefully) creative, a decent friend and sister. To throw them away would be to pull the rug from under me. Too destabilizing. So for now, I keep.

Purging in the Age of Technology

Luckily, we no longer have to rely heavily on material objects to assert our identity. Technology has helped loosen this dependence. By giving us an alternative way to define and express ourselves, the minimalist lifestyle has become an entirely doable concept. Why buy Egyptian souvenirs when we can post photos in front of the pyramids? Why buy beautiful stuff when we can represent our aesthetics on Pinterest? Why purchase books when we can download them on an iPad and follow authors on Twitter? Why keep mementos of our relationships when we can honor the people (and share memories) on Facebook?

It’s not my place here to talk about the inflation or extreme curation of our online identities. My point is simply: to reveal who we are, we now have more options  available to us than previous generations. And if I may unabashedly admit, this is perhaps why I write on this blog — to honor and give voice to this current, temporary, yet very pivotal version of myself. Instead of accruing trinkets for my hypothetical grandchildren, I write as markings on the wall that this fearful, extremely uncertain, yet absolutely certain self was here.