Are you ignoring these sources of emotional baggage?
The emotional baggage that most people carry with them usually revolves around past unresolved traumas. These may include (but are not limited to) poor treatment from parents and/or teachers, unexplained breakups or ghosting by past partners, and difficult emotions from past experiences that were never processed properly.
That said, many people who can’t consciously pinpoint why they have emotional baggage may overlook sources that aren’t typically discussed, including the following.
1. Subtle childhood abuse.
When most people think about child abuse, they usually envision kids getting beaten or screamed at by their parents. In reality, many who thought their upbringing was totally normal might not even realize that subtle damage was done to them when they were young.
They may have great relationships with their loving, wonderful parents now, and can’t understand where emotions such as resentment or anxiety stem from.
For instance, people whose parents invalidated their emotions may now have difficulty expressing them. As an example, if they cried when they were upset, they may have been told to shut up or be given “something to cry about.” As a result, they now repress their emotions instead of expressing them.
Similarly, those who were raised with constant criticism end up as adults who never think they’re “good enough.” Ever.
2. Microaggressions.
Much like with child abuse, when the average person thinks about racism or discrimination due to age, gender, and so on, they think about blatant or intense gestures—such as someone calling another by a racial slur or telling them in no uncertain terms that they aren’t welcome because of who they are.
In contrast, microaggressions are much more subtle, and thus can slip in past our defenses to take up residence in our subconscious minds.
Microaggressions can include (but once again, are not limited to):
– Having your qualifications or experience called into question
– Others moving subtly away from you in public spaces
– Hearing phrases like, “I didn’t know you people did that kind of thing”
– Having your ideas or grievances summarily dismissed without just cause
Since these happen much more often, they tend to either wear us down or accumulate over time. It’s rather like sand particles piling up or water droplets wearing a hole through a stone.
3. Having experienced or witnessed crime.
People can develop emotional baggage after witnessing or experiencing various crimes. For example, a person who had to deal with others breaking into their home and threatening them while stealing their stuff might never feel safe at home again.
Similarly, a person who has been scammed or catfished might assume that every new person they meet is insincere and out to get them. As such, they hold back from making new friends, starting new relationships, or getting involved in groups because they figure they’ll just get screwed over again. The only way they can feel “safe” is by being alone or with those they’ve known for years.
This can also happen by proxy, such as if a close friend got scammed by someone and you had to help them through the fallout from it.
4. Mistreatment that you were unable to resolve (or retaliate against).
If you’ve ever been in a physical altercation, chances are both you and the other person managed to land some strikes before you were pulled apart. The whole point of a fight is that two people are involved. If it’s just one person beating on the other, it’s assault.
As such, if the person who was first struck managed to hit back, they’re less likely to feel as though they were powerless in the situation. They’ll remember the fight, but trauma about it is unlikely to linger.
In contrast, someone who was attacked may not be able to let go of the fact that they were never able to retaliate. Maybe the other person was pulled away before they could strike, or they were in a position where they had to simply take it or walk away instead of holding their own.
That kind of impotence can wear away at a person for years, if not indefinitely. Even more so if they know they can never resolve the issue. Maybe that person was a stranger whom they’ll never see again or the one who mistreated them died and thus can never be confronted.
As you can imagine, this also applies to unresolved conflicts with former partners, elderly parents, and so on.
5. Fears about health or mortality.
People who have experienced an accident or illness after previous good health may become overwhelmed as a result of what they’ve gone through in the past. They may have spent time in a hospital recuperating from a life-threatening illness or have long-lasting physical changes after getting badly hurt.
They went through life with hope and optimism before, never worrying about their wellbeing or able-bodiedness, and now they’re acutely aware of their mortality and physical frailty. As such, their emotional baggage could go one of two ways: they may get paranoid about any threat to their wellbeing, or they could become reckless as a means of overcompensating for their fear.
With the former, they may become a hypochondriac who stresses over any feelings of discomfort. Some even refuse to leave the house to avoid possibly getting sick or hurt again.
In contrast, those who repress their fear instead of dealing with it could take up thrill-seeking pastimes or partake in risky behaviors to test their own limits.
6. Self-criticism.
Words cannot be unspoken, and if people have said negative things to you in the past, it might still haunt you. Even if whatever they said to you was true at the time, that might have been 20 or 30 years ago and doesn’t apply to you at all anymore. Unfortunately, the echoes are still there though.
For instance, let’s say you had very crooked teeth that required braces to straighten out. Your peers (and even your relatives) might have made fun of you constantly for being “snaggletoothed.” This may have been followed by “metal mouth” or similar until you finally got the braces removed.
Even if your teeth are perfectly aligned now, you may still smile with your lips closed because you want to avoid potential mockery. There’s literally nothing to taunt you about now, but the worry about possibly experiencing that kind of bullying means that you’ve altered a personal behavior forever.
7. Fear of the unknown.
Having no sense of security about future events can make a lot of people anxious and emotionally unstable. The ever-present possibility of civil unrest, seismic activity (such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), climate fluctuations, pandemics, and economic collapse can paralyze a lot of people and affect their daily lives.
Some might try to cram in as much living as possible because they want to experience all they can before the next calamity hits. In contrast, others may give up on trying to do anything because they figure the world is going to end at any moment and there’s just no point.
People from both ends of the spectrum may try to influence others to join them in their viewpoints and either alienate or depress everyone around them in the process.
8. Inner turmoil over how other people expect you to feel, look, or behave.
While social media is great for keeping in touch with loved ones and staying aware of various goings-on, it can also do a lot of damage to people’s psyches. Some get depressed because their lives don’t measure up to the carefully curated posts offered by “influencers.”
Others are confused because they’re receiving conflicting information about how they should feel, think, or behave. It’s often difficult for people to live authentically when they’re torn in different directions due to others’ expectations.
You may feel that you’re hard to love because you don’t look or act a particular way. Alternatively, you may feel alienated from your peers because you don’t believe the same things that they do. As a result, you feel pressured to conform to their views lest you end up being shunned and ostracized.
Not being able to speak freely or behave authentically can weigh heavily on anyone, causing depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, and even psychosis in some cases.
9. Guilt and regret from past actions.
Sometimes, the baggage we carry has nothing to do with things that were done to us but rather involves echoes of what we did to others.
For example, we may have mistreated past partners or friends when we were going through difficulty and now we’re haunted by guilt or shame about it. We might even feel shame about missteps done in passing and replay them over and over again in our minds.
This often happens at night when we try to sleep while bad memories from the past dance around in our minds, shaming us into wakefulness instead.
While you might wish you could go back in time and fix past transgressions, that’s not an option unless you’ve managed to rig up a time machine in your basement. As a result, you’re likely still thinking about all the things you could have done differently (but didn’t) and will never have the opportunity to change.
10. Victimhood.
While this type of emotional baggage has always existed, some people elevate it to an art form. In fact, they wear it as a badge of honor and make it an integral aspect of their personality.
At some point, this type of person went through something that damaged or upset them, and they’ve decided that it affected them so deeply that they’re permanently scarred by it. Furthermore, they’ve discovered that there are significant benefits to embracing and embodying their victimhood.
For example, they receive pity and sympathy from others when they talk about the awful thing(s) they’ve experienced. Secondly, they don’t have to be held responsible for anything they say or do because of all they’ve been through. They have the right to complain, and it doesn’t matter if anyone else has suffered too, because they have it worse.
As you can imagine, this impedes them from living an authentic life and negatively impacts their relationships. Who wants a friend or partner who complains all the time and can never be relied on?
