1KHO 844: Freedom From the Emotional Clutter | Laurie Davies, Emotional Hoarding

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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I've just read a phenomenally good book about all of our emotions and how sometimes we hoard them. And then this book goes into like every emotion. Well, not everyone, because there's also a newsletter where you can learn about more emotions, but a lot of the main ones, worry and fear and regret and guilt and pride and anger and bitterness and keeping secrets and shame and hustling. And the author of this wonderful book, Emotional Hoarding, Laurie Davies is here. Welcome, Laurie.

**Laurie Davies** (1:36)
Thank you so much for having me. We are, I can already tell right out of the shoot, we're going to have a great conversation today.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:42)
We're going to have a great conversation because these emotions, they really can derail you a bit. And so you have a lot of advice on how to deal with them.
And also just a lot of reminders that there are this, there is this large swath of emotions that you can have. So I would love if you would kick it off with your little girl self, little girl Laurie.

**Laurie Davies** (2:02)
Oh gosh.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:03)
You say, I've had big emotions since I was a young girl. My emotions have felt bigger than my body. I never seemed to find a place to put them. So I stuffed them. So you talk about when your dad left, your dad moves out, panic moves in.
And then that obviously is a massively upsetting, huge change for a child. But you talk about everything from that to reading Where the Red Fern Grows and wishing there was a different ending.

**Laurie Davies** (2:30)
Yeah. That was a... So my dad left, just so your listeners know, my dad left without a lot of, maybe any, I don't know, conversation with my mom and with us about... I think we all knew, even us kids knew, like their marriage wasn't working. But there was no sort of, the marriage isn't working, how can we do this in the best way for the girls? Right? So he just left, shock and awe. Like we came home from church and half the stuff in the house was gone and it was chaotic.
Probably one of the most traumatic days of my life. And to be fair to my mom, probably one of the most traumatic days of her life too, right? So, but that it just was, I referenced that particular story because it was, first of all, you know, probably one of the big traumatic days of my childhood. But also looking back on it, it was such evidence of how, you know, I had all these messy emotions. And in the book, I have the luxury of moving through them one by one. You know, but in real life, we know this stuff becomes a combo platter. So I had, I had grief, I had anger, I had confusion, I had rejection, all of it swirling and there was really no place to put it because there was no chaos manager that day. It was just chaos. So yeah, I kind of jumped off into the book with that story as an illustration that number one, some of this stuff does go back to childhood. Number two, it gets messy. And I want to find a way out of that.
I'm a woman of a certain age now.
I don't want to be stuck in this combo platter of emotion that is bringing me down all the time. I want to learn how to process it. And hang on to what's good, filter out what's bad and live the freest, most positive, most beautiful life that I can.