09: Q&A: A Traumatically Clean House
I have the perfect person to answer a question about “trauma cleaning” as a result of being raised by a parent who was emotionally and verbally abusive about keeping a clean house. This question came from Maria, a TikTok follower, and I’m jumping into this topic in today’s episode with my guest, Amanda Dodson. Join us!
Show Highlights:
Why this is a common feeling for many people when they sense barriers around care tasks
A good first step: Try to separate the behavioral home care task from the interpersonal problem with the parent
Why you have to decide how YOU want your home to be for your own comfort and safety–not how your parent would want it to be
Why it’s important to have compassion for yourself and awareness of what you need in your space to function well
How to identify what you need from your space and use a triage approach to get there
How to have your environment and emotions “meet” at a halfway point
How to take small steps toward organizing that work for you and your family
Resources:
Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram
Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning
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KC Davis 0:05
Hello, you sentient ball of stardust. This is Struggle Care, the podcast about self care by a host that hates the term self care. And we're going to do a Q&A episode and I have a special guest Amanda Dodson, who is a therapist and home organizer. Say hi, Amanda.
Amanda Dodson 0:22
Hello, everyone.
KC Davis 0:24
Alright, so, Amanda felt like the perfect person to bring on to answer this question. Okay, here we go. Hello, I've been following your tic tock, and I've watched almost all of them. I was wondering if you could do a series or a talk about trauma cleaning as a result of being raised by a parent who was verbally and emotionally abusive about keeping a clean house, I grew up in a house which looked like a museum with absolutely nothing out of place, my mother would lose her mind if a fork was left in the sink. She was controlling critical and type A, if you already have made these visit videos, let me know. But how do I heal from years of this? Thank you for what you do. Okay. And that's by Maria. So there's a lot there. I will say that this is a really common thing for people, when they start to figure out why they're feeling barriers around care tasks, whether it is I don't know how to start, I don't know how to keep up, or I don't know how to stop, I don't know how to rest, I don't know how to embrace good enough. And so many times it comes back to trauma or an adverse childhood experience that they had with their family of origin around care tasks. Because how your family treats care tasks has a huge impact on your relationship to care tasks as we grow up. And one of the phrases that I use a lot is that says, neurons that fire together, wire together. So if you experience an environment, or an action, in a certain emotional context, your brain starts to associate the two. So for example, if you grew up in a neglectful environment where everything was dirty and messy, and you always felt uncared for unprotected and ashamed, you actually can begin to associate feeling ashamed with that messy home. And so you can grow up and have a totally safe home and be a great adult. But you know, maybe it gets messy after a party and you feel shame, you feel like things aren't safe. But what's interesting here is actually someone experiencing the opposite, where they had this really sort of cold abusive context emotionally, with this perfect museum house. So curious what your thoughts are on that, Amanda?
Amanda Dodson 2:27
Yeah, that's such a tough question. And I just feel a lot of compassion for the person who asked it, because that sounds really hard. And, you know, I also get questions like this a lot from the people that I talked to about this, and coach, and I think as hard as it is, a good first step is to try to separate the behavioral home care, the thing that you have to do from the interpersonal problem with the parent, right? Because the problem wasn't really the cleanliness of the house. That was how the problem was coming out and how it was presented to you as a child. But that wasn't what was really going on, what was going on, was that the parent was overwhelmed, it sounds like with their own expectations, and anxieties. And instead of being able to regulate and cope with that, it got kind of spread all over the household and projected onto the children with being critical, and controlling, right. And like, These are behaviors that could happen in any home of any cleanliness, right, and their interpersonal and emotionally damaging behaviors. So if we can kind of pull that out away from the expectation of what a home is actually supposed to be, it can give you permission to think about, okay, as I am coping with the fact that my parent was quite cold and controlling. How do I actually want my home to be like, if I could, like you know, magic wand it and it's exactly the way that I would enjoy it being not like mom's never gonna see it. Right? Like, oh, we're not picturing like mom walking into the space and whether she approves or not like, this is your own clubhouse? What do you want it to look like? I think that then people can start to think about, like, how do I actually want to be in my space, if I can get rid of all the expectations of what a home is supposed to be like?
KC Davis 4:29
I love that. And I think sometimes building in routines that allow for rest, because I think sometimes when you come from this background, you have a hard time ever resting if things aren't perfectly in place, because the anxiety from your childhood, what has taught you that things being out of place, means that you're in danger. And now it may not have been physical danger, but it was certainly social emotional danger, right. Your mother was going to come in the room and criticize you and tell Are you down or punish you or take something away that you like, right? And so it takes quite a bit of deprogramming. Like we said, neurons that fire together wire together. So when you are at the end of the day, and you're going, I'm so tired, I just want to sit down, but you're seeing things around the house that need to get done. Taking a moment to have compassion for yourself, and that inner child at that moment, and just becoming aware of what's happening in that moment, and like you said, you can go, Okay, what's functional? Is it functional? Okay, and you have your little, okay, I, what do I need in the morning, I need a trash can. That's clear, I need enough dishes to eat off of, I need clean clothes to wear, I need a clear safe path to walk, I need a clean place to prepare food. And I would like a place in my home to sit down and relax that isn't over cluttered. Like maybe that's your little list of what is functional for you. And if you can recognize, okay, the functional things are in place, and I'm still feeling this anxiety, sometimes just the recognition that is your inner child trying to help you, right? Like this was a really adaptive behavior in your childhood that went You're not safe, don't sit down yet. And so sometimes just remembering that little warning signal of anxiety is not coming from your current home.
Amanda Dodson 6:21
Yes, totally. And I honestly can really identify like, as a very, very neat and tidy person. Because cleaning was the way when I moved out of my house and went to college and felt very exposed out in the big world. Cleaning and making my home and my room a certain way was the way that I dealt with the anxiety of life, right. And this over the years took on a bit of a life of its own, until I realized that I really struggled to relax unless everything was clean and tidy. And in its place, which as life went on, and I got older and tireder and sicker. It's just like, not going to be an option anymore. So one strategy I love. And I think the switch you mentioned is to think about, like, what's the bare minimum of what I need, at least to get that anxiety to a level that's tolerable? Right? Like, my goal is I want to be able to lay down and rest. And I feel like I can't do that unless the space is a certain way. Right? Okay. So instead of cleaning the whole house, before I can rest, I'm gonna pick one corner where I can lay down, whether it's from a little corner on my couch, or whether it's just this one spot in my bedroom, where I can put it orderly within five minutes tops, and be able to sit down and rest and understand emotionally regulate around the fact that like, everything doesn't need to be that way for me to be able to chill out.
KC Davis 7:51
Yeah, and I think this is also an example of, you know, when we talk about like, you don't exist to serve your house, your house exists to serve you. And so your unique sort of needs and emotional context is really going to color what you do with your space. So like when we have someone like myself, right, who has ADHD, who I'm not typically I'm not super anxious around like a high mess, tolerance, ADHD, busy mom, all this stuff, you know, that colors what I need from my environment. And what that means for me is like, I need lots of things visible. So I have a lot of things on my countertop, I have a lot of clear bins that I can see into a good friend of mine who's similar to me actually ended up taking off the cabinet doors off of her cabinets, because she's like, I want to see what's in there. That helps me I don't want things shut away. And I'm like that too. I need to see everything. However, Maria might be someone who needs something different from her space, she might say when I'm thinking about how much stuff I want to own, maybe I want to pare down so it's easier to put away. And when I'm thinking about organizational solutions, I want to go for bins that are not clear. I want to go for cabinets, I can shut drawers, I can push in. And like you said, I think a good sort of triage thing is to pick one room or one corner and have that be your safe haven have that be your everything is spic and span and immaculate right now. And that will kind of color some of the things that you can do because I think at the end of the day, she doesn't actually have the physical time or energy to make everything as immaculate as her anxiety would demand and so we want to do this dual approach where emotionally we're trying to meet ourselves halfway, but we're allowing our environment to meet us halfway as well into what we build into that environment.
Amanda Dodson 9:39
Yes, exactly. And I love like I love your stance on like home care is morally neutral. Because I love the idea that like the way at home is is morally neutral. The only thing to focus on is function and like what pleases you and what would look really nice. So you know for Maria like she was taught If that like having a museum quality home was the only acceptable way. And it's not, it is one acceptable way, I don't know how compatible it is with having children. But if it was just you and your house, you could totally keep your house like that if you wanted to, like, who cares? If you want to have your house just filled with stuff that brings you joy, and you don't care if the dishes are done all week, and like, it's not affecting anybody that lives with you, and it's not affecting you. Like, who cares, you know, you get to make it exactly how you want it. So I think my advice to Maria would be to just really like embrace the fun, even though fun might feel really far embrace the fun of making our home and our home care routines exactly the way that she wants them. And there's
KC Davis 10:45
little things like I'm thinking about, like what my family does with shoes. So we have three baskets, and they're pretty, right and they're big, that sit by the back door, and everybody has a basket and we throw shoes into the basket, it is a basket of shoes. And that's fine. For me, it takes me I like it, because it contains them. It also takes me very little time if people's shoes are left out of my shoes or left out to chuck things in there. And somebody else might say I'm fine with a pile on the floor. That doesn't bother me at all. And it's better for me after worry about baskets I'm gonna write, and then someone like Maria, someone else might go, Okay, I can't do the baskets. I'm looking at them. They're all a mess. It really bothers me. And so Maria might be someone who wants those thin shoe holders with the doors that shut a
Amanda Dodson 11:30
cover on them so that you can't see the shoes.
KC Davis 11:33
Yes, exactly. Yeah. And what Maria probably doesn't want to do, or people like Maria is they don't want to go, Well, I want it to look speaking Spanish. So I'm gonna get those shelves, and they'll sit nicely on the shelf. That's fine, if you like that. But Maria has to be honest with herself about what kind of capacity she has. And so you know, if it's something where I don't want to feel anxiety, every time I looked at it, I want it to look tidy when I'm in taking in my home at you know, as a whole home. But I don't reasonably have the time to sit and make sure every little shoe is lined up perfectly on an open rack. That's when we go okay, so you don't need to see it. And you know, having things with clean lines and shut drawers is going to be more beneficial to you. Because it's just not as she probably has a level of anxiety that just reasonably she could never get house clean enough and live there to satisfy her anxiety. And that's why we're like why I say we're trying to get emotionally Yes, you want to grow? Yes, maybe some therapy, yes, some things like that, you know, but we want your emotional skills and your home to sort of meet halfway in the middle so that you can enjoy your space.
Amanda Dodson 12:41
Totally, totally, I love closed storage for Maria. I love clothes storage for her. And we just can't overstate the importance of like baskets. And like cute little dishes like things that can corral items in a way that looks like pleasing to your eye, whatever that is, like in that's also easy to just like throw stuff into right. So you don't have to spend too much time.
KC Davis 13:10
And I don't know if Maria has kids. But the other thing that came to mind is like there is this play mat that I saw recently. And it's huge, right? And it's for Lego so your kids sit on their own, they play with their Legos. But the outer edge of the play mat, it's a circle play mat actually has a drawstring in it, it's the bag. So when they're done, you just pick it up and pull the drawstring. And it's a giant bag of Legos. So I think that those are like that's what we're talking about when we're saying when you're thinking about organizational things, right. And then for me, like there's, I've always had a space in my house that's like the Doom space, whether it's a closet or just a box or a whole room where it's like, okay, you know what, my room looks incredible right now it's decorated the way I like it's clean the way I like, and I just redid my daughter's room, because I wanted her to have more space to play in her room cuz she's getting older. But what that meant was I had some things that it didn't have a place and they were kind of bigger. So I had to put them in another room and I now I have a room that was a nice guest room. But now it's kind of a storage room. But that's okay. It's okay to have places in my house that just exists to kind of contain things so that the rest of my house is serving me and enjoyable to me.
Amanda Dodson 14:21
Yes, yes. And I love a room. You can close the door.
KC Davis 14:26
Absolutely see it? Yes. And if Maria is going to buy a house soon, maybe not an open concept for Maria.
Amanda Dodson 14:33
No, no, maybe not an open concept for her. Maybe we need good closet space. Right? Yeah.
KC Davis 14:40
So Maria, I have a lot of compassion for you. I hear you. And I hope that that is helpful advice to you and anybody else that's listening that could relate to that situation. So thank you, Amanda, and thank you for listening