Embracing the Mess
by Emily Phifer, M.S. MFT
Adjusting Your Background
Living through this pandemic has brought new meaning to the concept of work-life balance, and the conundrum therein. If you’ve ever found yourself hurriedly relocating piles of folded (or heaped) laundry off the bed to ready your “background” before an impending zoom meeting, you know what I’m talking about. For all of us, pandemic life has required rearranging our lives, shifting priorities, pivoting our operations, adjusting our family life and flexing our professional work environments.
Wizards Behind the Curtain
As I recently hefted my own laundry piles out of sight before a zoom meeting, I wondered at the broader context in which we compartmentalize our lives to appear more presentable to one another. If we’re honest, we all have our own share of life messes: physical messes in our homes, relational challenges, and works in progress within our own internal psychological and emotional worlds. How well we hide these messes varies based on a number of factors. What will it cost us to let people glimpse us just as we are? What are we avoiding by concealing our messiness?
By degrees, we are all the proverbial “wizards” behind the curtain (a la Oz). Hiding behind some kind of façade, we attempt to appear impressive, larger than life, and to control how others see us.
Best Foot Forward
So just why do we try to hide our messes to appear presentable? Sure, some level of presentable front is necessary for showing the world we are capable, responsible, and productive human beings. We desire to appear attractive to potential partners, responsible to employers, and loyal to friends. We hope to show up for our lives feeling “put together” well enough to manage what is required of us. By the same token, do we in some way do ourselves a disservice by hiding our messes from one another?
No Shame in an Honest Mess
What if we found a way to embrace our messes as just one part of who we are- a part that is just as real and important as the more presentable parts of ourselves? When we separate ourselves from our messes, we attach shame to the parts of us that we perceive aren’t “good enough” to show one another.
By accepting our messes as a part of us, we can become not only more relatable and approachable to others, but we will also invite other people to be more real with us. I’m not suggesting that you literally show colleagues your dirty laundry, but consider challenging some previously held judgments about messes being unacceptable or shameful parts of who you are. As you’re busy showing up for your life and managing the ups and downs as you go, consider the following suggestions as a place to start embracing the mess.
- Start by extending more compassion to yourself around your messes.
- Choose one tangible mess you’d like to attend to in your life. First, acknowledge that disarray happens to all of us; because we’re human, and life is in flux.
- Be gracious with others when their messes become apparent.
- Practice acceptance that life can have messy parts, even as you function as a responsible, valuable human being.
- Challenge the misconception that messes are shameful or somehow make you unlovable or “less than”.
- Extend compassion to others in the midst of their messes. We’re all just human, after all.