CAUTION! THIS Is How Chaos and Disorder Affect Your Mental Health!
The saying "The genius overlooks the chaos" may be quite useful as a charming party gag when suddenly unannounced visitors arrive at the door. Not every apartment is ready for guests at all times, sometimes the conditions are not even suitable for the people who have to live in it. The pain threshold of disorder is different for each person. While some contemporaries can go about their daily lives seemingly effortlessly in a mountain of dirty laundry and dirty dishes, others need clinically clean laboratory conditions to get through the day stress-free. Tidiness is a private matter, of course. However, psychology provides some interesting insights into how much disorder and chaos can damage our mental health. One thing right off the bat: the impact is enormous. We'd like to briefly show you why in this article.
1. Clutter is not just clutter.
We always think of this term only in terms of the external conditions under which our lives take place. However, we need to make a distinction here. In fact, there is:
a) The physical chaos.
This refers to the normal disorder in the home, car or on the desk in the office. It is a myth that order-loving people just don’t like to search. A certain structured way of living and working takes away the threat of chaos right from the start. Besides, anarchy on the outside, hits our insides quite quickly.
b) The emotional chaos
Emotions can also cause chaos, especially if they are negative in nature and we do not want to deal with them. How often does it happen that we experience situations that still bother us days later? How could someone have possibly meant what they said? What was between the lines in that text message? Keeping our emotions in order is much more difficult than our home. They want to be felt and analyzed in real time, and preferably processed right away. If we carry them around with us like invisible ballast, they too plunge us into a kind of state of emergency and we lose the overview.
c) Mental chaos
Mental stress can literally overload our brain. If we only have flashes of thoughts running through our heads, to which we cannot pay any attention, we may even experience a kind of system failure. Every day, we have to do justice to so many people, master so many different situations and always function at our best, that so many things in our minds must fall by the wayside. This diffuse jumble of thoughts causes additional distraction and disturbs a harmonious existence.
d) The digital chaos
This began dominating us humans not so long ago, but with full force. Technical devices and cable clutter are just as much a part of this as a full e-mail inbox, constant scrolling and surfing without measure or goal on the cell phone or laptop, and opening multiple tabs and applications at the same time. In this way, we not only paralyze our digital tools, but also slow ourselves down quite a bit. And if you don't put a stop to all those files and folders, you'll eventually drown in the digital flood.
2. How clutter affects the mind and body
It's obvious that we feel more comfortable in a clean, bright and light space than in a garbage dump. As a human being, you would have to be very hardened or mentally battered not to perceive clutter as a messy feeling and a strong burden. Especially our brain suffers from the visual overload that mountains of dirty laundry or piles of paper and magazines have on us. It is then much more difficult for our thinking organ to concentrate on simple tasks. The images of mountains of garbage, pizza boxes or the mountain of dishes in the sink always catch up with it like a flashback resulting from post-traumatic stress disorder. Sounds dramatic? It is! Concentration and performance drop rapidly when we have to spend time in a cluttered environment. But that's not all. Studies have impressively shown that chaos and disorder can lead to the following 6 health impairments.
a) We feel ashamed and inferior
No one likes to live in chaos by nature. Sometimes things just slip away from us. But we instinctively know that this is not the ideal state. After all, we recognize it differently, from ourselves and from acquaintances and friends, where a spotlessly clean home is the order of the day.
b) Behavioral disorders can develop
The accumulation of things in one's own 4 walls can develop into a compulsive or hoarding disorder. Those who at some point fail to part with useless items are at risk of drowning in them.
c) Our stress level goes through the roof
Clutter and piles of junk are proven to stress us out. We feel cramped, at the same time we see a permanent need for action and feel the overwhelm at the mere thought of tidying up. The constant fear that someone might glimpse our lives in this hubbub further stresses us out.
d) Social isolation threatens
Clutter becomes pathological when it massively impairs our quality of life. When we feel ashamed to invite strangers into our home, and even when we don't let family or close friends into our cluttered apartment, social isolation is imminent. This creates a vicious circle for our psyche. A minimum of social contacts is necessary to stay mentally healthy and balanced. If we deny ourselves this out of shame about the conditions in our home, we wall ourselves in.
e) Overstimulation rules
If you are surrounded by anarchy and have to live your life in a single battlefield instead of in an oasis of peace, you will eventually no longer be able to process all the impressions associated with it. Soon we no longer know where our heads are. One construction site after the next seems to open up.
f) Distractions lurk everywhere
It is logical that we can no longer think clearly in the face of such confusion. If you have to think about every step and carefully master every move so as not to shake any piled-up stacks or mountains, you can't concentrate. In such an environment, few people can grasp a clear thought.
3. Tidying up as the key to well-being
In this age of celebrated minimalism and Cleaning Challenges on the Internet, word has long spread about the benefits of decluttering. For one thing, it frees us in more ways than one. For another, it gives us a sense of accomplishment in no time, leaving us satisfied and proud. By tidying up, we reduce stress and can relax. In addition, we even train our problem-solving skills and our decision-making ability. Last but not least, a clean home has a positive effect on our social life. If you don't have to be afraid of strange looks every time the doorbell rings, you can socialize in a much more relaxed way.
Today’s Conclusion: Make life easier for yourself
Of course, it is not always possible to avoid a kind of regrowing chaos in the apartment. People with children or toy-loving pets know that there are forces at work here that follow their own laws. But there are now also a lot of smart tips on how to easily manage tidying up in small planned squares. Moreover, it helps enormously to regard these activities as meditation. Good music as positive action reinforcement can additionally cause true pleasure. That's it for today.