Episode Transcript
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Hi. This is Rachel on Recovery. We're here with Stacey Scott. She's going to tell us a little bit about herself, and then she's going to answer some questions for us. Um, hi, everybody. So, I'm Stacey. I am a inner child healer, a feng shui practitioner, and also an occupational therapist. 2s Okay. How did you get into this type of work? So what I do particularly is actually help in heal trauma, but I do it through the home. Um, and that's where the feng shui and occupational therapy actually blend really beautifully together. I was an occupational therapist for over a decade. Um, working in people's homes, I walked into all sorts of different situations. Um, and one of the things I kept noticing was no matter what I did in the setting of being an OT, there was a lot of emotions around not only what our home looked like, but how it functioned for us. And later, after I became incredibly burnt out from health care and needed to take a break, I found my way really organically to feng shui. And it literally became the answer to the questions I had been asking myself basically my entire life. Um, but certainly throughout my time as a full blown occupational therapist. And it became really clear to me that decluttering specifically because that's what I tend to talk about the most, that decluttering specifically actually has nothing to do with strategy or an organization and everything to do with a history of trauma. And we're talking about decluttering in this country specifically entirely wrong. So that's what I'm on a mission to just enlighten people and let them know it's not their fault. 1s Okay. Um, 2s tell us about, um, your inner child research you've done. 1s So, I actually have not done my own organic inner child research, but I'm a huge research nerd, thanks to my time getting a doctorate in occupational therapy. I love reading a research article, so I got really curious, and I wanted to learn more about inner child healing because it was something that I was actually actively using in my own life personally, and it was revolutionary to me. I had already done all the therapies, um, all the different types of more traditional talk therapy, and I wasn't finding anything that was really moving the needle for me. And when I started doing more inner child healing, it was just like an explosion of healing in my personal life. And I knew I had to bring it into what I was doing as a feng shui practitioner, because at the time, I was just doing feng shui consults, more traditional feng shui services. Um, and I was like, there's got to be a way I can incorporate this because it's just too phenomenal. So I started diving into the research. At the time, there was next to nothing. There's still not a ton, just because this is such a new idea. But what I did find was researchers are starting to nibble around the edges of this idea. They're not necessarily calling it inner child healing. Um, but there is search starting to come out that says that this is a really lovely step, especially for complex trauma survivors to take that next step if they are binding that traditional talk therapy is not enough for them. And then I just, in my own little OT way, integrated it with what I was finding with decluttering and how people interact with their homes. And it became really explosive for my clients, and they were having really amazing wins. So before I knew it, I realized I had stepped in something really big. 1s Okay, um, tell us about being, uh, a messy and inner child work. 1s So the first thing is, I want people to know, if they call themselves messy, that it's not their fault. We live in a society specifically that 1s really likes to try and tell us that if we don't live in the, quote unquote, perfect home, that somehow it's a personal failure. Um, and I just don't think that's true. I have been in thousands of homes at this point between my work as a feng shui practitioner and as an OT. And I can tell you some of the most lovely homes that are
filled with so much warmth and lovely energy, almost, quote, unquote, the best feng shui homes I've ever seen are not what you would expect. They're not necessarily the cleanest, they're not necessarily the most perfect organized, they're not necessarily the biggest. And that really made me recognize, not get seduced by wealth, that just because you have the most trendy, organized, perfect home didn't necessarily mean that you were morally superior to anyone else. So if you are someone who sits there and you call yourself unorganized or messy or even a hoarder, i, uh, want you to take a step back for a moment and really start to understand if that is a label that you have just adopted from society. And then, of course, we go deeper with the inner child healing work. For a lot of us, we grew up in homes where we didn't feel safe, we didn't have emotional safety, maybe we didn't have physical safety. And this really still comes out subconsciously in the way we interact, the way we design, and the way we kind of move through our lives in the setting of our homes. M. And, um, the pandemic really put this on display for a lot of us. When I first started doing this work, it was literally March of 2020 when I started my business. And I'm pretty sure if I had started saying what I do now to people, they'd look at me like I was a few screws loose. But now when I say it, people get it so much more. Because I think we spend so much more time in our homes that we feel the energy of our space so much more deeply than just a few years ago. So if you are someone who calls yourself messy, take a step back. Is that something that's really true? Or have we just swallowed hook, line, and sinker, what society and popular media wants us to believe?
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Okay, um 1s I
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know some of us just would like to make our homes a little more functional. What would you say to those people that are struggling with their inner child? 1s So when it comes to functionality or organization and if you are somebody who is on a healing journey, what I tell all of my clients is take a step back for a moment. 2s If you are not unorganized or messy in any way. Because when we go in and we really work on moving the inner child through feeling the emotions that they were not allowed to feel or saying what they were not allowed to say as a kid, this whole idea of needing to be organized or not messy, it kind of goes away. And I know a lot of people don't believe me when I say that, but it just alleviates this kind of cognitive pressure to be a certain way. Just really becomes just it just goes away. And that's why I call a lot of my work effortless decluttering. Because a lot of those questions we are constantly asking ourselves, uh, but what if I need it? But I spent money on this, but what if my mother in law asks me where this thing is and I don't have it anymore? A lot of those questions that swirl around our brains when we think about our possessions. When you really go in and heal the prior version of you that is holding on to that specific possession that's causing all that resistance and friction within you, then your hands just really naturally open and you're just either able to look at the possession as a possession and you just decide to keep it, or you're able to release it and donate it or wherever it's going to go much easier. So it's not really a question of how do I get cleaner or how do I get more organized. It's more a question of what do I need to release within me to make space in my home for my dreams to come in
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and. It. Okay.
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Um, 2s tell us about the 1s hoarding. And working on our inner child. 1s We've touched on that with messiness. But hoardings, I feel like, is a little bit different than being messy. Yeah. So hoarding specifically, and this is where the research really came in handy for me. Um, there is a I believe it's a systematic review, and I believe it's from 2017, but don't quote me that looked at the incidence of hoarding across all Westernized nations. So that's the US. Canada, Europe, um, and some other ones. And it actually found that hoarding itself as a diagnosable disorder, something that, uh, you were able to check off, quote, unquote, enough boxes to be labeled as a hoarder, which I don't 100% agree with, but that's where we are. That that was only prevalent, actually within 2.5% of the population. And we're talking about millions and millions of people. 1s So I think what we have on our hands is a society that has been pushed into believing that they are all Hoarders, that they have too much stuff. And I get that sometimes it can feel like the walls are closing in on us. But really, what I think we have here is not really anything that can be diagnosed as Hoarding again, because it's very rare and more of a difficulty as a society and collective with letting go of things, letting go of our emotions. Being able to release 1s so much of Hoarding, so to speak, is really based in sentimentality. And that's just a deep fear of the unknown, and it's an inability to really express your grief. So I think what we have here is collectively, we don't know what to do with our emotions, and our emotions are really being then projected out onto our spaces. 1s Everybody's a hoarder by any means. I think we just literally don't know how to manage our emotions 2s well. Um, 1s uh, most of us don't like to feel our feelings, so 1s I feel like that plays into dealing with our emotions because. 1s I think we avoid dealing with our emotions because they're boiling in the inside and we just don't know what to do with them. Exactly. 1s And for a lot of us, then what ends up happening is then we shop or we don't go through and do 1s light decluttering because we've literally projected those emotions that we are afraid to feel. We have affected them onto our spaces and onto our possessions. So if you're holding up a shirt and that shirt is, let's say, 2s kind of a placeholder for some rage that you feel, of course you're not going to get rid of that shirt. Of course it's going to feel like you're just throwing out your emotions. No human is going to do that. And that's where this internal resistance and conflict comes from. Why? People open up their closet doors and, um, 2s they think they're going to declutter this day. They've got energy, they want to do it, and they open it up and they're like, no, can't do it. And they shut the closet doors again. So when I talk to people about decluttering, it's never from the standpoint of strategy, because in my world, you cannot strategize your way out of an emotional issue. Do we've got to feel those emotions. And that's where the inner child healing comes in.
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You.
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So the video you're referring to is I was kind of pulling the curtain back on why so many of us made piles. This is actually something I did as a kid. Um, and for a lot of us, it's a way to feel a sense of control in our spaces. We don't actually go through and do a declutter, we just make piles of things. Um, it gives us a sense of control, it gives us a sense of organization, and it's really a way for us to kind of get some of our anxiety out. Um, and it can be anxiety about anything. It doesn't even have to be, oh, my home looks messy right now. We can just feel anxious about work or friends or our children, and then we need to kind of physically do something with our hands to get some of that anxious energy out. So I do find a lot of times when we make piles, it's really a way for us to control or give ourselves a sense of control when we feel like, um, 2s there's something that we really can't put our finger on, or the world is out of control for us. So that's why I really find a lot of folks make lots of piles of things. I'm not saying piles are bad by any means. I'm looking at a pile of books here on my desk right now. Not all piles are bad, but if you find that your predominant pattern when it comes to decluttering is to make lots of piles of things and not actually go through the emotional purging of possessions, releasing them, that's when, you know, you're like, okay, maybe this isn't the best thing for me, and there's something better here. Pile piles end up becoming a survival technique. It's certainly one I learned as a kid, because I wasn't allowed to throw anything out. But I had this sense that I needed to breathe in my childhood bedroom, and I couldn't breathe, there was too much stuff. So the only way I knew how to survive, I created a survival pattern, was to create lots of piles. M. 10s You? 2s Totally. And that's one of the first things I walk people through in the work that I do, is looking at generationally. What have you inherited? We got modeled so much stuff that has just been rolling down through the generations, and we don't even question it. We literally don't even question it. So one of the first questions I ask people is, do a little digging in your family tree. What were some of the personal things that people experienced in your lineage? And then what were some of the lifetime worldwide events like wars or famine or genocides? There's some good research. It's a new branch of research, but it's called epigenetics. And it talks a lot about how, uh, something that happened to our four times great grandmother can actually lay dormant in the DNA that's then passed to us, especially through the matrilineal line. And then somehow in our lives, in our DNA, it gets expressed and we start having the same kind of fears or anxieties even though we haven't experienced the same thing in our actual real life. So it's a fascinating branch of science that's just getting going. 52s M in my world, that's the key. 2s There's no quick fix for this. There's no silver bullet. 4s Uh, I know that's not the answer folks want to hear, but that's what I have found, not only personally, because I also do struggle with this myself, but also with my clients, that if you do the inner work, that's nobody's idea of a fun Friday night. I know, but if you really do it, 1s you don't look at your possessions the same way. The fear and, uh, the anxiety that you might feel when you look at that overstuffed closet, it goes away. Because it was never about the possessions in the first place. S it's about the possessions becoming a placeholder for your emotions that you have not allowed yourself to feel yet. So, yes, this is incredibly deep work. It's not for everybody. But the folks who feel like they're called to it or they're ready for it, it just breaks them open in all these new ways.
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You. 2s For me, personally, I am incredibly sensitive to lots of energies, so I do lots of stretching every day. I love to stretch, even if I don't get a workout in. Um, and if I start to get really tired and I find my brain going, coffee, coffee. I, um, know that's my cue to get up and stretch and move and get some sunlight. Um, I know that getting outside is one of those things that everybody says that it almost feels like it's going over our heads now. But at least for me, I need that sunlight. I need to get outside and get some fresh air. Especially since I work from home. I don't get out a ton anymore like I used to. So for me, that's my biggest key. If I stretch, I am so happy.
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Yeah. Just a closing thought that I don't want people to be afraid of this work. I know that it sounds so daunting, and in the beginning, it really can be, but you can do this. You were made to feel your emotions. Like, what you're experiencing now doesn't have to be your entire life. You do not need to settle not only for what you're experiencing in your body, but what your home feels like, looks like, how it functions for you. You do not have to settle for that. I meet so many folks where they just think that this is just how they are. It's a quirk of their personality, and they're just going to live like this forever. And I want them to know that you don't have to do that. It takes some work, it takes some effort, but you can absolutely live an entirely different life and surrounded by a home that looks completely different and, uh, is just full of open space, where that open space actually makes you feel like, liberated and free versus scary and unfamiliar. So anybody can do this. It's possible. It just does take effort.
