This past week I moved offices and much of the furniture of my new office is actually my old furniture from my old office in Portland that I have been using in my home.
Tuesday was my first day seeing clients in the new space and one thing I was surprised by was how accustomed I had gotten to orienting to this stuff in my home space.
It felt good to finally have office furniture in the office and just home stuff at home, but I still had to do a mental reset around that furniture.
And it got me thinking (again) about how important our environments are. And how impactful an environment can be in the context of trauma.
When we’ve grown up in a lot of trauma, the places we grew up in can be laden with stimuli. Stimuli, that in accumulation, can sometimes be too much or overwhelming (yet we can’t always pinpoint why we feel overwhelmed).
Sometimes we need a break from that stimuli to land on our feet and start doing the healing work we need. There’s nothing wrong with this.
I’m reminded of the phrase, “You can’t run from your problems.” and it’s true – you can’t. But you can give yourself a break. And sometimes that’s the wisest thing.
