Conversations With Cinthia

What is emotional baggage, and how does it affect our relationships?  Emotional baggage is the remaining residue of trauma on our lives, whether from traumatic events (e.g., physical assault) or in a broader sense (e.g., relational trauma).  It can become an ongoing part of what we carry with us into new relationships.  We unwittingly take it into new relationships and begin to recreate or re-experience the same thing again and again, reinforcing the trauma-based beliefs we have formed in our thinking, causing them to grow and self-justify.  Think of Linus’s blanket in the Peanuts cartoons.  What are you dragging with you into your new relationships? Emotional baggage does not define you.  Trauma does not define you.  Just as having a sleeping bag placed on top of you does not make you a sleeping bag, having traumatic baggage placed on you does not redefine you as the baggage itself.  This means (among other things) that you can make choices that impact how much power your emotional baggage has as your life c