ghostoffuffle To me, baggage is stuff you lug around with you that weighs you down. It might be fears and resentments and pain from past family or romantic relationships that you bring with you into new relationships.

When someone moves into a new home, there is usually a lot of stuff to throw out or put in a garage sale. You don't want to or can't take everything with you.

Unfortunately, psychologically we carry a lot of stuff with us from childhood, from schooldays, and so on: fears, attitudes, issues. We don't even know what it is until it gets in the way -- we overreact to something, we don't trust someone.

The good baggage from childhood becomes our personality. The bad baggage from childhood gets in the way. It's called baggage because it's both heavy and enclosed -- like in a suitcase. It's not obvious what it is that we carry with us, but it might come out inappropriately when we feel stressed or threatened.

In tng's example above, baggage can also be the children from a relationship that you bring to a new one.

A good therapist can help you get some insight into the baggage you are carrying around and help you separate out the strands that you want to keep as part of your identity from the strands that you can discard.

Sometimes it's hard to know which is which. If I have a preference that I want to cling to -- a preference for NO YELLING and DON'T THROW THINGS -- because I used to live with an asshole with yelled and threw things -- is that baggage for me to be irritated when my current husband raises his voice? I don't care - JUST DON'T YELL AT ME.

On the other hand, if I once had a bad experience with swordfish and refused to eat it again because of the bad experience - that's baggage. Luckily, I'm over that mostly.