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.
In a very literal way, baggage weighs you down, because you're carrying the stuff you need to survive. I think this analogy can work mentally as well. All the negativity that we may carry as baggage (hurt, abuse, mental illness, etc.) is stuff that can be drawn upon later in life to try to avoid repeating old mistakes. So, while baggage is heavy, there's no reason why it can't be useful.To me, baggage is stuff you lug around with you that weighs you down.
The girl who was so hurt in her first romantic encounter that she decides never to trust anyone with her heart again... that's baggage and is protecting her, but getting in the way of her other goal which is to be in a relationship.So, while baggage is heavy, there's no reason why it can't be useful.
Yes, and that's the dilemma. It can be useful to us and also get in the way. We packed those emotional things to protect ourselves. It's just that as we grow older, the things we needed to protect ourselves as a child might now be stopping us from achieving other goals. One example which I may have mentioned here before: the students in my classes who cannot get up to speak in class because they were humiliated when they were in elementary school. They decided early on to never be in a position to be humiliated again. While this may have protected them early on, it is just getting in their way now. That's baggage that no longer serves them.
Yes, but that's the importance of introspection. Why did I feel humiliated? What was it that hurt me so bad? Can I love again? Without these experiences, we couldn't answer these questions. The important thing is being able to ask them and to actually try hard to find some answers. A static life is one in which we never can grow. We all try to avoid hurt (and rightfully so), but without it, what could we ever learn about life?
Weird twist to the analogy, though: the heavier your emotional baggage, the longer you carry it.