Imagine you’re out hiking. 

You’re a good girl scout, right?! You’ve been taught that if you find something in the forest that doesn’t belong there, pack it out. You’re not the type to litter. Pack it in, pack it out. Right?! 

You are conscientious. You know that it’s important to keep the trail clean and beautiful. That's why we go to the forest, right? To hike on clean, beautiful trails. 

So you’re carrying your day pack, and you’re walking down the trail. But your hiking partner… well… instead of walking alongside you, carrying his pack and cleaning up any litter you may possibly come along… he’s running around like Tarzan, swinging from the trees, and leaping around and chasing frogs and doing whatever else comes across his jolly fun time. 

And every now and then, he runs in front of you and drops some baggage right in front of your feet. 

It's a suitcase full of his stuff. 

His emotions. 
His problems. 
His suitcase. 
His name is written right there on the tag. 

But you are a good girl scout. And you have been taught well to keep the trail clean. 

So every time that happens, you pick his luggage up--that pesky piece of litter, or that big heavy emotional suitcase--and you put it in your pack or you hoist it onto your shoulder, and you keep on truckin 'down the trail. 

A little while later he comes flitting along, and drops another emotional suitcase with his name tag on it, right in front of your feet… 

When this happens you have two choices; you can stumble over it and smack your face on the ground, or you can do the “right thing” by picking it up so that it doesn’t trip anyone else. 

You’re a good girl scout, and you want to do the right thing so you put it in your pack. But after a while, he’s still having fun swinging from the vines, and you’re getting exhausted. 

You’re exhausted because you keep picking up every piece of emotional baggage that you stumble across, even when it doesn’t have your name tag on it. 

Now does that mean you shouldn’t carry your own suitcase? Of course not. 

You are responsible for your own emotional suitcases with your feelings. 

Your decisions in them. 
Your mistakes in them. 
Your mess-ups in them. 

They have your name on the tags. 

You gotta carry them… those are your job. 
His emotional suitcases? Those are his job.

The thing is, you've been conditioned from childhood to not leave other people feeling bad, right? 

You’ve been conditioned to clear the trail. 
Pack out the litter. 
Leave everything better than you found it. 

You’ve been taught that’s what it means to be a good girl scout -- emotionally speaking. 

And here you are, a mature adult woman, still hauling other people’s luggage -- whether it’s your abusive spouse, or your crazy sister, or your toxic auntie, or bullying grandparent, or creepy cousin, or credit-hogging work colleague -- or whoever it is -- you’ve been conditioned that it’s your job not to leave other people feeling bad. 

His feelings are not your responsibility.

The cold hard truth though, is that you can’t fix everyone’s feelings to make sure nobody else feels bad, because their feelings are their own responsibility. So here you are, carrying a MOUNTAIN of other people’s emotional burdens. 

Their suitcases. 
Their name tags on the suitcases.
Their problems. 
Their job.

But here you are carrying them.

Now, this is not the same as God telling us to share one another's burdens. Paul tells us,

“Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.”

A healthy form of coming alongside someone who is carrying something that’s overwhelming them, is to join in their grief or worry, and sit beside them in prayer compassion. It’s beautiful to help others lighten their load. But that doesn’t mean carrying their emotional baggage for them. I’m talking about people who shamelessly drop their loads into your path and expect you to do the heavy-lifting. 

They’re not carrying their suitcase. 
They’re not hauling their load.

If your spouse was willing to stop their gallivant through the forest and hike beside you and help you navigate the trail as a partner, fabulous! Now you're a team. Now you're doing it together. Now you’re each carrying your own packs. 

But if that’s not the case, it’s time to...

Stop.
Carrying.
Other.
People’s.
Emotional.
Baggage.

If it doesn't have your name on the tag, don’t pick it up. 

Step over it.
Leave it on the trail. 

Let the person who owns it come back for it... or not.

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If they don’t carry their own suitcase, they’re going to have to suffer their own consequences. Even if they’ll trip over it when they come back down the trail.

Maybe they need to do exactly that?
Maybe without tripping over it, they’re never gonna learn to process their own junk.

If you have been conditioned to “pack it in, pack it out”, clean the trail, keep it beautiful by making sure nobody else has to carry anything--if you’re the one going the extra 10 miles and nobody else is coming to meet you, it’s time to change your hiking style.

A coaching client in this situation once said, “I wanna work on me. What can I do? I wanna work on me, instead of just asking him to work on him.”

I gave her this word picture and told her: “Stop carrying his emotional suitcases. Stop picking up what doesn’t belong to you.”

Just. Stop.

Carry your own emotional suitcase, and nothing more. 

You are not responsible for someone else’s choice to intentionally abuse you. It’s not your shame that someone else chooses to emotionally abuse you. But, you are free to choose to stop hauling his emotional suitcases. You have the freedom to exit the crazy and to stop participating in the cycle. 

You can do it, warrior mama. 
You really can.

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