Why Your Traumatized Self CRAVES ORDER

After enduring abuse, neglect, bullying and repeated hardships, it becomes incredibly difficult to think clearly. Life feels chaotic, emotions flood in, time slips away, self-care falls by the wayside and living spaces gather clutter. What the wounded part of you longs for is order — a calm, graceful structure that lets the pieces of your life settle into place. That kind of order helps your body calm down, helps your brain re-stabilize, soothes your nervous system, and gradually returns your days to a healthier rhythm. No matter how bleak the past has been or how messy things are right now, restoring some order and rhythm is essential. In this video I’ll offer a simple practice to begin gently bringing order into your routine, but first let’s explore what “order” really means and how you’ll notice it’s missing.
Some people recoil from the word “order,” valuing spontaneity and responding to life in the moment — and that’s beautiful when your inner life is steady. But it’s almost impossible to live freely if your inner world is disordered. You’ll know there’s disorder if ordinary signs show up: poor sleep, losing track of time, irregular eating, mood swings, trouble managing work and money, missed bills, avoiding people, shame about your home, or repeatedly misplacing keys or a wallet. A chaotic home is a very visible cue. When disorder builds, making choices becomes overwhelming; decision-making gets sabotaged by impulses and stress, and your wiser self can feel out of reach. Relationships suffer too — they may be conflictual, shallow, or absent — or your social life might be crowded with anxiety and rumination. At the root of these problems is too much noise in the mind.
Growing up with childhood trauma often damages the capacity to process thoughts and feelings. What that looks like is a head full of bouncing, unfinished worries, resentments and loose ends that you’ve thought about before but can’t seem to set down. They intrude when you try to sleep or to concentrate. That’s why at Crappy Childhood Fairy we place so much importance on daily practice techniques: a combination of writing and meditation designed to process thoughts and create mental space. For many, these techniques have been the single most powerful tool to declutter the mind and invite something new in.
If you want to learn the daily practice, there’s always a link in the description and on the website — remember to click the “more” button to reveal the full list of resources under the videos. Many people miss that detail and wonder what’s being referenced.
So this is what living in need of order looks like: too many things competing for attention. The idea of order can sound like a strict teacher or an authoritarian drill sergeant, but order isn’t self-punishment or denying your need for spontaneity. Think of it like learning to play music: when you know the notes and the scales, you can improvise beautifully. When people don’t know the basics and try to improvise, it’s charming but chaotic. Giving some structure to your life allows creativity to be genuinely expressive.
How do you begin? Start with essentials: get adequate sleep, eat nourishing food in sensible amounts, and keep the main areas of your home — your bed, kitchen and living area — reasonably tidy. Try an experiment: notice how a cluttered room feels versus a tidy one. Some people with severe clutter use it as a numbing mechanism or find familiarity in the mess, but over time clutter can shut out the rest of life. In a tidy space you may sense more mental breathing room, a little more “oxygen” to think and stretch. A cluttered desk distracts; research supports that a cleaner workspace often boosts productivity. Personally, my pattern is to let the desk become messy while I work, then clear it every few days — that rhythm works for me. But when the mess interferes with focus — when it takes time to find a pencil or a key — clearing it is a better investment of time than staying distracted.
Visual clutter steals your attention. Reducing what’s visible opens space to notice and plan the next steps you want to take in your life. Trauma makes attention and focus fragile, so anything that strengthens focus is beneficial on many levels. One small joy of order is the simple pleasure of finding things: keys, a can opener, your phone. Living with family members who aren’t organized can make everyday tools wander through multiple drawers, buried beneath other items. If you live alone you might not be perfect, but at least the things you use daily can be kept in predictable spots — utensils sorted, not tossed together. Studies indicate that a tidy environment reduces stress, and clutter can be a sign of unprocessed emotions. Decluttering can reverse that dynamic: clearing space physically often helps emotional processing and can boost self-esteem, creating room for social life — you may even want to invite people over.
Tending outside spaces counts too. Raking a yard, sweeping steps, or picking up litter on a trail gives you the satisfaction of creating order and adds the benefits of moving your body outdoors. Sunlight, wind or snow — whatever the weather — supports your nervous system. Movement combined with fresh air is calming, and if you can do it with another person, it helps even more: social activity supports re-regulation. Outdoor work can feel like a gentler form of exercise for people whose trauma makes gym environments intimidating. Over time, building confidence through small successes like this can lead to more ambitious steps.
Creating order often means dealing with messy life areas — neglected phone calls, resentful relationships where boundaries were never set, people who take advantage of you. Cleaning up relationships is like sorting a closet strewn with old shoes: you’ll find guilt, resentment, loneliness and overwhelm. The “clean, repair, or let go” approach applies here — focusing your energy on the relationships and activities you want to nourish and releasing the ones that drag you down. That can be terrifying if you already feel disconnected, but letting go of draining friendships makes space for healthier connections as you heal. If you’re working on reconnecting to the world, you provide room for new people to enter. There’s a course called Connection Bootcamp that explores these ideas further; that link is in the description if you’re curious.
The aim is to have fewer things — people, possessions, obligations — that no longer fit, and more of the clean, working things that do. Just as clutter can block the doorway, clearing your life’s clutter opens the path for newness, and newness is often what people long for.
A practical way to begin is with a list. Many of us create lists we never complete; sometimes that’s because trauma has jammed the brain’s processing circuits, making follow-through hard. Writing tasks down shifts them out of the mind and into the visible world, relieving mental pressure. Make your lists visible: color-code them, use columns, check boxes or crossing-off — when something is written and externalized, it’s no longer crowding your head.
In my own practice I use writing to empty anxious and angry thoughts via a specific technique that’s simple and effective; you can learn it in the book Re-regulated or in The Daily Practice course, which is offered for free. Links to both are in the description. My team also runs weekly calls teaching these techniques to help people clear the backlog of thoughts and feelings and experience relief: clearer thinking, calmer states, and emotional ease. These practices prepare your mind so it’s easier to tackle physical decluttering.
It’s exhausting to begin physical tidying when your inner world is overloaded. If your nervous system is downregulated, don’t set yourself up for failure by attempting a massive overhaul in one sitting. Choose small wins. A great strategy is to tidy the part of a room visible from the doorway — even if the rest of the room is messy, a neat view can lift you. Or clean one appliance you see daily, like the refrigerator door. That visual order gives a boost and makes the next task feel doable and even enjoyable.
Growing up with a chaotic home often makes cleaning feel like reclaiming control — that’s a real and valid source of comfort. Organizing any area of life — home, car, schedule, relationships, boundaries — brings clarity about what you value and where limits belong. Release things that no longer support you, repair what’s worth keeping, and stay aware and appreciative of what you choose to keep. If something makes you unhappy and you can eliminate it, consider doing so.
Here’s the promised practical exercise to introduce gentle order into your day: choose a small decluttering project that takes under 15 minutes. Examples include a kitchen cupboard full of old flour and salt dust, or a jammed drawer of T-shirts in wrong sizes and wrappers and pennies at the bottom. A favorite quick project is the silverware drawer — it tends to get messy, sticky, and full of odds and ends. The goal is a short task that produces a satisfying sense of order without overwhelming you.
Steps for a simple silverware-drawer declutter:
– Pick your drawer and gather supplies: a bowl of warm water with a tiny bit of gentle soap, and two clean cloths (one wet for washing, one dry for drying — a sponge plus a rag will do).
– Empty the drawer completely onto the counter: silverware tray, chopsticks, disposable cutlery, stray screws, batteries, old candles — whatever’s in there.
– Dip the cleaning rag in the warm water, savor the warmth for a moment — notice how the sensation grounds you and calms your nervous system — then wring it out so it’s damp and begin wiping the inside of the drawer. Use a small tool to get grime from corners if necessary. Treat this as a brief, mindful ritual: you are making the space cleaner and safer for the items that will live there.
– Dry the drawer with your dry cloth once you’ve cleaned it. Remember that childhood experiences of structured cleaning can carry a deep sense of safety for many people — you don’t need to rush.
– Sort the items on the counter. If you have a tray, clean it and use it to keep utensils organized. Put clean cutlery back in the drawer; anything dirty goes to the sink for washing before it returns. Nest forks and spoons so they sit neatly. Think of arranging the utensils as tucking little items into place — small, orderly acts can feel soothing and restorative.
– Decide what else belongs in the drawer and what doesn’t: you probably don’t need a pile of chopsticks, loose batteries, pennies or coffee grounds in the silverware drawer. Create a home for rubber bands and clothespins elsewhere. Keep only items that are clean, functional and in the right place.
– If you find items that are broken, expired, or useless, consider recycling or discarding them. For some people, letting go is hard because of scarcity or attachment, and that’s understandable. But holding onto excessive junk can keep you stuck; giving away useful things helps someone else and helps you reclaim space. Whatever you choose to do with items — donate, recycle, toss — it’s your decision. Try not to let fear of judgment from others stop you from letting go.
Returning to the drawer: give it one more wipe on the exterior, especially if it’s near the stove and sticky. Clean behind the lip and the surrounding cabinet area if you have the time and energy — but don’t pressure yourself to do more than you can handle right now. Keep the project achievable.
The final, crucial step is to sit down with paper and pen. Rest for a minute and notice how the quick tidy affected you: how does your body feel — your back, chest, breathing? Has anxiety moved? Are new tasks surfacing like a stampede of mental buffalo? If so, write them down to create a place for those thoughts to live outside your head. Note whether you feel calmer, more energized, or more inclined to do another small task. Record any emotions that arise and how your energy shifted. Allow yourself a short pause — a minute or two to let the satisfaction of the small victory settle in.
After resting, ask yourself what kind of order you want next. Make a brief list and then close your eyes to sense which items feel important or satisfying to take on. That feeling will point to your next step. Put the list somewhere visible, like on the fridge door you cleaned earlier. When you complete a task, draw a line through it — there’s a real pleasure in striking things from a list and watching progress accumulate.
To manage tasks, many people benefit from a visual board or an app. One helpful tool is KanbanFlow (a kanban-style app) that lets you place tasks in columns, color-code them by estimated time, and use a built-in Pomodoro timer. Setting a 25-minute timer for a task, turning off notifications, and focusing until the bell goes off can break through procrastination. The method encourages short work blocks and small breaks, and it logs completed sessions — which is satisfying and motivating. Keep realistic expectations: tasks often take longer than you imagine, so avoid overloading your day. If you fall behind, move items to another day or delete them if they’re no longer important. Getting things into a visible plan — even if not all are finished — quiets the mind because it no longer has to hold everything.
Writing things down — especially before bed — helps stop the night-time replay of worries and unfinished tasks. The combination of the daily writing practice and periodic lists releases fears and resentments, making sleep and focus more attainable. If you want to learn the specific written techniques for clearing your mind, check out the book Re-regulated or the free course The Daily Practice; both links are available in the description. Weekly calls and group sessions are also offered for folks who want guided practice and support.
This gentle, step-by-step approach — moving outward from tiny, visible wins to larger projects and emotional work — helps untangle the scramble that trauma creates. Each small piece of order reshapes your days, calendars, body, and mind. Celebrate the little victories and notice how grief or overwhelm changes as order accumulates. That is how healing happens, one small, deliberate act at a time. [Music]