House Moving Therapy

by Mila Petrova

Overview

Have you ever found yourself in a Big Mess from moving house? From losing a home or being unable to own one? From losing your bearings within yourself and the world? 

 

What was the mess made of? Things? MORE THINGS? Thoughts? Memories? Emotions? Death? Money matters? Relationship in tatters?

 

If you are facing the chaos of a house move, declutter, or even a soul search with no need to move; if they feel overwhelming, scary, heart-breaking, this-is-me-and-my-life-disintegrating, read on.

Or, rather, tear a leaf after leaf, peel a layer after layer of your relationship to the things you'll find around you.

 

This book is about our relationship to possessions, the loss of home and the search for one's true home, and about how to use the physical chaos of a house move to sort through some of the inner psychological chaos.

It is based on the author's experience of 21 house moves (or 40, depending on how you count). It is psychological-philosophical yet practical. It is passionate, raw and non-prescriptive but also forensically analytic.

 

It will leave you feeling freer, lighter, braver, less swayed by musts and shoulds and other persons' home-related truths, and more at Home, wherever you are. 

 

It doesn't matter if you are moving house or remain where you live until your dying day. 

The house moving is optional in finding your True Home. 

 

YOU making a move, again and again, is not. 

 

Ready? Steady?

Read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781739137779
Publisher:	Mila Petrova
Publication date:	11/21/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	414
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Dr Mila Petrova is, apart from a house-moving ninja, a health, social and behavioural sciences researcher, specialising in health systems strengthening, digital health, palliative and end of life care, health in humanitarian and development contexts, and evidence synthesis. She's working as an independent research consultant and continues to be Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, where she's spent most of her academic career. She's also a psychologist, counsellor and 'get unstuck' coach. Mila lives (or, more accurately, is currently living) in Cornwall, England. You can reach her through www.milapetrova.com

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Life on the floor

PART I: Beginnings

Ch 1: What makes house moving difficult (1): An explosion of decisions, or how the possessions of a two-bedroom flat can take up the seats of forty-six Boeings

Ch 2: What makes house moving difficult (2): 'Microprojects' on roots to uproot, harm to reverse, good to attempt and bullets to bite

Ch 3: What makes house moving difficult (3): Subversive emotions, but rarely the ones you feared

Ch 4: What makes house moving difficult (4): Defaults that are fat slices of our philosophy of life

Ch 5: How to make it easier? Two things to do that don't need you to lift a finger

Ch 6: Thresholds of pain

Ch 7: Parallel cleaning

PART II: On-Your-Back Things

Ch 8: "When in doubt, wear red". On clothes, the fear of truly shining, and eleven other types of psychological chaos

Ch 9: "Shoes shouldn't hurt". On shoes, lessons we were confident we have really learnt yet continue to repeat, and nine other types of psychological chaos

Ch 10 : "I sing the body electric": Sports gear and inner coxes. On sports equipment, harmful inner conversations, and ten other types of psychological chaos

PART III: House-Bound and Room-Bound Things

Ch 11: Tie yourself to a table. If tables are few, wall colour will do. On furniture, moments when our connection to a place (or a thing, or a person) snaps, and seven other types of psychological chaos

Ch 12: House decoration and painted-over soul cracks. On decoration and art, and traumas from our childhood homes that mark us for life

Ch 13: Liaisons dangereuses. On bedding, towels and other 'huggables', and on the self-defeating associations between a physical and an emotional home

Ch 14: Hunger games. On food, cooking and eating utensils, and almost any form of psychological chaos you can imagine, including fifteen dysfunctional 'eating personality' types

PART IV: Boundary-Crossing Things

Ch 15: Your amazing technicolour dreamhouse and the taken-for-granted. On electrics and electronics, the unglamorous essential ingredient of success and happiness they jeopardise, and five other types of psychological chaos

Ch 16: Do It Yourself. Nevermore. On DIY equipment, culturally inherited beliefs about what it means to be a true man or woman, and three other types of psychological chaos

Ch 17: You are not just a number. On paperwork and the glorious visions we have (had) for our lives v. the lacklustre of the everyday

Ch 18: Home in a bottle of face wash. On cosmetics, guilty pleasures and blindingly obvious things that took you decades to see

Ch 19: The books of life. On books and lives that need saving

Ch 20: The dark bronze envelope. On sentimental items and myths of letting go

PART V: Final Things

Ch 21: Boxing it. On boxes, suitcases and bags, and the tinge of dissatisfaction at endings that aren't a perfect closure

Ch 22: What makes a true home

Acknowledgements

List of Boxes

Disclaimer