Senior Moving Solutions

The Downsizing Cover-up

May 22nd, 2007
Print Print
Email Email
Comments Comments (3)

For years, those of us in senior move management have talked about the difficulty of downsizing one’s home, and how sorting through belongings that have accumulated over decades unleashes memories. Making decisions and letting go of the past is hard. But recently, I have begun to see the angst of downsizing as something else.

More and more, my clients are talking about their deeper fears of moving. Will I be happy? Am I doing the right thing? Will I be able to make friends? How will I deal with change? These are deep feelings—so deep that many people are unable to articulate them to themselves or to others. It’s much easier to transfer this anxiety to concrete objects such as our possessions, and make those objects the focus of our moving angst.

I wonder if we wouldn’t be more successful in helping our clients downsize if we facilitated their talking about the fears that lie beneath the surface, and not dismissing their concerns or blithely assuring them that “everything will be all right.” What if we just offered empathetic listening, allowing them to feel truly heard? I think we would find that our clients are far wiser than we suspect, that beneath their fears of change, they really do believe the move is the right thing to do. They just need to talk about it, at the deepest level. And once they do, once we remove the “downsizing cover-up,” I believe the decisions about china, towels, clothes and bric-a-brac will all be much easier, because the burden of anxiety that weighed them down has been alleviated.

  

Margit Novack is President of Moving Solutions®, a national move management firm, and of eSMMART, a Web-based training center for individuals who work with older adults.

Posted in Downsizing Your Home, Senior Moving Solutions: Margit Novack

Print Print
Email Email
Comments Comments (3)
COMMENTS
3 Responses to “The Downsizing Cover-up”
  1. celeste Says:

    You are so right, Margit! It is about the anxiety of changing where you are—will it change who I am? It is difficult to downsize. I know I started soon after my two twin boys left for college (mind you this was over twelve years ago!) and I still seem to have much too much for someone who is planning on leaving my home and moving into a condo later this year. It is funny how the objects around my house, which I so easily referred to as junk just months ago I sometimes think now are my most precious possessions.

  2. DannieLafs Says:

    I am a geriatric care manager in Raleigh. My job is very rewarding but I find it really hard to motivate clients to stay positive during this time. When they are moving out of their homes there is a lot of attachement placed on physical objects. Is there any other things that you suggest other than being a good listener? Thank you.

  3. Margit Novack Says:

    This is in response to the comment from DannieLafs.

    There is no one paragraph solution to how to help people emotionally during this period. This is the guts of what senior move managers do. I recommend visiting the National Association of Senior Move Managers Web site (http://www.nasmm.org).

Leave a Comment