How to Deal With All the Baggage That Comes From a Bad Break-Up

“Baggage” is a buzzword that people throw around loosely. Whether it’s directed at someone for talking about their ex too much on a date or a self-admitted “excuse me and my baggage” as you cheekily fill out your dating app profile.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Baggage manifests itself in different ways, and often, expressing it is the first step in unwebbing whatever trauma we’re dealing with.

We asked Eleanor Butterworth, an expert on family, sexual violence, and relationship issues, about baggage, where it comes from, what it even is and how it impacts our relationships.

VICE: What does baggage in a relationship look like?

Eleanor: First of all, let’s start with what “baggage” is. The idea of emotional baggage is basically just the metaphor for the heavy experiences we have collected that we carry around.

Like trying to carry an actual bag wherever you go the idea of emotional baggage is that ‘it gets in the way’; in the way of forming connections, of moving as freely through the world as we would like and that maybe you have to work around these bags in your day to day relationship.

One thing I want to say is that the label emotional baggage implies something external to ourselves and something we “shouldn’t be carrying”.

It is normal to have had hard experiences that we carry around afterwards, and these experiences and how we cope with them can come to feel like part of us.

So maybe start by not judging yourself for the “bags” you carry, but instead think about where you picked them up, what is inside them and if you need to carry them anymore or if they have served their purpose.

Our bodies, hearts and minds are amazing at working to keep us safe (emotionally, physically and spiritually), so if you have had a bad break-up then the “bags” you have picked up are filled with the tools your mind, heart and body have employed to keep you safe in the future.

The difference between “baggage” and more helpful tools and coping mechanisms is that “baggage” are often those behaviours and thoughts that can help us feel safer in the short term but in the long run hinder our ability to fully experience the world including our relationships.

It is also important to note that everything in this article is referring to the experiences we might have in a safe relationship.

If you are in an abusive relationship, that is one where you have less power and control than your partner, where you experience fear of their reactions and they use patterns of physical or emotional abuse to undermine and isolate you, any reactions you are having are normal responses to an abnormal situation and getting support from a family violence agency is really important.

How can baggage impact a new relationship?

We all come with some baggage, so part of a new relationship is understanding what we each want from a partner, what we are each working on and then deciding if that overall picture works for each of us.

Baggage can get in the way of this process in a new relationship by preventing clear, transparent communication. So if I believe being vulnerable with a partner will cause them to reject me I may feel like I have to hide my feelings, not communicate things I want, and say what I’m not ok with in our relationship.

This can be really tough on a new relationship where you are trying to build good foundations and really know what you each think and expect from a partner.

It can also mean we assume our past experiences will repeat themselves even though we are with someone new and it is a completely different situation. So if we had a partner who broke up with us when we asserted our needs we might be hesitant to be open about our needs again.

How can we tell that we're carrying baggage into a relationship?

We can assume we all have some baggage from our experiences, but there is a saying in counselling “that if I’m hysterical, it’s historical”. While describing feelings as hysterical isn’t a very modern or helpful way of understanding our emotions, what that saying really means is, if my feelings are going from 0-10 really quickly, or regular relationship stresses and conflicts feel unbearable, overwhelming or escalate quickly, chances are we throwing the old coping the strategies we have in our bags at a problem.

Some people also manage these feelings by becoming really numb, so if we are overwhelmed with stress, sometimes our minds will check out in order to cope.

These kinds of reactions are natural responses to trauma, so you’re not “crazy” but having a professional help you unpack what is happening to you is really important. Our GPs or specialist services (e.g. sexual assault centres) are often useful gateways to finding other professional supports.

How can we deal with our emotional baggage?

Start by paying attention to the way your mind and body respond to situations. Try and do this non judgementally, treat all these cues just as “data” that can help you understand yourself and how you relate to people. So if your partner goes out with friends and you are aware that you start telling yourself that they will cheat, just notice this.

Once we notice these patterns we can start to interrupt them. Interrupting them might mean changing the story we tell ourselves to something that affirms we are ok, we can cope and that these feelings are trying to keep us safe but we may no longer need them in our current relationship.

In the moment when we feel overwhelmed having techniques to bring us back to the present can be really helpful, breathing in for 5 and out for 7, splashing water on our face, and doing some vigorous exercise can all help regulate our emotions and when we are calm we can start to consider where these feelings have come from.

How can we accommodate our partner's process and heal from their past relationships or family trauma?

Trauma represents a particular type of “bag” people might carry. Broadly trauma occurs when someone has had an overwhelmingly distressing, frightening or painful experience, it may be a one-off or a series, (for example living in a violent home) and it may continue to affect our physical and mental health long after we are out of the situation.

Healing from trauma can be a long journey, so if you are with someone who is on that journey some of what you can do as a partner is validate their feelings, understand this may take time, seek to understand what healthy coping strategies they employ when they become overwhelmed and support them to access these, for example, if you have a fight they may know they need to take time out to prevent themselves being triggered, so not chasing them or demanding they stay if that isn’t right for them.

What we don’t need to do with a partner who is healing from past trauma is accept bad or abusive behaviour.

If your partner was cheated on and to help them feel safe they want to go through your phone or always know where you are, this is not behaviour that we need to ever accept, but can become controlling behaviour.

These types of harmful coping strategies may make them feel secure in the short term but they will limit your freedom and they aren’t helping your partner do the deep healing they need to do within themselves. You also can’t go on this journey for them or be their counsellor, so be supportive, be there to listen and give them space to do this work, but remember it is their work to do and you can’t drive it for them.

What emotional baggage can be a red flag if you've just started seeing somebody?

Anyone who is employing coping strategies or using behaviour that controls, isolates, abuses or threatens should be a red flag. People using these behaviours may have really understandable reasons for having developed them, but they will need to do their own work with professional support to learn non-abusive or harmful ways of coping.

Is it worth leaving a relationship if someone's emotional baggage is too much to handle?

Yes, anytime you do not want to be in a relationship or you are not able to be a free and equal partner in a relationship because of your partner’s behaviour it is important to know you can leave.

This is particularly true if your partner is not taking any steps to address harmful behaviour, even when you feel huge empathy for them and the experiences that caused them to develop these ways of being, we can’t love people better if they are not doing their own healing and change work.

If they are working hard to heal and learn new ways of being in relationships and you want to stay but are still finding it hard, accessing good support for yourself can be really important as your well-being matters too.

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