by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Dealing With The Big Black Bag of Emotional Garbage in a REAL Way
Take a few seconds for this quick thought experiment:
You’re walking down the street, minding your own business, and somebody rushes up to you holding a huge black bag that’s leaking, stinks, and is is clearly filled with rotting rubbish.
Without explanation, they try to hand it to you.
“Here“, they say. “Take this“.
What would you do in this situation?
Odds are, you’d probably step back, perhaps question their sanity, and then outright refuse to take hold of the bag…
That just seems like a no-brainer but this exact situation (metaphorically speaking) happens to us every single day psychologically and emotionally:
If you stop to look at the world around then you’ll see that people are constantly attempting to hand you their emotional ‘garbage’:
Often, they don’t even realise their doing it but their fear, shame, anger, insecurity, confusion, and unprocessed inner chaos are all offered up to you as though it’s YOURS to take a hold of.
If we’re not grounded in our REALNESS, then we can actually find ourselves picking up all kinds of emotional garbage that has nothing to do with us whatsoever.
This article is about recognising the bag when it’s offered, understanding why people try to give it to you in the first place, and learning that you can CHOOSE not to take it.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Emotional Garbage: What We'll Cover in this Article
- Dealing With The Big Black Bag of Emotional Garbage in a REAL Way
- The World Is Full of Unprocessed Emotional Garbage
- The Shadow Dance: When People Try to Hand You Their Bag
- When Something Feels ‘Off’ or ‘Weird’
- Why We Take the Bag of Emotional Garbage (Even When We Don’t Really Want To)
- Growing Real: Recognising the Bag and Choosing
- Not Taking the Bag Doesn’t Mean Losing Compassion
- Why Not Taking the Bag Helps Everyone Grow REAL
- Practical Steps: How to Stop Taking the Big Black Bag of Emotional Garbage
- Emotional Garbage & the Freedom of Empty Hands
The World Is Full of Unprocessed Emotional Garbage
Let’s begin with a simple but potentially uncomfortable observation:
The world is populated with people carrying enormous amounts of unprocessed emotional material.
Many of us spend a great deal of our time running – often unconsciously – from our own inner experience:
We distract ourselves, suppress feelings, construct unreal identities, blame others, and chase endless stimulation as a way of avoiding what’s unresolved within ourselves.
The aim of all this is pretty simple: to forget, escape, or outrun what feels uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, this running only increases suffering because the paradox is that reality itself is medicine and so the more we resist it, the worse we make things for ourselves in the long-term.
When we stop running and actually look at what’s going on inside ourselves honestly and without distortion then we can begin to feel better because reality has a natural self-correcting function and so once something is accepted, it can usually start to process itself because emotions are “e-motion, energy in motion”.
The problem is that many of us never stop long enough to discover this because of short-term emotional discomfort (that a dysregulated nervous system can often confuse for actual physical danger).
The long and short of all this is that instead of facing our own inner worlds, we can attempt to manage it externally with one the most common ways to do this being to try and pass emotional garbage onto someone else.
The Shadow Dance: When People Try to Hand You Their Bag
When people are living in a state of fragmentation – split between the conscious ego that they identify with and filter life through and their hidden shadow self — then they enter the Shadow Dance which is the ongoing struggle between the self-image they want to maintain and the ‘parts’ of themselves they’re not ready to face yet.
Maintaining the illusion of the ego creates TENSION that has to sometimes be released somewhere.
(As the old (supposed) Chinese proverb says: “Tension is who you think you ‘should’ be, relaxation (regulation) is who you really are“).
Rather than looking inward to release this tension by integrating they shadow, the most common strategy – in order to maintain the ego – is to try and offload by giving somebody else that big ol’ black bag of emotional garbage:
Projection: Seeing Their Garbage in You
The most common form that this offloading takes is projection:
Projection is what happens when someone takes their own inner emotional ‘stuff’ – for example, their fear, anger, dishonesty, insecurity, or shame (though it can also happen with ‘good’ emotion) – and perceives it as existing in someone else so they don’t have to feel it directly (and then process it).
Instead of recognising their own inner conflict, they locate it outside themselves (hence the saying that “perception is projection”).
Essentially, in situations like this they’re handing you the bag and saying, “This is yours“.
Whether you take it or not is a CHOICE that’s determined by what’s going on in your own emotional world…
Insecurity and Shame
Being offered the big black bag of garbage can also be something that’s motivated because of general insecurity rooted in underlying shame:
When people feel fundamentally not ‘enough’, for example, they often try to make others responsible for stabilising their emotional state and so they demand reassurance, blame others for their feelings, or create dynamics where you’re somehow help up as the one who needs to ‘manage’ their emotions for them.
Again, this isn’t REAL (because it’s rooted in their ego ‘stuff’ and the ego is the opposite of reality) -they’re just offering you that black bag again and attempting – usually unconsciously – to transfer responsibility for something that only they can work through.
When Something Feels ‘Off’ or ‘Weird’
Before we go too deep into this it’s important to point out that not everything is projection but – if we have our own ‘stuff’ – we can sometimes treat everything as projection as a way of emotionally bypassing:
Sometimes the feedback we get from others about how we’re making them feel or how we’re showing up is a genuine observation of one of our own patterns.
Sometimes we make mistakes and other people reflect things we need to see in ourselves.
This being said, though, being handed that black bag of emotional garbage when it’s not ours to take is a real phenomenon and there’s often a distinct signal when something is ‘off’ and this is what’s going on:
Many people I’ve spoken to about this recognise it as a strange or “weird” feeling – the sense of being pulled into something unreal that seems out of balance or ‘gamey‘ and dramatic in some way…the interaction feels distorted and you’ll feel the subtle pressure to accept a frame (interpretation) of reality that isn’t actually aligned with anything that’s true.
This feeling is a cue that your nervous system recognising an incongruence and that your realness itself is signalling that you’re being invited into a dynamic that isn’t grounded in truth.
In other words:
You’re being offered the bag but you DON’T have to take it.
Why We Take the Bag of Emotional Garbage (Even When We Don’t Really Want To)
If taking someone else’s garbage makes life heavier, why do we do it?
Because we’re often conditioned to.
If we are not grounded, regulated, and real within ourselves, we may feel obligated to accept what’s offered — even when it harms us.
Childhood Conditioning and Emotional Enmeshment
One reason that so many of us think we need to take the big black bag of emotional garbage from people is because so many people grew up in environments where they had to ‘manage’ a parent’s emotional state.
For example, perhaps a parent was unstable, overwhelmed, or unable to regulate themselves and so the child learned that love meant meeting the parent’s emotional needs.
This creates enmeshment (or blurring and blending between one person and another):
One of the worst consequences of this is that adult ego of people that exeprience this kind of thing continues operating from this pattern instead of from their REALNESS (which has always been their but gets hidden behind the distortions of ego) and so when someone offers emotional garbage, the old programming activates:
[Insert Robot noises *beep* *boop*]:
“I must take care of this. I’m responsible“.
But this is a learned survival strategy to try and acquire ‘love’ way back when – not the actual truth.
Unnecessary Guilt
Another reason that we might CHOOSE to take the bag is because we feel guilty (which – if it lingers – is always a sign that we’re being controlled or manipulated by some external source):
When we’re driven by guilt a few things can start to happen:
-We assume responsibility for emotions that aren’t ours.
-We believe we’re ‘bad’ if someone feels upset.
-We confuse empathy with obligation.
-We think refusing the bag makes us ‘selfish’ (or some other loaded term).
The truth, though, is that guilt doesn’t always indicate wrongdoing (though sometimes it definitely does and it’s asking us to learn and make amends) but often it simply reflects conditioning that needs to be questioned.
Our Own Unprocessed Material
The bottom line is this:
More often than not, we take the bag when it’s offered to us because we haven’t dealt with our own emotional ‘stuff’.
Unprocessed emotions often lead to the creation of a self-image and survival pattern where we assume we must carry things for others.
This means that their ‘garbage’ resonates with our unresolved issues and so we unconsciously accept it.
In short, the bag is something we take because something unreal inside of us makes us believe we have no choice.
Growing Real: Recognising the Bag and Choosing
Staying and growing real in these situations begins with Awareness.
‘Awareness’ means learning to notice when the big black bag of garbage is being offered and recognising the strange pull, pressure, or invitation into unreality.
Awareness is just the starting point, though, because the deeper transformation is in realising that we always have a CHOICE and so we can choose not to take it.
This power of choice becomes more of an option when we remain grounded in our realness which means that we stay connected to the things that actually belong to us like our values, our vision, our real emotions, and our inner rootedness.
From this grounded place, it becomes abundantly clear that the ‘bag’ has nothing to do with us unless we make it have something to do with us – instead, we can see that it belongs to the other person’s reservoir of unprocessed emotional ‘stuff’ and reflects their inner relationship with themselves.
In other words, it’s their work and we can stay free if we want to be.
Not Taking the Bag Doesn’t Mean Losing Compassion
Refusing the bag does not mean rejecting the other person or becoming cold, detached, or lacking empathy.
In fact, the opposite is true because it means accepting their REALNESS and their power to deal with all that ‘stuff’ to go deeper into wholeness in their relationship with themselves and life:
When we refuse to participate in unreal dynamics, we create the conditions for genuine growth for both for ourselves and for others.
We can still care, listen, and understand but we don’t need to absorb what isn’t ours – instead, we can focus on our own realness and our vision, our goals, our habits, and our alignment with reality.
By staying focused like this, we establish energetic boundaries that protect clarity and groundedness which, paradoxically, is good for everyone:
When we don’t take the bag, the other person is returned to their own responsibility which means they’re given the opportunity to face their inner world which means that real growth becomes possible.
Why Not Taking the Bag Helps Everyone Grow REAL
When you take someone’s emotional garbage, you participate in their emotional avoidance, help maintain their fragmentation, and reinforce the illusion that their emotional world exists outside them.
When you flip the script and refuse in a calm and real way then something powerful happens:
You interrupt the pattern; you model regulation; you embody realness; you show that facing reality cannot be outsourced.
This doesn’t always feel comfortable in the moment because some people resist (which is what the black bag is all about in the first place) and some might become upset (not because you’re purposely trying to upset people but as a by-product of not enabling those old patterns) but – in the long run – it facilitates authenticity and healing for all involved.
Realness grows through realness.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you’re ready to step into your realness once and for all.
Practical Steps: How to Stop Taking the Big Black Bag of Emotional Garbage
Understanding the idea is one thing but living and implementing it is another so here are some practical ways to make use of all this ‘stuff’ in daily life:
1. Notice the Signal
Pay attention to your body and listen out for when interactions feel distorted, pressured, or strangely heavy…
When they do, pause and notice any tension, confusion, or feelings of ‘offness’ or ‘weirdness’ because this is often your nervous system signalling that an unreal dynamic is unfolding.
(Not always but often).
2. Ask Yourself: “Is This Actually Mine to Take?”
When emotional heaviness starts to appear, ask yourself straight-up:
- Is this actually my responsibility or am I being told that it is?
- Did I actually create this emotion or is it something that was already there but that’s been triggered?
- Am I being asked to ‘manage‘ something that belongs to someone else?
Clarity interrupts those automatic patterns from an outdated self-image by allowing you to to make a CHOICE.
3. Ground Yourself in Reality
Stay connected to what is real for you and the things that you can actually DO something with:
- Your direct experience
- Your values
- Your intentions
- Your goals and vision for yourself
Regulating practices such as breath awareness, slowing down, or feeling into your body can stabilise you in moments of pressure and a grounded person can’t easily be handed someone else’s garbage.
The more you create a foundation of regulation in your life, the easier it gets to stay real when things get unreal.
4. Release Unnecessary Guilt
Recognise that you aren’t responsible for regulating other adults’ emotions and that you can still care deeply without carrying anything that doesn’t belong to you.
You can understand without absorbing and you can love without losing yourself.
5. Set Energetic Boundaries
Boundaries aren’t walls – they’re a commitment to clarity about who you are and what you’ll tolerate.
Sometimes, this means calmly expressing your perspective.
Sometimes, it means not engaging in certain conversations.
Sometimes, it simply means not internalising what’s projected onto you.
Your energy follows your attention and what you focus on grows to choose wisely.
6. Process Your Own Emotional Material
The less unresolved ‘stuff’ you carry in your own emotional reservoir, the harder it becomes for others to hand you theirs.
Turn towards your own experience and accept whatever arises without judgement so you can allow reality to work as medicine.
Once again, as your inner world becomes integrated and regulated, your capacity to remain grounded increases naturally.
7. Focus on Your Vision
The simple truth is that when you’re oriented towards meaningful goals, habits, and growth, you have less space for unnecessary emotional burdens because your life keeps moving forward and so your energy stays aligned with what matters (your realness).
Check out my free 7-day course if you’re ready to work on your real vision: The 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness & Life Purpose
Emotional Garbage & the Freedom of Empty Hands
Life becomes lighter when you stop carrying what isn’t yours:
You move with more clarity, relationships become more real, emotional space opens, energy returns, and reality flows.
Perhaps even more importantly, you discover something that can change your life forever:
You never had to carry the bag.
Realness is simply the willingness to see what is true, remain grounded in it, and choose accordingly and so – even though the world may be full of people offering their garbage – you’re free to keep walking with empty hands.
Stay real out there
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