Most people know that the decluttering process isn’t always easy. While I’m a big fan of just turning off your brain and tapping into joy like Marie Kondo suggests, anyone who has attempted decluttering often knows that there can be a lot of fear and resistance tagged on and we’re not really sure why. The crazy truth is that letting go of our things can quite literally be a grieving process. Not because we are people are so obsessed with our material items, but because we have accidentally given them meaning beyond just stuff. Here’s how to spot these misalignments and how you can course correct in a way that feels freeing and not frightening.