Free Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight by Peter Walsh Page A

related to your stuff. Clutter comes from bringing too much stuff
into
your home (your acquisition score), not getting rid of enough of it (yourdifficulty discarding/saving score), and allowing it to spread throughout your home where it doesn’t belong (your clutter score).
    An especially high score in one or more of these areas suggests you should pay particular attention to what’s causing you to acquire stuff, hold on to stuff, or be messy. If they’re all equally high, then you’ll know to seek answers across the board.
    Remember that your score may well go down after you go through the program. The participants who finished the program saw their scores fall steeply! I’ll talk more about how much they improved a little later in the book.
    MEASURING YOUR ANXIETY
    Next, it’s time to test your anxiety levels with a commonly used tool called the GAD-7. This is a fairly recently developed survey, and research has found it to be a “valid and efficient” way for doctors and mental health professionals to check for generalized anxiety disorder.
    I’m including it here as a way for you to quickly and easily get a general sense of how much anxiety you’re carrying around. I also asked the test panel to answer these questions.
    GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER 7-ITEM (GAD-7) SCALE
    Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems? Circle a number for each answer.
0
1
2
3
Not at all
Several days
More than half the days
Nearly every day
1. Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge
2. Not being able to stop or control worrying
3. Worrying too much about different things
4. Trouble relaxing
5. Being so restless that it’s hard to sit still
6. Becoming easily annoyed or irritable
7. Feeling afraid as if something awful might happen
    Scoring: Add up all your zeroes, ones, twos, and threes at the bottom of each column. Now add all your columns together. This gives you your total score.
    Your score can range from zero to 21. Here’s what your score means:
    0 to 4—you appear to have minimal anxiety
    5 to 9—you appear to have mild anxiety
    10 to 14—you appear to have moderate anxiety
    15 to 21—you appear to have severe anxiety
----
    Remember, this quiz doesn’t
diagnose
you with an anxiety problem. It merely draws your attention to a possibility. In my experience, people who are struggling with clutter tend to show higher degrees of stress and anxiety. A frequent part of my work with clients is to help them deal with a sense of anxiousness or foreboding. Addressing clutter inevitably raises surprising issues and emotions. Expect that to be a normal part of this process. Accept and work through your feelings. If anxiety is interfering with your life, seeking professional help may be your best course of action. Anxiety, left untreated, can be seriously debilitating.
    Our test panel also saw improvement on their anxiety scores, as you’ll see in the graph below.
    If you scored high on the GAD-7, keep in mind that addressing your anxiety will likely help you better manage your home and your weight.
    TEST PANELIST GAD-7 SCORES BEFORE AND AFTER PROGRAM

    MEASURING YOUR MOOD
    Now let’s take a look at whether you’re dealing with depression, using a similarly structured scale called the PHQ-9. Depression means more than just sitting around feeling sad: It can also lead to physical symptoms and changes in your behavior that you might not realize are due to depression.
    Researchers conducting depression-related studies often give participants the PHQ-9 to track their outlook. Since symptoms of depression can play such a big role in your relationship with your home and weight, I’d like you to explore whether any of the elements of this questionnaire relate to you. Having this knowledge can give you more power over your clutter and waistline while you’re doing the 6-week program.
    PATIENT HEALTH QUESTIONNAIRE-9 (PHQ-9)
    Over the last 2