I view our reactions to all situations as arising from our filters. What are our filters? Our filters arise from our life experience. For example, my family was poor and I was always hungry. So now I make larger portions of food when I cook than I need to. I'd rather waste food than go hungry by not having enough food.

Here's another example. My mother-in-law grew up during the great depression, when you dare not waste anything. It was programmed into her, to not waste anything. Much later in life, she had a subscription to reader's digest. Once a year she would put about ten copies of reader's digest by the door. When my husband and I visited, she would give the ten reader's digest to us. If we said we didn't want them, she would keep insisting that we take them. It was easier to just take them, than it was to argue about it for an hour. And she would just keep pushing for us to take them until we took them. Why? Because she couldn't throw them out. So we had to take them to our house and throw them out there. Is this irrational? They would still get thrown out, but she wouldn't know they were getting thrown out. So...it was okay for them to get thrown out, as long as she didn't know they were getting thrown out. Alternatively, she could have just been "okay" with throwing them out herself. This is irrational. The end result was: the reader's digest got thrown out. But because she didn't know that, so she was "okay."

One day I found an object of mine. I can't remember what it was. I didn't want it any more, so I put it in the garbage. My husband retrieved it from the garbage. Apparently, it wasn't okay to throw it out. Prior to that day he didn't even know that object existed. And now, he wasn't going to be "okay" if that object was put into the garbage, even though the object didn't even belong to him.

I find it totally confounding how people can pin their happiness on something as insignificant as throwing something away. It doesn't make you a bad person.

I asked him what horrible thing was going to happen if I threw that object out and he had no answer. I asked him what horrible thing was going to happen if his mother threw out the reader's digest and he had no answer. it's because nothing horrible would happen as a result of throwing something in the garbage. It would not change anyone's life at all.

To me, this is what anxiety looks like, retrieving something from the garbage that doesn't even belong to do you and being unable to throw it out. Or being unable to throw out old reader's digest. In these cases these two people are choosing unhappiness by believing it into existence. "I will be unhappy if I throw this out."
So they either have to keep it when they don't need it OR give it (force it onto) someone else. (recycle it). I'm absolutely certain they could both live full happy lives even if they threw out those objects, but they don't believe that.

Now this is happening with my daughter. She has some free seat tickets to her play (professional theatre). She believes if the tickets are not used and the seats are empty for one night (two seats), that's not okay. I see it like this: what horrible thing is going to happen to you if the two seats are empty for one night? The answer is: nothing, I will just feel bad. For nothing. Absolutely nothing in her life will be hurt or changed if those two seats are empty for one night. I think this is the foundation of anxiety. Fretting over something that isn't going to harm you at all. Two empty seats won't hurt anyone. The theatre itself is so big that the theatre people won't even notice. So the "harm" is actually non-existent, it's completely imaginary harm. It's almost like she's looking for a reason to be unhappy (anxious).

I guess I don't really have a question, just an observation. Do some people just invent or look for reasons to be unhappy? Because I think the unhappiness arising in these cases is all in the head/imagination of the person who can't "waste" a magazine, object or tickets.

The harm is only in their mind, it's not real. I realise it's real to them, but it's still unnecessary. They don't have to be hurt by the "waste." And I think going to the trouble of driving to a doctor's office or senior's centre to donate the reader's digest is equally irrational. A person ought to be able to throw out a reader's digest just as easily as they thrown out yesterday's newspaper.