Are you suffering from PTDI ie People Transmitted Dressing Infections?
If you want to be bold and courageous and show the world who you truly are, the clothes you choose to wear are the first guides to that.
What are PTDIs
Like Sexually Transmitted Infections, PTDI comes from other people.
You can’t be who you truly are if you are wearing clothes that please others while inside you are a seething mass of unhappy emotions. You have a ‘People Transmitted Dressing Infection’. It is deadly. It kills your spirit. You are not the person you are meant to be. You are a part or a full clone of someone else.
The underlying cause of People Transmitted Dressing Infections is people pleasing. We are all human. We all want the joy of pleasing others. We also want that safe feeling of belonging.
Every one of us has or will fall victim to people pleasing whether it’s for a moment, a period of time or a lifetime. Change and difference can be scary to some people. When you go against who you truly are to please others, you hope that you will be safe from their criticism and anger.
When you put those people-pleasing clothes on, your spirit quietly rebels. It tells you that you are wearing a mask that disguises who you truly are. When you have People Transmitted Dressing Infection,s you override your spirit. You choose to wear what will win someone else’s approval so that they can continue to feel comfortable and safe in their world.
You think you’ll get your mother’s, your sister’s, your partner’s, your husband’s, your boss’s or your friend’s approval. You don’t! It doesn’t work that way because it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about whats going on in their head or their lives. You can’t control that. Don’t argue. You’ve tried to please and appease and so far it hasn’t worked.
They Are Hurt
Your husband, partner, mother, sister, friend, work colleague or supervisor may be temporarily in pain. They are feeling hurt; maybe over something that does not even involve you.
As Bréne Brown says ‘some people express their anger outward’. You are either the first person that comes into their environment or they know that criticising your dressing will hit one of your hot buttons. So they strike, looking for a reaction that they hope will make them feel better inside. The last thing on their mind is what consequence it will have for you. They will not notice if you never wear those clothes again around them or whether you throw those clothes out or whether you change your style of dressing completely.
Some people attack your dressing as a cover up to stop a conversation about their bigger or permanent anger. When you react, they have put a Band-Aid over their hurt. It will come off as Band-Aids do. The process will be repeated over and over until you are totally cowered or you choose to respond rather than react.
They Are Comparing Apples with Pears
Sharing the same basic values with your husband, partner, friend or family does not necessarily mean that you share the same style of dressing. Within the context of the society in which you live, your dressing is determined by your colouring and your personality. Lots of people do not understand that. The longer you are together, the more some people assume that both of you are exactly the same.
You may have been chosen as a partner, friend or employee because you add something to their lives or their business. That may be sparkle or serenity. Then over time, they try to change you to be more like them. Or worse, like the idealised version of who they think you should be.
Until they have acquired the knowledge and wisdom to accept that it is colouring and personality that is the base for how a person dresses, they can affect your way of dressing through seeing you only through their eyes. It is not ignorance. It is simply ‘not yet learnt’.
Until you discover, acknowledge and celebrate your true colouring and personality, you will be people pleasing and creating more People Transmitted Dressing Infections in your wardrobe.
You Are Pretending
Its not all one-sided. Sometimes you are pretending to be someone you are not.
You can do that to be accepted by a partner, a friend, a peer group or a job. You change your dressing. Or you had a part-idea of who you are and this person comes along that you desperately want to please; so you change to what you think is acceptable to them. At work, your job’s Dress Code or uniform can be far from who you are. You change your dressing to fit in and please the firm but each day as you look in the mirror, you know that it is slowly killing your spirit and your enthusiasm for the job.
Celebrity, Social Media, Blogger, Magazine and Royalty Transmitted Dressing Infections are also people pleasing. You are pleasing that person inside you that tells you that you are not good enough.
It is the job of celebrities, modern royalty, bloggers, magazines and social media stars to showcase fashion and sell clothes and accessories. You are uniquely You. Your job is to choose to buy an individual item or take elements of their dressing style because it matches part of your personality. You are worth more than being a clone of someone in the spotlight.
Courage and Boldness
Look now in your wardrobe. Is there anything there that you are keeping because it pleases someone else or quietens that little voice in your head that says you are not good enough? Is there a niggling feeling that your wardrobe does not represent who you truly want to be?
It takes courage to step up to yourself. It takes courage to get rid of the People Transmitted Dressing Infection clothes caused by people pleasing out of your wardrobe. When you do, you will find that you do not need all the clothes that are there or hidden in less obvious places. Your wardrobe will become more minimalist.
You will need help to uncover all the varied and interesting parts that make you the person you are. You will discover how to be bolder and more selective in what you buy and wear. Then, you will only have in your wardrobe clothes and accessories that you love and that you love to wear often.
I will not guarantee that you never suffer from People Transmitted Dressing Infections again. You are human. I am human. Things happen and sometimes we are caught off-guard.
I will guarantee that you will recognise the symptoms and be able to bring your wardrobe and your spirit back to optimum health quickly. And you’ll be able to laugh about it.
There’s a negative dressing word that has a great impact on your dressing and your self-esteem. 
Have you ever gone shopping and cannot find something you like? Instead of going home or elsewhere, you go ‘I’ll just buy this’. You come home with a second best choice. Because of that, you’re not keen to wear it. And somehow it gets taken out of your wardrobe and put back again. You simply cannot convince yourself to wear it. I’ve done that.
Janet’s one word hack for ‘just’ is ‘simply’. When you are choosing what to wear from your wardrobe, instead of saying ‘I’ll just wear this’ substitute ‘I’ll simply wear this’. The feeling and the message are completely different. 
Thirdly, ‘I’ll just keep this’ is a way to avoid decluttering your wardrobe of clothes and accessories that no longer of may never have given you joy when wearing them. It’s saying ‘I don’t like this. But I am hoping one day to find something that will make this look fabulous’. Funny, that day never comes. Or ‘I’ll just keep these small clothes because I will fit into them one day.’ That day never comes either.
Recently, I was filled with an urge to de-clutter.
Tidying by category of books revealed to me that I love books and store them everywhere. I also realised that I don’t need to keep one book by a loved author to remind me of that person. At my funeral my family will say ‘Margaret loved reading.’ They will not list the authors I loved. So all I have kept are about 10 books that I re-read and re-read because they give my joy and a special lift when I need it. Later, I found more books hidden elsewhere. I instantly discarded them. If I didn’t remember where they were, they weren’t giving me current joy.
Let me leave you with Marie’s last words – 
Whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere, it’s time for a new season wardrobe or closet cleanout.
A few weeks ago I had to take my husband to a hospital for a major check-up. It was going to take some time: so I decided to find a local café where I could sit and write one of my newsletter articles with a cup of coffee and a slice of raisin toast. Sounds good! I was lying to myself. I wasn’t going for the raisin toast. I was going for a nice cake. The coffee was my excuse.
This is similar to how we women buy clothes. We start out with good intentions to only buy one or maybe two things. We are seduced by all the choices around us. We come home maybe with the item we were searching for but often with that and more or something completely different. UK research in 2009 on ‘Sheconomics’ concluded that 80% of women shop to ‘cheer themselves up.’ There are some personality types who can be single-minded in their shopping all the time. For the rest of us, it’s our emotional state that decides whether we stay focused or get distracted. It’s the distracted emotional state that causes us to buy items that we regret buying when we get home.
Our complaints are many. It doesn’t look as good as in the shop. It goes with only one item in our wardrobe or we start to worry how others will perceive us when we wear it. We may have bought it for one event and then don’t go. We buy it for one circumstance and that circumstance never happens again. It’s tighter than it was in the shop.
Do you have clothing obesity in your wardrobe and other spaces? What if you learnt to live with less clothes, shoes, handbags, scarves and jewellery? What if your work wardrobe, your casual wardrobe, your travel wardrobe and your formal wardrobe contained only clothes you loved and wore regularly?
Dressing is a basic act of life but it is not simple. Dressing is both a physical and an emotional act. We choose each piece based on emotions and justify our choices to both ourselves and others with rational reasons. (Men do it too.)
It’s almost the end of January. You look in your wardrobes in despair – all those clothes you never wear. You’ll have to buy some new ones.
A friend arrives at your door or at your coffee date with an armful of her second-hand items or something she has bought especially for you. You are caught off-guard but you are too polite to say ‘No’ straightaway? ‘Let me think about it,‘ you say as you stall for a kind answer.
All of you will have the time to decide on your preferred ‘No’ response. You will also have the time to practise it. Some people will hold you to your ‘later’ commitment. So Extroverts do not ignore it. You must make a decision before the set date for Sarah’s return call.