Carl Jung said that the reason for mental illness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. We have a wrong relationship to pain and change, and that is because we are not aware that death is part of life, not at the end of it.

The ego is conservative and only wants more life and puts death outside the wall, into the hypothetical future, as something which is going to happen. But in reality each breathe comes and then goes. Between each inhale and exhale we die and are reborn.

So clinging to memory, to the past attachments, to toxic people, and useless ideas and beliefs brings great stress to the Self which knows that it is all junk. But like pack-rats, we hold on and wonder why life is rancid and mediocre.