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Interesting Note: Hoarding is slated to be declared as a discreet mental health diagnosis in the DSM-V, which will be published in May, 2013. IN the past, hoarding was believed to be a symptom of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I think this is still partially true, though it's likely that other things (such as depression, as mentioned previously) can also lead to hoarding.
I believe that there is a trigger, something happens in a person's life, that creates a feeling of helplessness. And hourding is a way of having "control" over things. And it just escalates. Then, it becomes out of control, and the hoarder protects even more the items...because this is the ONE thing in their life that they CAN control. That is why the extreme melt downs occur when folks try to intervene...they are taking away the person't CONTROL, over their own stuff.
Yes, it is messed up. I have dealt with many hoarders. And called CPS/APS on some folks who were living in homes that were unsafe, and unfit for human habitation. And believe me, when I call, the place is OUT OF CONTROL. I have a major high tolerance for hoarding, having grown up with a Mother who saves everything...and I mean...EVERYTHING. Dealing with a hoarder takes the patience of a saint. I would sit with my Mom, and take one box out of the house, and we would go thru each thing in the box, she would have to go get a drink, then go to the bathroom, then make a phone call, and procrastinate going thru one box...So, finally, we get to this box, then, she is hungry, and if I make her sit trhu this one box, iI will hear about the time I "denied" her food, and starved her...believe me, she can make a drama out of anything...so we get food, then, back to the box..by this time, half the day is gone, and we still have not gone thru one box. Okay, now, let's go thru this box...she is really trying to divert the entire thing, and wants to drive me insane, so I will leave, then she will say, "See, I was ready, and you got all mad and left"...Okay, back to the BOX...we go thru the ONE BOX..."Mom, do you need this recept from Costco, dated May 5, 2001?", "Well, let me see it..."...spends ten minutes looking at reciept...then says, "Well, I guess not"...meanwhile, I am tryig to not go crazy...Okay, next peice of paper...on and on....and then of course, she needs another bathroom break, and another glass of water...and...it is just her anxiety about going thru anything...and then, she tries to goad me into a fight..."Do you remember that time when your husband cheated on you?"...Anything to divert from going thru her stuff...You have to realize that this is part of their mental illness.
Last edited by jasper12; 02-22-2013 at 03:05 PM..
Reason: edit
Interesting Note: Hoarding is slated to be declared as a discreet mental health diagnosis in the DSM-V, which will be published in May, 2013. IN the past, hoarding was believed to be a symptom of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I think this is still partially true, though it's likely that other things (such as depression, as mentioned previously) can also lead to hoarding.
I find this very interesting. Hoarding was always thought to be an OCD condition. The problem has been that treatment for OCD, typically, doesn't help hoarders. They have also learned that most people with OCD recognize that they have a problem.
Hoarders, frequently, do not, making treatment all the more difficult.
I find this very interesting. Hoarding was always thought to be an OCD condition. The problem has been that treatment for OCD, typically, doesn't help hoarders. They have also learned that most people with OCD recognize that they have a problem.
Hoarders, frequently, do not, making treatment all the more difficult.
Hopefully, making Hoarding Disorder a specialized DSM V category will generate more study/treatment interest.
If you have ever watched any of the hoarding shows it is very obvious that some -- perhaps most -- of these people really suffer from mental disorders. Now some of the older ones I suspect the dementia is also involved, but it is so clear that some of these people are struggling with undiagnosed and untreated mental problems.
Some of the hoarders, women in particular, seem to struggle with being shopaholics and that leads to hoarding. (Being a shopaholic can be very, very serious even if some people make light of it by calling it "retail therapy".
I believe that there is a trigger, something happens in a person's life, that creates a feeling of helplessness. And hourding is a way of having "control" over things. And it just escalates. Then, it becomes out of control, and the hoarder protects even more the items...because this is the ONE thing in their life that they CAN control. That is why the extreme melt downs occur when folks try to intervene...they are taking away the person't CONTROL, over their own stuff.
Yes, it is messed up. I have dealt with many hoarders. And called CPS/APS on some folks who were living in homes that were unsafe, and unfit for human habitation. And believe me, when I call, the place is OUT OF CONTROL. I have a major high tolerance for hoarding, having grown up with a Mother who saves everything...and I mean...EVERYTHING. Dealing with a hoarder takes the patience of a saint. I would sit with my Mom, and take one box out of the house, and we would go thru each thing in the box, she would have to go get a drink, then go to the bathroom, then make a phone call, and procrastinate going thru one box...So, finally, we get to this box, then, she is hungry, and if I make her sit trhu this one box, iI will hear about the time I "denied" her food, and starved her...believe me, she can make a drama out of anything...so we get food, then, back to the box..by this time, half the day is gone, and we still have not gone thru one box. Okay, now, let's go thru this box...she is really trying to divert the entire thing, and wants to drive me insane, so I will leave, then she will say, "See, I was ready, and you got all mad and left"...Okay, back to the BOX...we go thru the ONE BOX..."Mom, do you need this recept from Costco, dated May 5, 2001?", "Well, let me see it..."...spends ten minutes looking at reciept...then says, "Well, I guess not"...meanwhile, I am tryig to not go crazy...Okay, next peice of paper...on and on....and then of course, she needs another bathroom break, and another glass of water...and...it is just her anxiety about going thru anything...and then, she tries to goad me into a fight..."Do you remember that time when your husband cheated on you?"...Anything to divert from going thru her stuff...You have to realize that this is part of their mental illness.
Good post, and interesting. Your analysis makes sense to me. I do believe it is a matter of control.
I used to keep too much stuff, although I wasn't a hoarder as one normally thinks of a hoarder. But I was afraid to throw things out because of an irrational fear that it might cause something bad to happen. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but in a way I could prevent "it" from happening that way.
Now I can't stand having too much clutter. I want to get rid of stuff and have less. From 2009 - 2010, I moved three times in one year and each time got rid of more and more. It's very cleansing.
My mom was always a hoarder...but it escalated when she lost her job, her Mother died, and she just could not deal with it all. That is when she started rescuing cats...and became an animal hoarder as well.
On the cats, I have been successful in having her self limit now. But she still feeds feral colonies. At least she does not trap them and take them home any more.
On the stuff...less success. ..as you can see from above, trying to help her is futile. For my own sanity, I can't do it. Her home is still "livable", as she ages, more intervention will occur, but for now, I just let it slide.
What is interesting, in my Mom's case, is the OCD aspect of the disorder. Her kitchen sink is immaculate. She cleans it with bleach and a toothbrush. Spends two hours on it. In minutiae. The rest of the house is a wreck, but certian areas are immaculate. It is either completely perfect, or ignored. She scoops her cat boxes hourly. Watches cats, and scoops a box right after a cat is done.
This show is fascinating to me as well, cause I feel like I have some of these tendencies underlying somewhere deep inside, and the show scares me into cleaning, lol. I don't tend to hang on things so much, and I certainly wouldn't mind having someone else come to my house and clean for me, it's just that I tend to be lazy in actually doing it myself and procrastinate lots. This is combined with a measure of shopoholism - not like uncontrolled spending or anything, but I do LOVE stores and shopping and it's always guaranteed to lift my mood, especially clothes. I also recognize myself in that mindset of buying for an imaginary lifestyle rather than actual - nice clothes I don't get to wear because I'm a SAHM, too many clothes for DS cause they're so damn adorable, cute kitchen and entertaining stuff thinking of hosting dinner parties when in reality we have at most one or two a year, etc etc.
After having a kid, a few moves, and more coming up, I'm trying my hardest to keep clutter in check and ask myself before buying something, "will it make the cut for the next move or will it be getting tossed?". And if the answer's obvious, I put it back. I've also stopped buying really cheap stuff cause it always ends up trashed, and anything i don't outright LOVE or need, and have gotten much more ruthless with getting rid of things that are not getting used, clothes I won't wear, etc etc. I used to hang on to stuff forever thinking I'll need it someday. It actually feels great to go through and gather up a huge bag for Goodwill every once in a while, very liberating. But I GET how, after a traumatic event, something can snap in the brain, and you end up just shopping constantly because it's an escape from reality and feels good, while on the other hand being too overwhelmed and exhausted to do any cleaning.
By the way, if anyone has more recommendations for shows/books/movies on the topic, I'd love to check it out. For some reason it just fascinates me.
Evil Cookie brings up a good point about hoarding...I think that there are separate issues with hoarders...and those who are compulsive shoppers. I think really, if we look at it, this is like any other addictive behavior, not unlike compulsive gambling, where it is not only money lost that counts, but also time spent in casinos, along the same continuum of compulsive shopping, how much money do they spend, and how much time at the mall, just deciding what to buy. And then, having so much stuff, leads to hoarding, and not wanting to part with any items.
My mother is also a hoarder (but luckily that started after my father died when my siblings and I were moved out of her house already, as adults). She refuses to throw anything away -- she still has toys from our childhood, cardboard boxes, and lots of junk. She hasn't reached the point where it's impossible to walk around her home, although she has filled up her second bedroom with lots of junk. It's very depressing to visit her, so I rarely do.
I also was friends with a hoarder for three years and she was bad. Her car was full of so much crap, no one could sit in the back seat, and you had to hunch up your legs if you sat in the passenger side in the front seat of her car. Then her house; full of cats, more crap, moldy food and garbage. Once, early in our friendship, I went over to her house to help her with a cat (I was naive, what can I say) she'd rescued because she and another friend of hers run a non-profit cat rescue out of their own homes. Once inside her home, I was overwhelmed by the smell of cat pee, can dander, cat fur, and cat poop...because she let her cats pee outside their litter boxes but never cleaned up their urine or feces. She also lets food rot in her refrigerator or on her kitchen counter. She's very emotionally needy, manipulative, and if confronted about her hoarding behavior by anyone, will physically hit and scream at you. After that one house visit, I kept our friendship going (or tried to) by setting strict boundaries with her, which she hated. She was always 45 minutes late no matter what our plans were for, and she always complained about everything.
The two children of her current fiance moved out of their father's home (he has sole custody of them) because he let my former friend's hoarding behavior take over his house to the point where she was putting junk in their bedrooms; so it was impossible for them to get in their bedrooms. Their mother was furious, and my former friend whined to me about the situation many times. Eventually, I got tired of the friendship and let it go. I will never be friends with another hoarder ever again.
Actually, I'd say she just knows what the symptom was. I think hoarding is a symptom of a bigger problem--the physical manifestation of it and just like we live in a day and age where an excess of food can make us fat, we also live in an age where an excess of stuff can make us hoarders--we didn't have that luxury in times past.
Agreed. The healthy/functional drive to acquire & retain that worked fine back when humans really never had enough resources can go haywire in these modern times of plenty.
Not to mention pernicious f/x of economy/society based so heavily on advertisements/marketing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stepka
I've been thinking of this some more and I've come up with two personality characteristics that can feed into hoarding--no guarantee you'll be one, but watch it if you have these. They are procrastination and thrift.
Yes, these two traits (which-to a degree-are normal) can go into overdrive, and at that extreme level can contribute to one's environs becoming a tangled knot that doesn't allow for easy unraveling.
I've had a compulsion to document things throughout my life, so I have concrete record to consult when my memory lacks the data-
but that initially reasonable urge/impulse has become problematic over time, bc. documentation grows bulky as it piles up.
I'm trying to digitize (scan in) some things to my computer (digital clutter at least doesn't impinge upon my living space), but it's still a tiresome, laborious procedure that goes really slowly for me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sally_Sparrow
I think that there's the hoarding we see on TV and because of that we all think that the reasoning is universal, but that there are really different levels to this and different causes for it.
And there are different levels of insight a person has into their circumstances. I recognize my tendencies (inherited from my parents, who were "book people" & kept a lot of stuff-though not trash), so my situation isn't completely impossible, and I regularly put effort into checking if there's anything I can bear to part with.
Wish there were a graph/chart (maybe somebody's already come up with it, I dunno') outlining the variables one may be subject to in this area-
not to determine if one has a problem w/hoarding, but to delineate the aspects where one is more functional/competent & aspects in which one has more severe impairment/deficits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sally_Sparrow
Now, I am messy. Very messy. I have "hoarder tendencies" if you look from the outside but it is not about hoarding/keeping stuff at all. It's about not wanting to clean and being disorganized. The main difference I see between me and my mom is that I don't' get attached to stuff. I like to ACQUIRE stuff (thrift shops), then I am lazy about making decisions about it on a regular basis, so I have to do this purging, like spring cleaning, more often than most people would. The difference is, I have zero problems letting it go. And my stuff is not neatly stacked like my mom's. It tends to be wherever, I am very disorganized and I over-estimate the space I have in my living situation. If you told me I needed to move in a month though, I could do it, even if it meant giving tons of stuff to Goodwill or throwing it away (my mother will NOT throw away anything worth more than $.50)... but if you told my mother she had to move in a month she would panic and move stuff around and not be able to get rid of anything.
I despise having to clean-the end result is desirable, but the necessary action of approaching the dirt/grime/dust grosses me out so much that it interferes with maintaining cleanliness.
Yeah, I wash dishes, launder clothing, etc. but I hardly ever vacuum (bc. I hate using vacuum cleaner).
It can be hard to summon the resolve to clean, because nothing ever stays clean-sooner or later, I'll use the thing again, then it's dirty-the whole process can feel discouraging & futile.
I do like to "tidy" (sort/organize)-too bad I couldn't do job barter/trade with someone who was awful at that but who loved to clean-we could switch places on occasion, to assist our respective households...
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilCookie
This show is fascinating to me as well, cause I feel like I have some of these tendencies underlying somewhere deep inside, and the show scares me into cleaning, lol. I don't tend to hang on things so much, and I certainly wouldn't mind having someone else come to my house and clean for me, it's just that I tend to be lazy in actually doing it myself and procrastinate lots. This is combined with a measure of shopoholism - not like uncontrolled spending or anything, but I do LOVE stores and shopping and it's always guaranteed to lift my mood, especially clothes.
Some folks have greater vulnerability to acquiring things (believing that buying this or that will make them feel better),
others have greater difficulty divesting themselves of items (getting rid of things)-
and some folks have tough time with both sides of that cycle.
The reasons for those challenges can vary as well: emotional attachment to memories (which the object serves to trigger), not wanting to waste resources (painfully remembering how much money an item cost to purchase can really create an obstacle when there's no way to recoup any of that investment*), not being able to find a suitable place to donate/recycle the item in one's town.
*Online auctions exist, but not everybody is equally capable of becoming sophisticated enough at such tasks to use those opportunities (to get a little compensation back).
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilCookie
By the way, if anyone has more recommendations for shows/books/movies on the topic, I'd love to check it out. For some reason it just fascinates me.
3 books I read & enjoyed (strictly speaking, only the last one is about hoarding-the others are about broader/related issues):
The Dirt on Clean: An unsanitized history by Katherine Ashenburg, 2007.
Quote:
Originally Posted by book excerpt
"Dirt is matter in the wrong place-Henry J. Temple, Viscount Palmerston 1785-1865"
Dirt: The quirks, habits, and passions of keeping house (anthology) by Mindy Lewis, 2009.
Quote:
Originally Posted by book excerpt
pg.156-7: "At almost fifty, clutter has other, generally darker meanings, a literal and figurative bundle of the things you can't face, won't throw away, and haven't dealt with, all piled up in one huge mass of Don't Go There ! This is why getting organized can be so frankly traumatic...or therapeutic."
Dirty Secret: A daughter comes clean about her mother's compulsive hoarding by Jessie Sholl, 2011.
Quote:
Originally Posted by book excerpt
pg.277: Much has been written about the Collyer brothers, but I didn't know that the term 'Collyer's mansion', is used by rescue personnel all along the East Coast to refer to a clutter-packed home, where rescue workers may have a hard time getting through. Similarly, in the Midwest, a hoarded home is labeled a 'packer house', and on the West Coast, it's called a 'Habitrail house'."
(maybe I can be accused of "hoarding" bookmarks, but I like having useful information close at hand -and bookmarks are easy to delete, which cannot be said of physical clutter )
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-and bookmarks are easy to delete, which cannot be said of physical clutter 
)
