I still have a few questions for today :)
What do you wish people understood the most about hoarders that they usually don't?
Does hoarding affect your relationships with friends etc.?
Do you work with a therapist, take any medications, or do you recover through willpower alone?
And probably the last question for today: is this one of the reasons why you are on this forum? If at all. And if it plays significant role in this...
___________________________
Sorry, my mind is shutting down for now.
I've been apathetic and depressed for a long while now, but you managed to get me curious. So thank you, I guess I am still capable to love to find out something new.
You've given me a lot to think about. Thanks again for answering my curious questions so kindly.
I really appreciate your openness, it helped me understand things a lot better.
Sending you lots of love and good vibes.
Wishing you strength and hope you'll feel better!
A couple of things come to mind:
One is that, like any behavior, hoarding serves a purpose. Self harm helps a person cope with emotional pain. Tantrums help toddlers with limited vocabulary process big feelings. And hoarding also serves a purpose. For some, it is a way to rebel against perfectionistic standards. For those who identify as neurodivergent, who are forced to keep themselves under tight control in their outside lives, hoarding is a way for their minds to unravel and unmask. For other people, hoarding is about safety. For others it's rage. There are so many purposes that a hoard can serve in the life of the hoarder. Is hoarding potentially destructive to the hoarder and to those around her? Of course. Does that need to be addressed? Absolutely. However, we can have these conversations in a way that honors this reality, and when we design interventions for a hoarder, we need to give them an alternative means to meet that need.
The next thing I wish people understood about hoarders is the level of brain disease found in our population. Most people already know that hoarding tends to coexist with trauma and mental illness, and you would hope people would have compassion for that. Unfortunately, even people who have a history of trauma and mental illness still tend to believe that this is something that you should just suck it up and power through. But I would argue that there is a huge segment of the hoarder universe that is literally incapable of that. Look at how many elderly hoarders are diagnosed with a dementia related illness. Hoarding is actually considered a form of self neglect and is actionable by adult protective services. Look at how many hoarders have a history of traumatic brain injury. It's not just psychological, but a very physiological barrier that these people face in maintaining a livable environment.
I actually fall into one of these categories. I have severe right hemisphere brain dysfunction. This condition inhibits executive function, which is the ability to plan to get from point A to point B. When that piece of your cognition is missing, even simple tasks seem huge and confusing and exhausting. Throwing away a piece of trash? Doing a few dishes? Too complicated. My disability also affects my visual perception. I have 20/20 vision, yet I can't see objects that are right in front of my face because my brain doesn't decode it. So if I'm looking at clutter and filth, there is a good chance that I can't visually see all the messy details that you can see. I can't act on something that I can't see. And when I *do* commit to, say, an organizing project, the visual clutter that a hoard entails just crashes my server. Make sense?
It's mixed. I'm fortunate that my friends all have a basic respect for both me and my possessions. They don't see me as a hoarder because I don't fit the stereotype. They see me as someone that loves her stuff and is a little disorganized. I've had people come into my apartment and say it's not that bad, that they were expecting way worse. A couple of them feel claustrophobic in my apartment and thus choose not to come over. They all want good things for me. My family doesn't understand. They're embarrassed. They refuse to come over. We still have a good relationship but I accept that this is one of those things they will never understand.
Perhaps the most significant relationship that has been impacted by my hoarding is my property manager. I've gotten multiple eviction notices because of the hoarding and one time, she even yelled at me over the phone. With the help of a caseworker, I have been able to educate her about my condition. And every single time I got a lease violation or an eviction notice, I made sure I cleaned up the place. I haven't attracted pests or damaged the property or caused a nuisance. My hope is that she will see that, and she will see that I continually show up for her and maybe she'll show up for me too.
I don't think it's possible to recover from a genuine hoarding illness through willpower alone. Medication can treat symptoms that lead to the hoarding, but there is no medication to treat hoarding itself. For example, I take a high dose SSRI for OCD, which contributes to my hoarding. Someone else might take anti-psychotics if they have delusional beliefs about their possessions. Therapy is the preferred mode of treatment for hoarding, and there are a few different types you can try. You can try exposure response prevention (ERP), where you intentionally expose yourself to your worst fears (in this case throwing out prized possessions) in order to become desensitized. Cognitive behavioral therapy is good for reframing your attitudes about your possessions and dialectical therapy can increase your distress tolerance. Occupational therapy can give people organizational and basic living skills. In some cases, grief counseling may be appropriate, because people are often grieving not only the loss of their things, but also the trauma that caused them to hoard. In some cases, they started hoarding after a loved one died and/or the hoard itself consists of the deceased's belongings. You may have to experiment. And this may actually be where willpower comes in. No matter how much help you get, you're going to put in hours of work and it's going to suck, and you may not see results at first, especially if you go the ERP route. In any case, it's better than staying stuck where you are.
Hoarding was THE reason I opened an account in the first place. At the time I signed up last year, I had gotten my latest eviction notice not just for hoarding, but for animal hoarding no less. My PM was under the impression that I had 15 cats in the unit., which I most certainly did not. I was tired of constantly being threatened with the loss of my home. I'm tired of bringing my broken body home to an apartment that reeks. I'm tired of my home looking like a storage unit instead of my home. I'm tired of not having any room to do any of the projects that I love to do, or living in fear that something in my apartment will break that I can't fix, and not having people over. I'm tired of eating crap food because my kitchen is unusable. Deep down, I feel like I deserve better and yet I'm trapped in both a brain and a body that are useless. A;ll I can do is eat ravioli out of a can and watch myself be buried alive.
It means a lot to me that people are reading my content. So many people don't view hoarders as even human, you know?
