The Mystery of Hoarding

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction. Fiction after all has to make sense.                                                     Mark Twain

Sometime people get too comfortable in their trash

Since I retired from my job as a psychotherapist, my husband and I have been sorting through and clearing out many of the things that we have accumulated over more than thirty years in our home. This got me thinking about how easy and refreshing a task it is to toss away the detritus and yet how hard and nearly impossible it was for some of my old clients. 

Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.                                  William Morris

Years ago I went to a workshop on "Hoarding: the problems with obsessive compulsive disorder [OCD]". The pressing need at the time was in the form of a delightful client, Dottie* who was unable to throw away anything she had attached meaning to. Sounds sweet and sentimental until her husband, Ralph*, explained, "she had fifteen years of LL Bean catalogs because she loved their covers. Do you have any idea how much room those catalogs take up in our tiny house?" he said with deep frustration. That was just the start of it. She had bottles and bottle caps she saved from recycling due to the memory of sharing a drink with her family. Ralph went on and on about all the horrors of living in a scrap pile--their house was loaded with useless trash. So I went to this workshop hopeful that I could persuade Dottie to come to her senses and start the process of letting go of junk.

From this workshop I came away amazed and perplexed. I was amazed: we watched a film of a family in a four bedroom house that looked fine on the outside. When the cameraman tried to enter the house, his way was blocked by an incredible volume of garbage. One of the most surprising things to me was this family was living in this ungodly mess. Children were being brought up next to mountains of trash strewn all through their home. Poor dears probably thought this was normal.  Here's what was most perplexing: I can more or less understand one person living alone accumulating all that garbage... no one was there to stop them. But how a young family could live in such an unpleasant and painful filth was indeed baffling. Were they all hoarders? 

In my nicest voice I asked the workshop leader, "aren't the ones who aren't afflicted with this illness [OCD] basically enablers? Can't they put their foot down and insist the mess be cleaned up?" She cleared her throat and said, "we have to move very gently and carefully, it is a very slow process to recovery." Again remember, I was at this workshop because of Dottie who paled in comparison to what I saw on film. But I wasn't looking for a description of pack rats, I was looking for answers, to solve the problem. I tend to be somewhat of a hard ass when I see a problem and no one is willing to address it head on. Being realistic I knew I had only a few mild cases of OCD in comparison to the workshop leader who was out in the deep, dark trenches. She said, "I recently dealt with an old man who had never given away a tool and kept all of the magazines and newspapers he'd ever read". Another case she cited was "the older woman who had many cats and fed them on the floor never threw away food cans. Also the home was overrun with her own cans, garbage and pizza boxes. Sadly, despite the cats, the rats were literally running over the mantle, in broad daylight." Imagine my incredulity that her only advice was to "go slow and suggest simple and small goals", I'm thinking, "what, like torching the house"? 

I realize OCD and hoarding are mental illnesses but they are also a form of addiction. Sometimes bystanders and family members can be too sympathetic and become paralyzed by the fear of the person with OCD. The client will claim, "it would kill my soul to throw away anything I've collected..." I have yet to see a soul scorched by recycling.

One of the truisms in the field of addiction is the best motivation for a person to stay sober has to come from within. This can take a long time and patience is required. However, external consequences can speed up the process and coax the unwilling to become more willing. Anyone who has ever raised a child or trained a dog knows that logical consequences, positive feedback and rewards work well in training behavior. Bless the poor workshop leader who was attempting to keep some of these old ones from being evicted from their homes or shut down by the health department. I believe she did herself and her clients a disservice by giving them too generous time lines for change. Heavy tasks---and as far as I could tell these folks were unwilling to change unless they were offered a hefty reward or by contrast, a cattle prod.

It is not enough to know what is right. Courage also is needed to do what is right.                                                        Arthur Dobrin

How to overcome hoarding:

1. If you love a relative whose hoarding is out of control be frank and tell them they have a serious problem and need some help.
2. Give them the name of a therapist or at least a housekeeper to help them.
3. Give them a deadline of when you expect to see results, this is important, stick to your agreed upon date.
4. Tell them they will be rewarded for cleaning up. A dinner out? Reassurance that they won't be evicted...
5. Warn them that if they are not able to stop collecting you will get someone in to do the cleaning/hauling away and that will have to pay.
6. Be kind but do not listen to their rationalizations as to why they must hoarded useless crap. It is sick and irrational.

What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order.                  Katherine Patterson

Dottie really resented the above suggestions that I gave to Ralph and for a time I thought she was going to quit counseling. She cried pitifully and begged that there need be no change. I urged Ralph on. Once Ralph manned up and set the dead line things got enormously better, she decided to only keep the covers to the catalogs [progress not perfection], he was able to do some serious recycling in their home and felt so much better. 

Your objects are not your soul, they may be meaningful so you could always snap a picture of them or scan them and treasure that memory in an album. Families need not give into the misguided fears of the hoarder, tough love does work in this instance.

Time to let go of things that are broken

The craziness will go around and around if no one puts a stop to it.

*Dottie and Ralph would take great exception to their fake names.
susansmagicfeather copyright 2014 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved