You know, I’ve talked about a lot of different things on this blog regarding compulsive hoarding disorder, and I consider myself to be on the “road to recovery” somewhat, so this blog has been a bit of a catharsis for me in a way. I was somewhat shocked at the reaction of one guy who left a comment on my article about hoarding disorder case studies…I can tell that this condition can really impact the surrounding family members. I watched the show “Hoarders: Buried Alive” on TLC, and I became almost disgusted at the whole condition, although I consider myself to be (somewhat) in that same boat. No, I’m nowhere near as bad as the people they profiled on the show, but I see similar traits, and I don’t like it a bit. In fact, I freakin’ hate it. I’m really seeing some things about myself that I had no idea were even problems or issues, but they’re definitely things that I cannot ignore. Since I started studying on the subject of hoarding disorder, and having fought many personal battles with clutter hoarding myself, I have really gained a feel for what works and what doesn’t as far as overcoming the need to acquire and keep things is concerned. All of this started really surfacing lately since I’ve been thinking about the holidays, and really playing with the idea of starting the New Year with an absolutely clean slate and fresh start. I was talking to a friend who shares similar struggles with hoarding, and he started telling me how he was doing with purging his house (and car) of a bunch of old junk that he no longer needs. We both laughed when he told me that he had power bills from 2006 and things like that—I can fully relate. But during the conversation, some interesting things really dawned on me, even as I was talking to him.
I realized that I have held on to things that are stuffed into boxes that are just sitting in my attic, taking up space. I’m talking things that I haven’t looked at since I moved into my new house (in 2007). Not only that, but these are things that I haven’t looked at since the move before that one (in 2003). I literally have things crammed in boxes that I have not physically laid eyes on in over 6 years, but yet I have held on to them, and the only time I even think about them is when I have to go up in the attic for something. Even then, I just glance at the boxes, knowing that they’re full of a bunch of junk, but yet I have derived some kind of comfort in just knowing that they’re up there. I really sat and thought about it, and the amazing thing is, not only have they taken up space in my house (and house before that), but they’ve also taken up space in my mind for the same amount of time. They are just as much a mental “clutter” to me as they are physical clutter. That freakin’ sucks. I realized that I really never will give those things the attention that they “deserve” in my mind. I will probably never go back and read those magazines I’ve held on to for 6 years. I will probably never go into those boxes full of papers that I printed off the Web (as if I can’t get those same documents from those same websites now any time I need them). I realized that I will never fix that broken camera that’s in one of those boxes (they probably don’t even make the doggone camera anymore), I’ll never find the last piece to that electric razor I’ve been keeping in another box (because, as most hoarders will say, that’s the “only thing wrong with it, so I can’t just throw it away”), and I’ll probably never really go back through those old trinkets and so forth from my childhood that have really no type of significant value other than that which I have attributed to them. These boxes are full of things that literally have no value; they’re nothing that I would want to leave to my kids as an inheritance; and I know that I’ll never get around to putting them to any kind of use. I’m barely keeping up with my two daughters (ages 3 and 18 months), much less do I have the time to go through all that crap and do anything with it.
So, I’m throwing it all out.
Yep, you heard me, I’m throwing all that crap out.
I’ll never use it. I never even look at it. Since it’s in the attic, as soon as it’s out of sight, it’s literally out of mind. I’m tired of holding on to a bunch of crap that I don’t need. I’m really tired of it. I’m encouraging any other person out there who has suffered from hoarding disorder of any kind. If you have had problems overcoming compulsive hoarding, here’s your answer, in four simple words…THROW THAT CRAP OUT. And move on with your life. You’ll find yourself liberated by it instead of feeling chained to your junk all your life.
Showing posts with label causes of hoarding disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label causes of hoarding disorder. Show all posts
Jan 14, 2010
Apr 23, 2009
Hoarding Help
Today I came across a fascinating news story about hoarding disorder that really startled me, intrigued me, and at the same time saddened me. It was a recent news story (January of this year) according to the Sun, a very popular UK newspaper, about a man named Gordon Stewart, 74, who literally died of malnutrition in a maze of his own clutter. He lived in Broughton, Bucks, and evidently was a pretty peaceful citizen who didn’t really bother anybody, and that may have been one of the reasons why nobody even knew about the incident until too late. He piled trash so high in all of the rooms of his house that he literally created a labyrinth of trash that he eventually had to learn how to navigate around in order to get through his house. Trash, papers, old electronics parts, etc. were piled from floor to ceiling in this gentleman’s home, and evidently it got to the point to where he couldn’t even figure out his own way around the maze, so he died of dehydration. The newspaper called him a “human mole”, because he literally had to BURROW his way through tunnels of garbage to get from one room to the next.
This is an astounding thing in my mind, and it got me thinking about my own (much milder) struggles with compulsive hoarding, and why in the heck this condition even exists. From what I understand based on the news article, Mr. Stewart had no next of kin, was an elderly man, and was somewhat eccentric and reclusive. I guess you could call him a “loner” of sorts. What I started thinking was that a person who is a loner and has little to no contact with other human beings can become susceptible to these types of impulses because deep down, they do desire human companionship. But maybe due to insecurities, bad experiences with people, lack of trust in people in general, or a host of other psychological issues, they push people away and opt for clutter to be their companion instead. Basically, the clutter becomes their “companion” in a weird sort of way. It gives them a sense of security and comfort, knowing that if they don’t have another human being to rely on in this world, they have their clutter to “insulate” them from the realities of life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an expert on the psychology of hoarding, but this is just an observation I’ve been mulling around in my head for quite a while. All in all, that was a very sad story.
As to the causes of hoarding disorder, they can be as varied as the people that suffer from the condition. One thing I’ve seen pretty much across the board is that hoarders suffer with issues of safety and security. They feel “exposed” without their clutter, almost like an agorophobe feels vulnerable in open spaces. I noticed in my own life that I would get this extremely insecure and anxious feeling any time I would walk in a very open space where there was a lot of distance between me and anything else, such as certain areas of shopping malls that are out in the open. I would feel like I needed to find something to hold onto. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true. This same feeling of vulnerability or lack of security is probably one of the roots to the hoarding symptoms I’ve dealt with. I can say that even as a young child I just remember that the more “clutter” I surrounded myself with (stuffed animals, toys, etc.), the more safe & secure I felt. I remember many times I would even take all my toys out of the toy box, lay on the floor or on the bed, and then pile all of them up around me and on top of me, and once I was done, it felt good to be surrounded by all that junk. LOL.
So for those who are seeking help with hoarding, I would say that the first step is to examine your own sense of security. Do you feel unsafe without being surrounded by a lot of stuff? Just some food for thought…
This is an astounding thing in my mind, and it got me thinking about my own (much milder) struggles with compulsive hoarding, and why in the heck this condition even exists. From what I understand based on the news article, Mr. Stewart had no next of kin, was an elderly man, and was somewhat eccentric and reclusive. I guess you could call him a “loner” of sorts. What I started thinking was that a person who is a loner and has little to no contact with other human beings can become susceptible to these types of impulses because deep down, they do desire human companionship. But maybe due to insecurities, bad experiences with people, lack of trust in people in general, or a host of other psychological issues, they push people away and opt for clutter to be their companion instead. Basically, the clutter becomes their “companion” in a weird sort of way. It gives them a sense of security and comfort, knowing that if they don’t have another human being to rely on in this world, they have their clutter to “insulate” them from the realities of life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an expert on the psychology of hoarding, but this is just an observation I’ve been mulling around in my head for quite a while. All in all, that was a very sad story.
As to the causes of hoarding disorder, they can be as varied as the people that suffer from the condition. One thing I’ve seen pretty much across the board is that hoarders suffer with issues of safety and security. They feel “exposed” without their clutter, almost like an agorophobe feels vulnerable in open spaces. I noticed in my own life that I would get this extremely insecure and anxious feeling any time I would walk in a very open space where there was a lot of distance between me and anything else, such as certain areas of shopping malls that are out in the open. I would feel like I needed to find something to hold onto. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true. This same feeling of vulnerability or lack of security is probably one of the roots to the hoarding symptoms I’ve dealt with. I can say that even as a young child I just remember that the more “clutter” I surrounded myself with (stuffed animals, toys, etc.), the more safe & secure I felt. I remember many times I would even take all my toys out of the toy box, lay on the floor or on the bed, and then pile all of them up around me and on top of me, and once I was done, it felt good to be surrounded by all that junk. LOL.
So for those who are seeking help with hoarding, I would say that the first step is to examine your own sense of security. Do you feel unsafe without being surrounded by a lot of stuff? Just some food for thought…
Feb 20, 2009
OCD Hoarding (Part 2)
When I first started this study on compulsive hoarding, and it really started dawning on me that I was truly a case study on hoarding myself, it was somewhat of a shock to my system, and also somewhat embarrassing. I still can’t believe how blind I’ve been to it all these years. Let me let you in on a few things about me: I would keep practically anything that represented something I didn’t want to forget. For instance, I used to ride the trains before I got my own car, and when you ride the trains, you normally buy a transit card to get around. I actually have a collection of transit cards that I kept, week after week. I actually kept about three years’ worth of those weekly cards, and I still have them today. In my mind, as whacked-out as this sounds, they are a reminder of a time in my life where I was struggling financially, and part of me never wants to forget that time so that I don’t get lazy and end up going back to it. That sounds pretty noble and inspirational, but then there are other things I have accumulated that simply don’t make any sense. I would keep napkins from any fast food place I visited throughout the week. I always made sure to grab a ton of napkins when I would eat in at any fast food joint, and then I would keep all the extra napkins in the glove compartment of my car, or in my laptop bag. My rationale was that just in case I spilled something, or needed to blow my nose, or whatever, I would have something to wipe my hands with if I ever needed it. This turned into me keeping half-used napkins with unidentified stains on them, and then this turned into me balling them up when they were fully used, but still keeping them for some reason.
I was an absolute pack rat, and I felt guilty for throwing anything away until I felt like it could absolutely not be used anymore, in any way whatsoever. One of the worst examples of this (shamefully) is the way I would keep plastic Ziploc bags. If I took some food to work in a Ziploc bag, I would keep the bag and rinse it out, and use it again. This would get to the point of ridiculousness after a while, because I would accumulate Ziploc bags but procrastinate on rinsing them out. Consequently, after a while I would have a desk drawer full of Ziploc bags with gunk and crumbs in them from days or weeks ago. Talk about hoarding disorder taken to ridonkulous levels.
About the only thing that has ever paid off for me in the hoarding arena is when I started keeping all my Altoids tins. I’m an Altoid-aholic, and I have always kept the tins for really no reason other than they just seemed too useful to throw away. After a while, I had accumulated around 30 or so Altoids tins, and I decided to find out if people bought the empty tins on eBay. To my surprise, they actually did, so I sold a lot of 25 Altoids tins for about 15 bucks…Hey who said that compulsive hoarding doesn’t pay! LOL
I was an absolute pack rat, and I felt guilty for throwing anything away until I felt like it could absolutely not be used anymore, in any way whatsoever. One of the worst examples of this (shamefully) is the way I would keep plastic Ziploc bags. If I took some food to work in a Ziploc bag, I would keep the bag and rinse it out, and use it again. This would get to the point of ridiculousness after a while, because I would accumulate Ziploc bags but procrastinate on rinsing them out. Consequently, after a while I would have a desk drawer full of Ziploc bags with gunk and crumbs in them from days or weeks ago. Talk about hoarding disorder taken to ridonkulous levels.
About the only thing that has ever paid off for me in the hoarding arena is when I started keeping all my Altoids tins. I’m an Altoid-aholic, and I have always kept the tins for really no reason other than they just seemed too useful to throw away. After a while, I had accumulated around 30 or so Altoids tins, and I decided to find out if people bought the empty tins on eBay. To my surprise, they actually did, so I sold a lot of 25 Altoids tins for about 15 bucks…Hey who said that compulsive hoarding doesn’t pay! LOL
Dec 5, 2008
Hoarding Disorder
Well, this is my second post dealing with compulsive hoarding, and as I do more and more research, it’s amazing how much this condition has affected me without me even knowing it half the time. It’s amazing how you can see life through a “lens” of a sort, where you think that the way you think is just “normal”, when in fact it’s anything but. I have since learned that many of the thought habits and patterns I have developed have reeked of hoarding disorder and I never would have detected it, had I not started doing research on some of the symptoms of compulsive hoarding.
One of the most tell-tale symptoms (for me, anyway) is when you keep things that have little value, but in your mind you have trumped them up to have a great amount of value, even though everyone else can see that they’re nothing but junk. Or, you’ll begin accumulating certain things, claiming that you’re building a “collection” that you may believe may be “worth something someday”. Most of the stuff I ended up accumulating, man, it would be hard to find a buyer anywhere for that crap. I actually have a Hershey bar wrapper collection from the 1980’s. I have an Altoids tin collection. I had a collection of melted VCR tapes from when I worked in a videocassette production place…I’m not kidding you. By the way, I finally got the guts to throw those videocassettes away. All of this stuff is crap, and yet I would just collect it and collect it like it was gaining in value every year or something. The truth is, all it was doing was cluttering up my house and my mind.
I even had this stupid habit of keeping old pens that didn’t write anymore. Yep, I would just have a desk full of pens without caps that had dried up completely or just barely wrote at all. What did I think was going to happen? Was I expecting some kind of supernatural change? Were the pens going to resurrect one day and all of a sudden begin to start magically flowing with ink again? Freakin-A. I guess what I’m trying to say with all this is that hoarding disorder can cause you to see things in a distorted manner, and you don’t even realize that your perspective has been skewed.
One of the most tell-tale symptoms (for me, anyway) is when you keep things that have little value, but in your mind you have trumped them up to have a great amount of value, even though everyone else can see that they’re nothing but junk. Or, you’ll begin accumulating certain things, claiming that you’re building a “collection” that you may believe may be “worth something someday”. Most of the stuff I ended up accumulating, man, it would be hard to find a buyer anywhere for that crap. I actually have a Hershey bar wrapper collection from the 1980’s. I have an Altoids tin collection. I had a collection of melted VCR tapes from when I worked in a videocassette production place…I’m not kidding you. By the way, I finally got the guts to throw those videocassettes away. All of this stuff is crap, and yet I would just collect it and collect it like it was gaining in value every year or something. The truth is, all it was doing was cluttering up my house and my mind.
I even had this stupid habit of keeping old pens that didn’t write anymore. Yep, I would just have a desk full of pens without caps that had dried up completely or just barely wrote at all. What did I think was going to happen? Was I expecting some kind of supernatural change? Were the pens going to resurrect one day and all of a sudden begin to start magically flowing with ink again? Freakin-A. I guess what I’m trying to say with all this is that hoarding disorder can cause you to see things in a distorted manner, and you don’t even realize that your perspective has been skewed.
Oct 21, 2008
Compulsive Hoarding: An Introduction
When I thought to start this blog, I was initially doing it as somewhat of a study on compulsive hoarding in a general sense. The funny thing is, the more I started studying hoarding disorder, the more I saw myself fitting all the symptoms and descriptions! So, in the midst of me trying to do a study on this, I have realized that I almost completely fit the profile…that SUCKS!!! Now, I don’t have any rooms piled up with 3 feet worth of junk or anything like that, but I do recognize that I have a lot of the same symptoms of a hoarder’s mentality. So, with that in mind, this blog will actually be somewhat of a diary (man, I hate using that word) of my own personal journey to be completely free from compulsive hoarding in all its forms and fashions.
For years I wondered why I would keep a bunch of relatively useless stuff, but I never gave it much thought beyond that initial question. I just figured that I was a conservative kind of guy, and only wanted to keep things because I could possibly use them later, or because I didn’t want to be “wasteful”, or because I may actually need those things one day in the future, and if I didn’t have a store of stuff to draw upon, what if what I needed would no longer be available? All of these types of questions would go through my head. I never saw them as any type of “wrong” thing to think; in my mind it was interpreted as being “responsible” and not being wasteful. But man, it has turned into something almost laughable and ridiculous now. I have a collection of candy bar wrappers that I have had since I was in middle school (I’m 33 now). By the way, that’s another symptom of hoarders—they call all of their accumulated junk “collections”, as if the junk has some kind of intrinsic value, when most of the time it doesn’t. I thought about selling the candy bar wrappers on eBay, but I probably wouldn’t get but about 10 cents for them. In other words, the hoarder assigns or attributes value to the things that they collect, but in reality that value is not accurate or even sometimes non-existent.
I also have a ridiculous amount of old power bills, old gas bills, old money order receipts, old deposit receipts, etc., many of them dating back four years or more. Those bills have long been paid for, and some of the companies I’m not even a customer of anymore, but I have still kept the bills, as if some psychotic auditing company is going to raid my house just to ensure that I have paid my bills for the past 10 years. I also have an excessive amount of magazines that I don’t read, several copies of the same books that I don’t read and don’t even want, miscellaneous cables, wires, adapters, and other electronic stuff that I can’t even use, but that I keep and would honestly feel a loss if I threw them away. This flat-out SUCKS. So again, I am starting this blog to somewhat document my journey OUT of compulsive hoarding, and hopefully stave off that stupid mentality that breeds hoarding disorder, forever. Onward & upward from here.
For years I wondered why I would keep a bunch of relatively useless stuff, but I never gave it much thought beyond that initial question. I just figured that I was a conservative kind of guy, and only wanted to keep things because I could possibly use them later, or because I didn’t want to be “wasteful”, or because I may actually need those things one day in the future, and if I didn’t have a store of stuff to draw upon, what if what I needed would no longer be available? All of these types of questions would go through my head. I never saw them as any type of “wrong” thing to think; in my mind it was interpreted as being “responsible” and not being wasteful. But man, it has turned into something almost laughable and ridiculous now. I have a collection of candy bar wrappers that I have had since I was in middle school (I’m 33 now). By the way, that’s another symptom of hoarders—they call all of their accumulated junk “collections”, as if the junk has some kind of intrinsic value, when most of the time it doesn’t. I thought about selling the candy bar wrappers on eBay, but I probably wouldn’t get but about 10 cents for them. In other words, the hoarder assigns or attributes value to the things that they collect, but in reality that value is not accurate or even sometimes non-existent.
I also have a ridiculous amount of old power bills, old gas bills, old money order receipts, old deposit receipts, etc., many of them dating back four years or more. Those bills have long been paid for, and some of the companies I’m not even a customer of anymore, but I have still kept the bills, as if some psychotic auditing company is going to raid my house just to ensure that I have paid my bills for the past 10 years. I also have an excessive amount of magazines that I don’t read, several copies of the same books that I don’t read and don’t even want, miscellaneous cables, wires, adapters, and other electronic stuff that I can’t even use, but that I keep and would honestly feel a loss if I threw them away. This flat-out SUCKS. So again, I am starting this blog to somewhat document my journey OUT of compulsive hoarding, and hopefully stave off that stupid mentality that breeds hoarding disorder, forever. Onward & upward from here.
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