<p>“Yes, the hyper-responsibility …”</p>
<p>So hyper-responsible that they’re willing to lose their spouses, homes, children, etc. in order to hold onto a non-functioning refrigerator filled with rotting food? Perverted hyper-responsibility for sure. But what causes the perverted hyper-responsibility?</p>
<p>As for having suffered losses and deprivation … well that’s simply part of life for tens of millions. Why is that just a small percentage respond by becoming hoarders?</p>
<p>many years ago a psychiatrist told me my sib is a perfectionist, that perfection is impossible, but if one doesn’t ever finish a task or make a final decision there is no chance of doing something less than perfectly or “wrong.” </p>
<hr>
<p>The goal is to have a perfect closet. So you pull everything out of your closet, in preparation for organizing the closet. You go to Home Depot and buy a closet organization kit. You put it together in the living room because your bedroom floor is now full of clothes. The organization kit isn’t exactly right. But you leave it in pieces in the living room while you spend the next few years researching the perfect closet organization system. You decide as long as your closet is empty you should do some small renovations in your bedroom. You tear out some sheet rock. You buy some new sheet rock and all the necessary supplies which you store in the dining room because there is no room in the living room (because of various closet part components) and you collect 20 or so wall paper sample booklets because it might be nice to wall paper the bedroom while you are at it. You stack the books on the bed where it is easy to consider what looks right in the room. Now you have to find a new place to sleep — temporarily, of course, just till you make up your mind about the wall paper. Since you aren’t sleeping in there anyway, at the moment, you go ahead and take down the bedroom curtains and store them in the hall. You are pretty sure you want to replace them, but until you find something you like better, it is a good idea to just hang onto them. Meanwhile the old sheet rock and the old closet components are in the yard, because they may be useful, in some way, before the project is completed. We can’t know till then. And it doesn’t matter the sheet rock has been rained on or that the closet components keep the yard man from cutting that area of the lawn and now some small pine trees are growing up between the pieces. Because now you have been exploring and considering the very best way to organize a closet for five years.</p>
<p>multiply this times 30 plus years of “projects”
you aren’t living in chaos, just with unfinished projects and you would be starting on one of them tomorrow except there is a new litter of puppies that need attention. You will get everything straightened out in six weeks or a couple of months as soon as you are able to find them all good homes. </p>
<p>Finding the puppies homes… the perfect homes…<br>
Can you let them go? How many dogs is it possible (or sensible) for one person to have?<br>
You can keep them in kennels and you have room for quite a few - but -
you are still working on getting those constructed to your satisfaction and please do not move those supplies either …</p>
<p>alh - ^ Yes, that’s one “page” from the hoarding catalog. But there are also perfectionists who choose other avenues to satisfy their perfectionism. Furthermore, there are hoarders who have no projects, save keeping others away from their hoard. Most significantly, the perfectionism doesn’t extend past protection of the hoard.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that perfectionism isn’t a piece of hoarding’s primordial soup. I’m just saying that perfectionism alone … like privation alone or personal losses alone … don’t predict hoarding.</p>
<p>One theory of hoarding is that it stems from a “do-loop” in the brain, a dysfunctional nesting syndrome, one that never gets turned off. It can be another form of OCD. Medications do help as well as therapy (especially when trauma has triggered it).
I’ve noticed on the show that many of the hoarders have some great loss like the death of a family member that appears to have triggered their hoarding or made it significantly worse.</p>
<p>yes ^ post 103</p>
<p>imho, (not professional) there is a genetic component. I think there may be a propensity and a “trigger” but my sib has been like this literally since birth, and living the end result of a long process. I have seen two other extreme cases like this, both in my grandparents’ generation, one on my mother’s side of the family and one on my father’s. That, in itself, is interesting to me. I do NOT think my sib is modeling, but this is a behaviour our family has seen before.</p>
<p>“many of the hoarders have some great loss like the death of a family member that appears to have triggered their hoarding …”</p>
<p>Yes, but that’s a lot like saying many PTSD sufferers have had a trauma in their life that triggered their Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. The bigger question is why the sufferers are susceptible to their hoarding/PTSD/etc. being triggered by events that most people successfully navigate.</p>
<p>I want to add something to what I said on the last page about a genetic component with a possible trigger. There also has to be an environment that allows the hoarder to become level 4 or 5. I think I remember reading that Swimcatsmom didn’t realize her husband was a hoarder until they settled in one place for a while.</p>
<p>I only have theories and observations which have no scientific basis.</p>
<p>alh – I just read your thread #102 “the perfect closet”. Great stuff.</p>
<p>Channel surfing last night and saw a program about people who hoard pets. One lady had 83 dogs! The therapist and the family were able to convince her to send 71 of them to no-kill shelters. At the end of the show, she had just had a litter of puppies and everyone was worried that she was starting up again.</p>
<p>Very heart-breaking…</p>
<p>The animal hoarding shows are the worst. </p>
<p>On a positive note, I am getting ready to <em>unhoard</em> a bunch of stuff today. I find I am looking at my clutter with new eyes. Darling daughter is going to take a car load to donate. The show, and this thread have inspired me. Something along the lines of <em>scared straight</em>, I guess. Yesterday she took a large pile of excess blankets and sheets and dropped them off at a community center. </p>
<p>Now, I am going to go tackle my worst headache for a couple of hours – paper clutter. I have a deadline. Younger daughter is having a sleepover tonight. Gotta see what I can do before they get here. Yikes! Why I find it so easy to accumulate vast amounts of paper, I don’t know. Glad it’s not animals, though . . .</p>
<p>
I definitely have hoarding tendencies and one of my challenges is … when things are in piles in the open I have no trouble knowing the general area where things are … however when I put things away I sometimes have a heck of time finding things again. There is a pattern to when this problem arises … when things could be filed in multiple places and I’m not sure where it went … did I file the receipt for the kid’s college computer in the kid’s college expenses folder or in the computer/internet folder. For me it is much faster using piles … it looks a lot worse but it actually works better for me.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve been scanning magazine articles that I want to keep (but rarely if ever look at again, in all honesty) for a while. At least the “mess” is on a little chip and is not a big pile of paper.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesting idea. I’m impressed that you are that organized. And having it all on a chip means you can collect the articles, but no one will ever have to deal with mountains of paper.</p>
<p>The perfect closet post sounds a lot like my relative. One of the earlier posts here led to a sight about Chronic Disorganization. Is that an actual diagnosable condition? And how is it different from ADD?</p>
<p>As much as I hate having a garage sale, we had one yesterday and made $440 and change. I really believe I could live the life of a minimalist. DH isn’t there yet, but is much better about letting me get rid of things these days than he used to be. I constantly remind him that when we’re dead and gone, DD (only child) will be responsible for going through all our stuff. Items that didn’t mean as much before gain much more sentimental value when someone is dead … at least that has been my experience. I loved seeing all that “stuff” leave our house yesterday and the back of my SUV is full of leftover items to take to Goodwill. It’s a win-win all the way around.</p>
<p>I haven’t had a garage sale in a few years. However, the key for me was doing as SplashMom did-donating anything that didn’t sell. I put a bunch of stuff that didn’t sell in the car and went directly to donate all of it. I had vowed that anything we dragged out of the house or garage for sale would never go back there, even it didn’t sell.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not at all. Grief is a very very specific event and trauma, as is hoarding. There is value in recognizing that this specific trauma seems to trigger this specific OCD type behavior. No it doesn’t solve it, but it does potentially illuminate the underlying psychology involved. </p>
<p>Of course for any cause of mental illness you can point to “those for whom that cause didn’t create mental illness” (or heck, the cause of <em>any</em> behavior is not going to impact all people), but that does not diminish the value of recognizing the cause.</p>
<p>My older brother has had hoarding tendencies for many years, and they were not triggered by any event … they were part of his depressive tendencies. However, we recently discovered that the hoarding had escalated & was accompanied by other very disturbing behavioral issues (without going into detail, I will just say that he lived in his own filth). It is quite possible that the escalation of the hoarding and other problems was triggered by events. He lived with another brother & found him dead of an accidental OD two years ago, and he was with our mother as she died a painful death 1-1/2 years ago. We did not realize how much these events would affect him, and we found out the hard way when he was recently hospitalized. We had allowed him his privacy in the past, as he only wanted to see us on his own terms. However, we have no choice now but to visit his place (once he gets a new one - his landlord evicted him over the condition of the apartment) on a regular basis. He seems to want to change, and we cannot leave it to chance. There are few things more heartbreaking to live with than a mental illness.</p>
<p>So sorry to hear this. Hope your brother gets the care and treatment he needs to heal and move on with his life. It sounds like the past two years have been very painful for him and I’m sure for you as well. Please take good care of yourself.</p>
<p>Thank you. Somehow, he was taken to the “right” hospital this time … it is one he had never been to before. He was honest with the staff right from the start, and he told them he is ready for help. They have an amazing support team, beginning in the hospital & extending to outpatient care. Of course, we can only be cautiously optimistic, as this will not be any easy road for him to travel. He tried once before & couldn’t deal with his problems. We had to tell him he can’t live with anyone in the family, because he did that with my deceased brother & simply “existed” rather than facing his issues. It is not easy to turn away family, but we know it’s best for all concerned.</p>