Nowadays we hear fairly often about the phenomenon of “hoaders”. I don’t know if this has increased over the past decades, or it’s just that the media has focused more on it, and there have been a couple of TV reality shows on the topic. Hoarders were (and many still are) in the closet and the condition is a shameful secret for many.
Hoarding has sometimes been thought to be related to OCD, although hoarding doesn’t usually involve the persistent, very distressing thoughts of OCD. In fact, hoarding often involves getting comfort from, and taking pleasure in the objects accumulated. A study just a few years ago that was published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, presents evidence that hoarding may have more to do with separation anxiety and previously experienced serious loss and trauma.
My own experience certainly supports that. I am no expert on the topic of hoarding and am not a psychologist (I play one on TV!..No, just teasing). Still I have made some observations based on a handful of people with hoarding tendencies whom I have personally known. I don’t claim that my observations are in any way scientific.
I think I have known at least six individuals who would fit the description of true hoarders. Of course, there are different degrees and some have a mild hoarding problem, while others are the extreme cases they feature on those awful TV shows.
I can think of a couple of people who are compulsive shoppers. They don’t have room for the things they buy, tend to not need them, and their space fills up, often with unopened boxes or junk collecting in many rooms, and which the owners never quite get around to actually using. One buys jewelry constantly, but never wears most of it. The majority of her collection remains in boxes, but she can’t hear of parting with any of her trinkets. Another person I know has regular financial crises, doesn’t feel like he ever has any money, but has a clothes closet fit for a movie star. He can’t pass up a sale on cashmere coats or sweaters and has hundreds of ties he never has any occasions to wear. In fact, he probably hasn’t worn a tie in years, but he keeps on purchasing them.
I know garage sale enthusiasts who also can’t pass up a “bargain” that somebody else is selling because they have no further use for it. One acquaintance from the past would literally exhibit physical symptoms when trying to leave the scene of a garage sale without making a purchase. She would walk away after examining an object and would get in her car. Then she would sit in her vehicle talking to herself, or to a companion if she had one, and would attempt to identify the object she had just seen, if not apparent. She would do this to try to rationalize buying it, even if she wasn’t exactly certain what it was. Or she would manage to name several possible practical purposes for the item, obviously trying to convince herself. She would start up the car, then turn if off, and, sweating and anxious, would bolt from the car, returning to the site of the sale to make the purchase. The “bargain” would be thrown on a pile of other similar things in the corner of her living room or dining room.
Someone else who was a neighbor of my mother’s a long time ago, lived in the same apartment for years and years, but nobody she knew was allowed to visit, including close family. I chatted with her sometimes in the hallway and if she had the door open just a bit, got a glimpse into her living space. There were huge piles of things everywhere Her adult kids were eventually contacted and made to help her clear the space or she would have faced eviction.
My mother-in-law tended to be a hoarder too, even saving pay stubs from a job she had in the 1940’s, her kids’ report cards, though they were in their 60’s when we discovered them, and lots of junk she ordered, still in unopened boxes years later. You will most likely decide the following is T.M.I. for you, but when we were moving her from her house, we found a birth control device in a dresser drawer. She was about 80 years old at the time with no use for such a thing.
An old friend in New York City had stacks of old magazines and newspapers in every corner of a small apartment, and even had a cellophane-encased string of lollipops hanging on the wall that was probably a relic from covered wagon days, if they had lollipops back then.
More and more, research is showing that hoarding is more related to trauma and loss issues than it is to OCD and/or anxiety disorders. Again, I am not a researcher or a psychologist, but I have noticed a common thread among hoarders I have known, and that is the experience of deep loss, often early in life, or in early adulthood.
Loss is a topic with which I am highly familiar, both personally and professionally. It’s something I have lived through a great deal of, something I help clients with, and since several of my kids are adopted, is a theme in our own family. My adopted kids experienced loss as infants, and then also lost their adoptive father, and other family members too, as well as their house and most of their belongings in a fire.
One woman I know, tends to form a very personal attachment to the objects that fill her home and vehicle. Even when offered a free replacement, this individual will not discard the first item and becomes emotional if anyone suggests that might be a good course of action. This is a person who lost her possessions, as well as a parent, when she was a young adolescent.
My mother-in-law, in many ways a classic hoarder, with this behavior escalating as she aged, also lost her father at the age of 12 and we recently learned that she placed a child for adoption in her early 20’s, thus adding to her lifelong loss.
The others I mentioned above, lost significant people in their lives in childhood. One lost her mother when she was a pre-teen, and another was widowed in her 20’s. Another was a child of a difficult divorce at a relatively young age.
I am always astounded by how many material possessions we do tend to accumulate even if we don’t have those hoarding tendencies. By the time you reach my age, the accumulation is a sizable one.You know how things have an almost magical, mysterious way of migrating to our homes and to our designated storage spots, and we usually can’t quite recall where they came from, or how they ended up where they are. Yet, most of us can finally get on the ball and decide once and for all to get rid of what we don’t need, without experiencing severe anxiety, sadness or meltdowns.
If you know a hoarder, please don’t expect him or her to just make a decision to change and accomplish it, without help. Most cannot. Hoarding, like other types of mental illness, is not a choice that people make in an uncomplicated way. Be ready to help, but not to judge. Sometimes interventions are needed because the hoarder’s safety, or that of others around, can be compromised. Certainly, most hoarders retreat more and more into a private, isolated world and don’t let people in due to their shame. The distress a person with hoarding issues feels when having to part with possessions is very real. Some feel that if those possessions are removed from their sight, they will lose all memories of them, or of what they seem to represent. There are various techniques that can be used to help a person with a hoarding disorder confront his or her beliefs, begin to categorize his or her belongings, to set priorities, and most importantly, to recognize and acknowledge how much life he or she is missing. It is possible, with the right kind of help, dedication, love and support from friends and family, for someone to face whatever pain may have led to such a lifestyle and to make changes.
Iris J. Arenson-Fuller, PCC. CPC helps people with Big Changes, Hard Choices and Second Chances, and is an expert on getting clients through and beyond various kinds of loss, and trauma. Her primary client base nowadays, though, is midlife women, widows and Baby Boomer women. She does work with men sometimes too.
