Where Does Hoarding Begin ?
And How Bad Is it ?
“…somehow our default switch is to not see the clutter until it becomes a problem. Default switch is to put things down or aside, instead of putting things away. Repetition does not become habit with us. And cleaning causes anxiety… oh the anxiety.” — excerpt from the testimony of an anonymous hoarder
My grandfather is a hoarder. He doesn't qualify for the TV show, but he’s still one non the less. He mainly collects plastic bottles, but also takes screws, spacers and other small mechanical parts, because you can’t ever have enough of those can you ? Grandpa stores them in the cellar of my grandparents apartment. We’re quite accustomed to his little habit and every now and then (mostly once an year) we go down and gather the hundred plastic bottles he’s accumulated and surrender them to the local recycling depot. And while it is annoying to see plastic bottle everywhere in the house, it’s not really a problem.
I sometimes see traits of that habit in my father as well, although quite rarely and there are no bottles involved. And that is no actual surprise as well, as up to 85% of all people diagnosed with hoarding can point out to another member of the family with the same issue.
But what exactly is hoarding ?
By definition it is the act of accumulating large amount of objects with little or no value to your life and the inability to dispose and throw them away.
So, by definition, my grandpa is a hoarder, though you wouldn't really consider him one, would you ? He’s just an old man with a weird habit that needs occasional attention.
You see, definitions rarely matter in life. If I told you he picked up contact cards or vinyl records would you still call it hoarding, or collecting ? What if he used those mechanical parts he always gathers as materials for awesome sculptures like this one:
Would he be a hoarder or an extravagant artist ?
We put our own emotions and thoughts into objects and we are the ones giving them purpose. So, your junk might not be junk in the eyes of somebody else. And your broken toaster, that you threw away yesterday can give life to somebody else’s broken toaster with the parts still operating.
What I'm trying to say is definitions and perceptions are not what makes the difference. It’s how your activity affects your life that does.
There are people devoted to collecting Santas and have turned their homes into a practical museums for Santa — related souvenirs and items — bed covers, shelves full of figurines, thematic cutlery, plates and mugs. There are even clubs for people collecting Santas
And that’s okay, these people are collectors — they have found their passion. They have found what makes them happy and turned it into their hobby. We do that, people are intrinsically driven to act based on what they find pleasing.
This is where the border stands. Hoarders are not collecting things because they like it, but because they don’t like not doing it. It’s not passion that drives a hoarder to do what he does, it’s the anxiety and irritation when he doesn’t that makes him.
Hoarding has long been considered a mental condition, even though it’s still not technically “in the book of bad things in our head”
Researches have shown a strong link between hoarding and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Between 18% and 40%, depending on the particular study, of the patients diagnosed with OCD have shown signs of Hoarding as well. And it’s only natural to be so, as the mental processes behind the two are very much alike.
OCD is a compelling action driven by the worries of bad consequences occurring if that actions is not executed. There are people that scrub their skin off in the strive to achieve ultimate hygiene. And they have a pretty solid reason to do so — they fear what will happen if they don’t maintain a sterile level of cleanliness. They fear the germs getting in an causing health risks to them or their close ones. And that fear is exactly what pushes them to the extreme. Generally, most cases of OCD feature some similar precaution. Hoarding is quite similar.
Often hoarders explain the inability to part with items or throw away junk via four ways:
1. What happens if I throw this away now, and later I find a need for it ?
2. This is a memento from an important experience or person in my life, I can never part with THIS.
3. Those items there might be worth a fortune in time, why throw away that possibility ?
4. It’s perfectly good and working, why throw it away ?
All these, and more that are not listed are the bad consequences hoarders fear of occurring, if they don’t submit to their habit.
Sometimes, there is just the obsessive anxiety of parting away with an object — an addiction, If I may. You know you’re ruining your life, you know you’re just shooting pure poison up your arm, but by not doing so, you feel like nothing. You feel as if you shouldn’t exist. It hurts you so much, that you just choose to carry on and shoot another one.
Do you think they like it ?
That is what defines the disorder. The unforgiving, obsessive and overwhelming need and hunger to do something and the devastation you suffer, from choosing to not do it. Chaos is brought to a new light — it’s calming, soothing and pleasing. You know it’s not order, but when order is so painful, dark and lonely, are you sure it isn't ? And if you are, how long will it be before you don’t know any more ?
As any other condition, hoarding can be the result of numerous factors in your life. The American Great Depression in the 40's is thought to have integrated hoarding into the very lives of people. Because of the extreme poverty and famine, families gathered whatever they could and used and re-used absolutely everything to it’s complete and utter potential. All this was driven by the fact that if not living in this manner, they might very well die, because they lack the basic things required for their survival.
Clothes were worn, stitched, and worn again. Then they were inherited by the newer generations and the same action repeated, until the very fabric cannot hold any more. And even then, it was not thrown away, but re-purposed into other fabric-based belongings.
Even now you can spot the signs of hoarding in orphan children, coming form extremely poor and challenged families. You see, because they know they have nothing, they never miss an opportunity to gain something more. And even if they don’t need it now, the future might prove otherwise and they have to be ready for it. Imagine preparing for the apocalypse. Their apocalypse is their reality — it’s what they live in.
Emotional trauma like that can set in a very disturbed image of priorities. Even though their apocalypse is over, they can never live past it and continue down the destructive path.
Hoarding is also known to be a coping reaction to the loss of a close person in your life.
The results of compulsive hoarding you've probably seen already. Countless pictures, articles and videos of what it is to be inside the “home” of such people. There are even TV shows about hoarders, as repulsive as it sounds to make your money on the problems and illnesses of others. You've seen the piles of garbage, blocking most parts of the house, including the toilets, kitchens and bathroom. You've seen how people react on the stench of tens of animals living uncontrolled and uncared for. You've seen what a fridge looks like when the “food” there is so bad, it has liquefied. Yes, it’s quite the horror.
But have you ever asked yourself: “Who is responsible for that ?” Obviously, the cause is apparent — the man or woman is sick and his sickness has developed into this toxic, hazardous, but have you wondered if that person can be blamed, or did you automatically bestowed the responsibility to cause?
Is responsibility and cause the same thing ?
Hoarding is just another illness of the mind, with proper help and support it can battled with, controlled and even defeated. Most cases you see on the news however, are the result of zero attention to the troubled person. And by zero, I mean that only 5% of all hoarders get to the attention of professionals, who can help them. And of those almost half drop out of any rehabilitation program. And it’s not because treatments are not effective. On the contrary, only after a few spent weeks in such programs the patients exhibit 45% drop in their hoarding activities.
Scientists have discovered that the first signs of hoarding can be spotted as early as ten years old — early enough to put in effort and treat the problem in it’s embryo stage. Illnesses don’t have the notion to cure themselves out of nothing. Rather the opposite, as long as you ignore it, you can be pretty sure it will grow bigger, stronger and harder to be rid of. By the age of thirty, unattended hoarders lose control of the situation and by fifty you can easily see the horrible cases, I mentioned before.
The landlord goes in your apartment one day and throws a tantrum over what he sees. Naturally, rather than helping, he gets you evicted and on the streets of London, for example. He calls the the removal crews to get the mess out and then the end of tenancy cleaners to finish the job. It might take them a few weeks, but after that he’ll just get a new tenant — one that is not sick, and all goes back to normal for him.
And what do you do ? — you become that child who never had anything and just calmly dive deeper into the obsession. That same obsession is your only companion and your only tool to survive, so you stop to struggle for control and just let go.
Still, hoarders are not mindless. Some them, if not most, realise their problem, they know every detail of it, far better than anyone else. They know what drives them and they also know they want to be free of that obsession. But they need a friendly and helping hand if they’re to succeed. And as most of the world condemn such cases and go round them like they’re scared to not catch it from the air, what chance do these people have ?
“You know what, that’s the first person that’s ever said that.” — the reaction of a hoarder, when prompted with an offer to help, while his house was being cleared by removal crews
Author’s notes
If you want to know more about hoarding. You can visit any or all of the websites, listed as resources. If you want to help awareness, you can share this simple infographic, I designed with the little statistics, I could find.
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