Recovering hoarders?

[Chicken lady]

Simplemind, i'm sorry for the pain you went through with your parent's house.

I am an instrumental hoarder. Actually I fit in several categories. I think that the tendency toward hoarding is innate, but how it is expressed is a product of your environment - "learned". As a parent, teacher and artist I have many opportunities for my instrumental hoarding to bring me reinforcement and dig a deeper channel in my brain. My dd called home from college her freshman year and said " I need 100 identical items to build an art project out of and I have a $5 budget." I was able to give her choices! For free! Happiness! Pride! The pleasure centers just lit up. My fellow teachers know I am their go to girl. - social status!

You need a lot of people on your cognitive behavioral therapy team. I am lucky because I have a lot of people who love me and understand me and will take the time to help me make new paths even when it seems ridiculous. In some ways it's like physical therapy for a severe injury. Only you can SEE the physical effects of an injury, so you don't feel stupid or frustrated when you tell a full grow person "great job! You got three beads on the string today!" or whatever. Today my daughter's boyfriend asked if cd cases were recyclable. And I said "no. You have to throw them away. And if you save them, it doesn't make them not trash, it makes your house the dump.". And my non-demonstrative daughter got up, walked across the room, wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my shoulder. These are the things I hold on to when I'm trying to throw away the trash. That is worth way more than $5. My coworkers can go buy craft supplies.

Ultralightangler, I'm not so sure about the trauma theory. I think there can be a lot of small "traumas" that aren't really traumas to normal people, or even large traumas that push you one way or another - usually they intensify the hoarding behaviors, like an addict reaching for more, but maybe sometimes they can also be wake up calls. And I think in some cases, the behavior just slowly takes over your life until you reach a tipping point and give up.

Libby, religion can also be seen as a learned behavior, but whatever culture a person is raised in, I think some feel a deep connection to the divine and others nothing. Those who are deeply devout might have taken a different path in a different culture, and may even convert, but are unlikely to "unlearn" religion.

[ToomuchStuff]

My MiL grew up in a household of extreme hoarders. That is what she learned. My husband also struggles with that issue. I think it is a learned behaviour so why is it so difficult to unlearn?

libby:

The research shows that it is partly, if not mostly, genetic. There is something wrong with chromosome 14 that makes people hoard. While the study of compulsive hoarding is very new, they do know there is a large genetic component. They also know that emotionally troubled kids are more like to grow up and be hoarders. Another interesting factoid is that only Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has thus far been shown to work at all to help hoarders.

But heroin addicts are more likely to overcome their addiction than hoarders are. It is an incredibly difficult to disorder to overcome.

One other thing, most hoarders are just cluttered or shopaholics, but then there is a trigger moment. Maybe it is the death of a child or spouse, maybe it is an illness or injury. But suddenly the person goes from cluttered to full on extreme hoarding.

First, any link to the science/data?
I ask in part because both genetics and environment are predetermination verses free will. Also in the case of genetics, there is some evidence that it adapts/evolves (from Darwin to studies of Twins, where one gets cancer and the other doesn't). I bring that point up, because I deal with it every day of my life. (another subject, not the right time/place)

Second, unlearning a behavior does involve some things:
Want/need to change
Practice, practice, practice
then of course other things help:
Support
Guidance
reinforcement
and in some cases there is a physical element (example the patch for smokers).

[Chicken lady]

Here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18616610

Less technical:
http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-gene...sive-hoarding/

Also:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/708049

[Float On]

My dd called home from college her freshman year and said " I need 100 identical items to build an art project out of and I have a $5 budget." I was able to give her choices! For free! Happiness! Pride! The pleasure centers just lit up.

Being able to allow someone else (even a daughter) to take 100 identical items from your home for her use is a huge thing in the hording spectrum. To be able to say "I've got it for you", and to feel "Happiness" and "Pride" is really big. What I've seen, a horder of items tends to be very self-centered - they might need it someday and can't bless others with their things. I just wanted to point that out because I think it is worthy of note.

[Chicken lady]

I think it stems from your definition of us and them. Self/family/tribe and mine vs. ours vs. theirs.

For example, when ultralightangler's mother let his dad give him the gun, she was NOT giving up the gun, she was just accepting that him having the gun was the same as her having the gun. Letting him have it when the idea of selling it panics her actually shows that she has a strong connection to him.

I have saved things that could have been used by multiple children in my community by now if I had passed them on, because MY grandchildren *might* need or want them. I don't personally know those other children. So i think the more social connections a hoarder has, the easier it is to "share" the hoard. Unfortunately hoarders tend to withdrawal from social connections as either a related trait or a consequence of hoarding. Also, on the flip side, the more connection you feel to someone, the more compelled you feel to hoard THEIR stuff.

[catherine]

I have saved things that could have been used by multiple children in my community by now if I had passed them on, because MY grandchildren *might* need or want them. I don't personally know those other children. So i think the more social connections a hoarder has, the easier it is to "share" the hoard. Unfortunately hoarders tend to withdrawal from social connections as either a related trait or a consequence of hoarding. Also, on the flip side, the more connection you feel to someone, the more compelled you feel to hoard THEIR stuff.

Interesting… I have in my basement right now two things relevant to the conversation: a jacket my son wore when he went the premiere of a movie he was in, and a Disney costume (Beauty from Beauty and the Beast) that my daughter wore one Halloween. It was the only costume we bought as opposed to making, so it was very expensive in my mind. (Actually my DH bought it for her--I wouldn't have).

What the heck are these things doing in the basement for 20 years?? As you said, I've often thought about the joy that that Disney costume would give another little girl, but I have fallen into the "someday when I have a granddaughter" trap.

Because I have a strong grounding in Catholicism (no longer am Catholic, but I attended 12 years of Catholic school), I think it's literally a sin to hoard things in that way. It goes back to Jesus' "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." I feel that it's a sin for me to keep things to myself rather than release them for the good of others. I am not passing judgment on anyone else, but for me, accepting it as my own sinfulness helps me to deal with it.

[Chicken lady]

Interesting to me in that context - I heard a progressive rabbi speak once who said that the word translated as "sin" from Hebrew might more accurately be described as "missing the mark".

[catherine]

Interesting to me in that context - I heard a progressive rabbi speak once who said that the word translated as "sin" from Hebrew might more accurately be described as "missing the mark".

Yes, that's how I see it. To me, sin isn't guilt-inducing indictment of my character, but kind of a marker of something I should correct in order to be happier/closer to God.

[Ultralight]

Catherine:

I grew up half-Catholic (Mom was Catholic; Dad was secular). And I feel much the same way! When I see someone with 40 pairs of shoes I think: "Imagine on the kids in Haiti that need those shoes!" Ya know?

[pony mom]

Interesting to me in that context - I heard a progressive rabbi speak once who said that the word translated as "sin" from Hebrew might more accurately be described as "missing the mark".

I think Eckhart Tolle explains sin the same way in A New Earth. Actually he explains many things in the bible in ways that make much more sense to me.