Letters to the Editor
-
therapy
Cary's answer in the previous article is a good first step, a way to get the letter writier's mother ready for change/therapy. However, the type of therapy needed to change this pattern of behavior is called "exposure and response prevention."
This is a difficult form of therapy, but ultimately has the best track record for helping people-better in the long run than drugs.
Here is a link that provides information
http://www.ocfoundation.org/behavior-therapy.html
-
I have a similar relative
Note: Skip this message if you don't want to hear somebody pile on (pun intended) about the same problem as the LW.
My relative is a severe hoarder. It has been going on for years, with her direct siblings getting more and more frustrated. The situation will get worse before it gets better.
They've tried everything to convince her to clean up her ways. Each attempt is met with animal-like resistance. It is as if the issue of hoarding, and the stuff itself, is infused with all of the woman's accumulated life's emotions of pain, failure, and depression. Trying to change things is like trying to make somebody deeply in denial face all her problems and unhappiness at once.
She has two residences, both filled with her stuff. The cost of renting one of them has drained all her savings, but she can't move out because there's no place to put everything. (Even if there were, getting her to take useful action is impossible.) So now she is at the point of having to beg and guilt-trip people to "loan" (i.e. give) her money just to live on.
Meanwhile, both residences are so full of stuff that you can barely walk through them. They're piled high with stacks of boxes full of newspapers, shoes, and items ordered off of the Shopping Network. Instead of clearing space, a towel or blanket will be thrown over a pile of stuff so that more stuff can be piled onto it (without toppling over). Cereal boxes and other containers are saved in case the proof-of-purchase seals or coupons are ever useful. Everything has a potential use that is never exploited.
Years of mementos, and a lifetime of now-vintage clothing sit and collect dust. An entire basement, an entire garage, a living room, a family room, and every bedroom are full. At one point she had to sleep in the bathtub because the beds were so covered in things.
Nobody knows what to do. Lawyers have been consulted, advice given, but it's so much trouble that everybody is putting off whatever intervention might be undertaken. (Is it any surprise that the siblings are dealing with the problem by also going into denial?) Past attempts to help clean up were met with extreme hostility. Somebody threw away something that turned out to be a prized possession, and this resulted in yelling and tears. So nobody is interested in repeating the drama.
It's like everybody is waiting for her to die so that everything can be taken to Salvation Army in one big dumpster truck.
I know this is hardly useful to the LW, other than the "you're not the only one" angle. I've read that hoarding is a symptom of depression, as well as isolation, alienation, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so on. To me it's like the part of the brain that wants to gather things for survival loses its ability to make decisions, so it errs in favor of everything.
I wish somebody would set me loose in her homes to see what could be sold on e-Bay. I'll bet I could turn her junk into at least a few thousand dollars.
-
call the fire department
If the house is that full, call you local fire department. They may declare the house a fire hazard.
-
resources
Somewhere on the "children of hoarders" site there's a link to a nation-wide service that handles exactly this situation. Sorry I can't be more specific, this is something I read a while ago and don't remember where to find again.
They not only clean the house, they work with the hoarder to prioritize stuff and preserve what's worth keeping, and teach the hoarder skills about how to manage. It looked like an excellent resource.
According to one article I read, hoarders have a different way of remembering where they put things - for a hoarder, basically out of sight is out of mind, which is why they're so terrified to put things away. Clear boxes and drawers can help manage things while keeping them visible, which reduces anxiety.
I also seem to recall that OCD drugs may help.
Good luck with this.
-
Tough situation
LW, have you thought of calling the City? This sounds like a situation that can cause fire potential, health code violations,etc. She might have to be forced to get rid of the stuff by the threat of legal action. I know you'd rather deal with it in a nicer way, but perhaps some tough love is warranted in this case.
-
Mine too.
http://www.squalorsurvivors.com may be helpful for the LW.
I deal with this situation personally. My parents have bought enough ugly crap to stock four junk shops and completely trashed two houses. They've got a lot of weirdness going on between them, and it includes both hoarding and destructive hostility that takes the form of a compulsion to make their living space gross.
How I dealt with this: after house #2 was beyond repair, I bought them a house. I also made rules regarding house #3 and told them that if they so much as picked up a screwdriver and gouged a wall, I'd throw them out. I actually did not reach such heights of draconian authoritarianism on my own, but on the advice of a very able therapist who told me that their tendencies could probably be managed only by very clear, very absolute and schematic rules. They are fairly disgusting housekeepers (no novelty), but they are not in an endangered condition or a self-imposed state of indignity.
Lacking any desire for change on the hoarder's part, getting the hoarder over a legal barrel as above or strong-arm tactics of various sorts, none pleasant in the doing, are what the caretaking person has at his/her disposal. As they point out on the Squalor Survivors site, too, gratitude is not one of the responses you can expect for rescuing someone from their mess - they don't see it that way at all. A hell of a conflagration is likelier - but at least, if you rescue them from their encompassing mess, the conflagration will be merely figurative rather than literal, the nightmare of a house fire in a hoarder's home.