I was a hoarder: I struggled to throw anything away

Hoarding

This is my first post since my 'About Me' post in which I introduced myself.  I thought that I would start off by posting about something quite innocuous.  Recently I have been making great progress in relation to my old hoarding problem and so I thought I would write a little about this.  
My Live Life Satisfied website has a fuller discussion concerning hoarding and if you wish to read this it can be found here:- lifecoachinglls.com/site/154.asp
I was a hoarder

Hoarding began to become quite a problem for me as I was growing up and as I moved into my later teenage years.  Its funny because my dad told me that when I was around 4 years old, I used to keep all the boxes of all my toys and carefully put my toys back in their boxes after I had played with them.  He has told me this recently, and he says that at the time it struck him as strange.  Interestingly he has traditionally been a little bit of a hoarder as well.  

One of the worst aspects of my hoarding has been in relation to paper work.  I think that things may be useful one day and would always keep paper in case they might be useful one day.  I would keep leaflets and receipts and almost anything that I possibly thought I might want at a later date.  As a result, by the end of my teenage years I had many plastic bags full of paperwork.  I would also find it created massive anxiety to have to go through the paperwork, because I really struggled to bin any of it and trying to decide whether or not it would be ok to bin something would be very traumatising.   As I would look at each piece of paper and try to convince myself it was OK to throw it away, my back would start tensing up - literally.  

So I had bags and bags of paperwork in my bedroom.  I left home at age 18 and then began accumulating more paperwork.  I remember when I had to move house once at age 21, and a friend had offered to help me move, he turned up at my house and my whole room was full of paper - all over the floor, and it was a very big room.  He couldn't believe that I had not packed it all away ready to move and we spent hours trying to put it all into bags and boxes.  Years later at age 29 when I moved again, I had 2 friend who had come to help me move and once again on the day they arrived my whole room was full of mess.  I told the girl who had come to help as I looked at all the mess 'I just want to die!'   This was a slightly awkward moment because I had only met her a couple of months before this!

I also think that there are still numerous plastic bags full of paperwork at my Mum's house but I don't have the guts to go and find out.  Usually after I moved house, it would take over a year for me to finish going through all the bags of stuff I had packed up when I had moved. 

Reasons for Hoarding

One thing I have noticed when I have been trying to throw things away, is that I find it particularly difficult to throw away presents that people have given me.  I have a drawer at home that is full of old presents that I haven't been able to bring myself to throw away.  I know, for example that there is a Yo-Yo in there that my aunt and uncle gave me around 15 years ago.  Because it was a present I have felt too guilty to part with it - even though I haven't used it for most of the 15 years and will never use it again.

I also just think I worry that I might need things one day.   In order to contain all my paperwork, last time I moved house I had managed to create folders for all kinds of paperwork and the folders, if piled up would have reached a meter high.  Right now I can see them near me and they are around 30cms high and I think this is great progress.  There used to be folders entitled 'instructions' that contain all instruction that I have ever had.  Its so traumatic to go through the folders that I probably have instructions for things that I haven't owned for 5 years.  There were 'important document' folders and 'things I may need one day' and 'things I may need but are not as important.  

I've made massive progress over the years

Over Christmas I decided to clear out 2 cupboards that were piled high with stuff.  I now keep the doors of these cupboards open so I can see the progress I have made: they are both almost empty now.  In fact one of them is a 2 meter deep cupboard and I was not even aware of this until I cleared it  because before this it was filled to capacity with stuff.  Its still not easy to throw things away but it feels so good to see the clear space.  

I began to make serious progress after I moved house 4 and a half years ago.  I've written about this on the Live Life Satisfied website, but basically I decided that I could no longer tackle the problem in the way I had been trying to.  Up until this time if I was tidying, I would pick up an item and try to argue with myself as to whether or not I might need the item.  Was it possible that I would regret it if I threw the item away?  I could always argue to myself that I might actually need the item in future and so I would almost always end up retaining the item.  However, I now decided I needed to approach this differently.  I decided that my primary aim should not be to try and decide whether or not I might need an item in the future: my aim should be to bin as many items as possible.  I decided that I should start binning items, even if it meant that occasionally I threw something away that I later found I needed.  I reasoned with myself, that for every 10 items I kept, using the argument that I might possibly need them one day, I probably actually only used 1 in 10 of these saved items.  So I decided it would be better to throw away 10 items, and then, if in 5 years time I found I needed one of those ten items, I could just go out and buy it.  The cost of buying the item was worth it if it meant that I had managed to throw away 9 other items that I would have never used.

Adopting this attitude I managed to throw away around a third of my belongings.  A year later I went through the same process and probably threw away half of my belongs again.  Over Christmas when I went through those 2 cupboards, I probably threw away four fifths of everything in the cupboards.  

Amazingly, I have hardly ever needed an item that I threw away during the last 4 and a half years of doing this.  I could probably count on one hand how many times I have later thought 'oh I could have used that if I hadn't thrown it away'.  And of course its easy to buy something if necessary.  

Guilt

I think that it guilt often plays a huge part in stopping hoarders from throwing things away.  In classical Psychoanalytic literature (please understand that I do not endorse all Psychoanalytic ideas, but amongst the many things I disagree with there are some very powerful insights in Psychoanalytic literature) it says many people have an inner guilt and that many behaviours are people's attempts to appease their inner guilt.  Frugality can be very similar: one says 'I must not spend too much money because it is bad to waste money' and so some people will go to incredible lengths to try to save every penny.  I remember a year or so ago trying to justify buying a chocolate bar for this very reason.  I have now begun to buy cups of tea during my working day and a bag of crisps every day because I find that they help me enjoy my day, but it has taken a lot of work to convince myself that it is OK to do this, because basically, I believed deep down that this was wasting money, and I felt guilty about it.  And I think not being able to throw things away is often very similar: we kinda feel like we shouldn't throw things away, because it is a 'waste'.  And so because of our guilt, we end up having maladaptive life behaviours, that make the day to day running of our affairs very difficult.  

However, I believe that these kinds of behaviours actually serve to feed the guilt.  As much as we feel less anxious if we give into the guilt, I believe that if we are to ever get rid of this underlying deep seated guilt, we cannot give into it all the time.  If we do, we just condition ourselves to accept that guilt.  Learning to challenge these thoughts and more importantly acting in a way that visibly demonstrates that I don't agree that I have to feel guilty any more has been integral over the last 12 years, to me learning not to feel guilty about these things any more.  At first standing against the guilt was excruciating, but over  time, through practise, it has got easier and easier, and today I live with very little unjustified guilt.  

Please leave comments

Please do leave comments or ask questions related to this thread, if you have found it useful or encouraging.  If no-one leaves comments, it is difficult for me to know whether or not anyone is benefiting from my posts.  Also, I much prefer to post in response to people's questions than just randomly trying to decide what to post.

Phil 


A couple of people have commented on this post today, and I thought it would be good to also mention a book that looks in depth at the subject of hoarding and treatment for hoarding problems.  Chapter 9 - the link is below.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder-Treatment-Psychology/dp/0471494453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326737968&sr=8-1