Hoarding Disorder - Identity of the problem

All hoarders have an emptiness inside them which they are trying to fill; they are often inadequate in some area they are incessantly trying to mask and compensate.

The Order Freak is someone who usually is neat and tidy, but they have a need to store all their items with a lot of consideration to the sorting algorithms imposed, and may be irritable to attempts to break down that order.

The Chaotic doesn't take importance to the aesthetic of the ordering, but that doesn't mean they may not be defensive as to touching their items or displacing them. Hoarders can be very attached to their items even if they treat them badly.

The Collector can have different variations according to their interests, some may stick with collecting items and storing them very carefully maintained showcases, others may stack new items on top of the others even if they duplicate them for no logical reason. Never forget that some hoarders are a mix of all these categories, even if they appear contradictory. People are contradictory, although some have more apparent and ugly cognitive dissonances.

The Prepper is a type that is very much paranoid, anxious, alert and catastrophizer, which leads them to pick up on useful items that give them an edge in case of some world catastrophe, outage, shortage, or any other dystopian scenario.

The Slacker can be your average teenager or the basement dweller peter pan uncle that leaves clothes laying around and empty beer cans yet to be disposed of. They are often immature and unmotivated, and very little energy or discipline to keep it all together.

The Depressive is probably the most catch all type because most hoarders will fall into this category of having no will to do standard chores and barely have a will to keep going in life.

The Entrepreneurial may be only stocking items for selling or transformation purposes, although he can become unhealthily invested thus becoming pathological wishful thinking.

The Deliberate/Focused is the kind of person that is hoarding items for a specific task, which may be pertinent, but could also become a way to alleviate their insecurities or anxieties, thus purchasing and monopolizing all the items they can to get a sense of having done anything in their reach for the completion of the task (some may be legitimate, some may be psychologically alleviating cop outs or self-deceptive).

The Disabled is a person either reaching old age and/or with health disabilities. They rightfully don't have the physical means to fix the fallout of their behavior and often have a defeated aura to them, in so far as they believe any measures are hopeless, as they are at the end of their lives.

The Pet parent

compensates emotional emptiness with animal company. Some may even have some savior complex leading them to 'rescuing' many [abandoned] animals. But often the conditions of their hoard elevate to health hazards because they can't keep up with the upkeep of maintaining all these animals.

Now that we have detailed the sort of archetypes you may find hoarding in your house, we can move on to understanding the other side of the problem which arises as a contrast, which is the outside world. This both refers to the spatial outside world and to the people who are not included in this.

As you may have figured if you're in this situation, hoarders create a sort of bubble, a 'groupthink', or what in many pathological relationships is called a "folie à deux" (I'll expand on this topic further on).

The shame associated with the repulsiveness this behavior creates makes sure that most people will not tolerate being in this space, which in turn makes everyone alert to keeping exogenous people out, and maintaining the secret to deter to defer off humiliation. This creates an environment with a specific code of conduct - which is very much a primal tribalistic behavior. For this, it's absolutely likely to make the children become hostages, or what is called in kidnappings having "Stockholm syndrome", as the children become very scared to go against their parent's will and also humiliating themselves further than they already feel.

Children are often stuck without an option to liberate themselves from this abusive hell.

Yes, this is absolutely child abuse and you must never think otherwise. If your parent's or family member's behavior is impeding your basic functions (like eating, hygiene, socialization, etc) then absolutely it is negligence.

Although it may be politically correct to argue that you should ask the help of a family member, neighbor or friend (adult), unless this goes into insane levels of abuse not only most people/children won't do it, it also is a very hard decision that will have an impact on your relationship with your family hoarders, your life situation, and possibly your whole life story. If this comes down to state intervention it could destroy that person's life. And, although they are destroying yours, life isn't black and white, and definetly not clear and simple. So I will not be advising for or against any particular involvement of the state authorities, unless you feel unsafe, to which you should have no fear to defend your life from further abuse, and should seek immediate help from a third party.

This is why this reality is so tough to deal with. It coerces people to participate in their own demise.

As you can notice in my stance, I still have some strings attached from my sad days living under constant distress and abuse from a very mentally chaotic situation as living with such a person is. Their life spills onto yours and it is abhorrent and coercive. Make no mistake, if you let it, it will destroy your self-esteem and will to live. It will drain your energy and will corrupt your view of life, human nature, removing your meaning and eagerness to find happiness.

To keep on topic, it's important to highlight that this world that exists inside your house is most definitely a 'parallel reality' created by the hoarder to split public perception from their own private behavior behind closed doors.

If you are considering their worldviews, political views and so on, look to their house because that's absolutely how they'd treat people if they had enough power/freedom, and how the world would become under their rule.

Yes, they have separated themselves from the world; and yes, they found a life boat for their 'true unencumbered self' to wander freely. This is not to say they are only like this, but it is to say that they become like this when left to their own devices. As you have noticed, hoarders, except for a select few, are quite often two-faced, which may fall under the categories of the Dark Triad, such as machievellianism, narcissism, or psychopathy, and as I will expand on other topics, this behavior often has comorbidities with other psychiatric disorders. This can translate to inheriting these same patterns via genetics or by 'osmosis' (by being with the hoarder and sharing the same environment).

As it is, hoarding makes sure that the people that attempt to orbit the hoarder either leave them alone or only stay there because they depend on them, need them, or have no better choice - which gives them power over them - by creating these two playing fields with no middle ground ("you're in for me or out").

It is an asymmetrical relationship marked by authoritarian rule.

Their house becomes their dominion - their nexus - which means the societal rules won't apply; theirs will. You are faced with the position of either escaping or living under their rule. I have to press that the more you stay there the more it will destroy your [mental] health, hindering your development, and converting you to their way of life.

It is horrible to live for years by masking your personal life, by alienating any person that may be becoming too familiar, and it's no surprise that "familiar" becomes synonymous with "suffering", and also means disclosing your embarrassment can unravel your feeble balance hanging by a thin thread.

In my experience, people will be horrified if they see the hoard, and they will lose you and spread the information about you, especially when you're a kid that everything is used against you. So no, children of hoarders do not have misplaced fear of others, but you have to realize that no matter how judgemental people are, the situation you're in is the pathological one and can't continue further without producing some lifelong consequences in your character and future.

'Outsiders' hurt you because you have been put in a situation to relate to people external to the hoard as 'outsiders'. You have been separated and singled out.

Territorial

Defensive mechanism

Problem storing

The patterns this pathology exhibits are prompted by the inner feelings that the hoarder constantly has to relieve. A mixture of anxiety, depression, hypo and hyper-mania, obsessive compulsions, and attention deficit all can enter the equation that the hoarder has to manage. Since his emotionality periodically dysregulates he has to find solutions to maintain stability. So he has to find strategies in the world to channel the emptiness created by such instability. Instability alienates us, estranges us – meaning we have to find ways to be normal again.

Hoarders resort to purchasing because they get rid of money and they can engender social plays that regain in them some humanity. Instead of staying home amplifying those previously mentioned pathologies into overdrive they try to replace their experiences with distractions which lead to commerce. By doing so, the hoarder both fixes his inadequate feelings but also pleasures others giving them meaning as they sell their merchandise. This is not necessarily a widespread phenomenon in all types of hoarders, but there seems to be some sort of ideological association that keeps being reinforced throughout each purchase (capitalism or even communism come to mind). Nevertheless, we must not forget that many hoarders gather items that are free, abandoned and possibly even stolen. These too can be seen by ideological lenses, although I could only speculate to their connections.

I make a distinction I consider relevant between 'addiction' and 'compulsion'. The way I see it, addiction is focused on the dopamine pay offs which is much more associated with the compulsive buying; whereas compulsions are much more associated with the need to relieve intrusive thoughts associated with anxieties. Behaviors like bringing objects home is much more compulsive than it is addictive. Hoarders often rationalize having an agenda for these items. They rarely use collected objects productively. They're always projects to procrastinate about. They know it. But part of them can't relinquish the part of themselves that can't let go of that potential self that can do that project. As I've mentioned earlier, there is some ideology at play with many hoarders trying to 'save' objects as if they were abandoned unjustly. It has a self-referential aspect as I think hoarders identify themselves with these objects - feeling abandoned themselves. By not abandoning these objects (or animals) they find hope in themselves as well.

We're all self-referential to an extent, and we also compensate through our behaviors. Hoarders save themselves through the items that remind them of abandonment because they see it and fear it in themselves.

Most hoarding behaviors are more compulsive than addictive, save for compulsive buying. The hoard exists much more out of puerile motivations - 'potential' expectations - and energy depletion. Most chaotic behaviors, procrastination, irritation with disposing or touching their objects, are attempts to alleviate their strong negative emotions. Where addictions invest in something with a perceived or real pleasurable pay off (at least in short term), compulsions are much emotionally regulating. The hoard has then these two components in its structure.

Another component in the ethology of the hoarding condition is underlined by the use and allocation of energy and emotional investments. Hoarding is a pathology that is comprised by a heavy energy investment coupled with intense periods of low energy.

In my estimation, this is a strategy for self-restraint. Since hoarders can’t regulate and control their urges they instead would rather succumb “full throttle” to their impulses. Since hoarding takes so much energy and time it also escalates in the impact it has on the hoarder’s life. It tires him/her out.

Every process becomes increasingly more difficult. Small projects are put away to revisit in the future; interesting magazines, books, movies are saved to watch and read later; plumbing, fridge, electrical problems are put off to be dealt with later; materials that could be handy for professional development are saved as well; clothing for every situation is stacked in piles; the list goes on.

The problem becomes evident when you analyze the hoarder’s life in perspective.

As he/she tries to deal with their biggest points of stress in life (work, relationships, kids’ problems, daily life logistics), everything else gets side lined and put away for future reference and worry.

As we can imagine, this is like a Hydra (the mythological three-headed monster). When Hercules chopped the Hydra’s heads off it spawned an even bigger amount of new heads. The hoarder’s problem is like that. Everything gets sacrificed and every object is worthy of that sacrifice.

A debate worth considering is whether they are right or not. If we accept that they can’t maintain order because of their temperament, personality or circumstance and time constraints, then we should be prepared to grant that their strategy is a reflection of their situation. Their actions are suboptimal because they have no better set of solutions and certainly not the psychological (and perhaps intellectual) make up to handle a liveable environment.

Objects are used as shortcuts for emotional “sublimation.” In case any turn in life will require some of the saved items they are saved for that possible scenario. It would all be good if the hoarder’s motives were this pragmatic, and as though there is a psychological need to satisfy these insecurities, they aren’t always commensurate with the problems at hand. In practice, the hoarder will create mountains of objects that will stack one on top of each other and cover the previous ones. In fact, there will likely be redundancy in the collected objects.

From my experience, this happens for two reasons: the first is geometrical and has to do with the configuration of the objects which makes it progressively harder to perceive what objects are already in the house and find them in due time; the second reason is derived from a memory problem. It’s hard to say whether they have memory problems; if their behavior exacerbates memory lapses; or if their life is already so demanding to begin with that it doesn’t give cognitive room to index all that they acquired, but one thing is certain: part of their compulsive and repetitive behaviors as an etiology as to do with their difficulty of remembering their past acquisitions (and general behaviors). This leads me to conclude that there is a substantial level of dissociation occurring.

Since they have a hard time keeping up with their stock they end up repeating their behavior. Some hoarding behaviors may be more rational than others. The same person can be rationally driven on one instance and emotionally driven on another. The same person can save a scissor or a pen because it’s handy and opportune to have around, but then also save 10 or 100 more because it “facilitates” their process - it’s sometimes a question of physical proximity. But does it? They often waste more time browsing, specially when the object they are searching for is very idiosyncratic.

What I’ve noticed looking in all that rubble is that there is a proportion of objects by type. And this forces attention to be focused in that proportionality. This is the point. Whether it’s deliberate, unconscious or contingent, it’s obvious that the natural demands and behavioral patterns in their daily habits and life goals leads them to gather specific objects more recurrently than others.

They aren’t entirely chaotic because they need sustainable life goals that keep them afloat in life - managing to survive and be functional workers and citizens. At least at a surface level.

This shows how their behavior can’t be entirely arbitrary.

But some of their items are not perfectly proportionally aligned given their usefulness to their life. But, generally, they are. So you will see a ‘pizza of ingredients' in the proportion that they need in life. Naturally, your purpose should be to reduce the item quantity but still keep the proportion.

The major problem in their style is that they don’t measure their process in temporal constraints and compare it to alternative modes of operation so as to judge which behaviors would grant them more optimized time and spatial usage and adaptation. In fact, I argue, I think it’s part of their strategy to create this chaos and grey cloud that psychologically affects others. It’s hard to say whether this is the main objective; I’m inclined to think not, but I do think that they adapt their lifestyle and strategies around this spatial blockade. What I mean by this is that, by building such an environment they assault other people in their close circle with psychological warfare. It is at a great cost of self-flagellation, but from my observations they already hold a great deal of shame even prior to hoarding behaviors. This is a perfect contact point to other comorbities such as NPD, ADHD, depression and isolation behaviors. By changing the environment they also change the rules, which forces people to live to their beat if they want to go on about their lives. This is a central point. This strategy functions as form of sifting who is “in” on their close social circle and who is out. People become enmeshed and inducted a similar shared psychosis as in cluster B personality disorders ethology – a shared fantasy (“folie à deux”).

By creating a “game” it also forces everyone under the same rhythms, psychological moods, and tribal induction. It is a form of brainwashing. Just like in NPD they create a paradigm to control others. It’s just as important to keep some people “in” as it is to keep certain others “out.” This is akin to the same tribalistic and nationalistic ‘loyalties’ that you see in mafia groups or by soviet operatives. It’s incredibly pernicious and alienating. This psychological manipulation will force people around to abandon their connections outside of this circle.

To sum up: this shared fantasy, that they force on others because of how the environment is set up, both influences energy levels of the hoarder and bystanders, and it changes the “energy” (spirit/dynamic) of the room – meaning: how people organize, behave, and their mood.

To close, it serves to mention that depression makes everything harder and more painful which is an excellent “motivator” for degrading into sloppy, unclean, messy and dysregulated hoarding.

One way to see what happens on the environment (on any environment) is to realize that it’s a reflection of the mental landscape of the people that populate it.

In case of the chaotic hoarder, the scenery he cultivates reflects the messiness of his mental schemas and heuristic/epistemological frameworks. They completely miss the Socratic method. They completely avoid having to sort and file reality by nesting, by taxonomy, by category, or any other relevant and simplifying scheme that can, in turn, help see how things can be connected and operations shortened, for example.

I’m mostly talking about the more messy types we are used to see all the piles of objects. There are hoarders that are much more strict and systematic in their organization. Although these ones are not as imposing, they can also be compulsively expansive in their collecting behaviors.

This setting make up should give you an inkling to their internal processes and try to educate and instill new strategies to replace the existing ones. It’s necessary to point out that one of the problems with transitioning to healthy behaviors has to do with 'going over the hill'. Since their situation is already so degraded it’s very hard to have the willpower to change their life. Their energy is often already depleted and so taking those extra steps on their own will be like a sisyphean task.

If you have it in you (as I did), instead of trying to reform their behavior you have to put your hands to work and do all the heavy lifting while they are not at home. And only then, you police/micromanage their behavior from an healthy environment. It’s much harder to make them change when they are by now most likely hopeless and sold to their own miserable situation.

On a different note, just like the NPD patient creates a world of internal ‘objects’ to try to match external entities, the hoarder also does this, to which an emotional bridge will be established, thus eventually triggering lability destabilization when the reality of their objects starts conflicting with their mental conceptualization.

They are emotionally connected with their objects. This means that their emotional regulation is proxied to their objects. This implies that the objects they perceive will give them some sort of reassurance, passification, nostalgia, identity structure and sense of control. They only get this emotional back up when they perceive or interact with their objects as well as when they feel they are there with the reassurance that comes with that.

This isn't without some cognitive dissonances of shame, self-hate, low self-esteem, and so on. The hoard leads to both positive and negative feelings - it's a trade off.

This means that they will lose control of a good amount of objects that they have. If you start removing some of those forgotten objects they won’t notice. Unless they are of substantial value the hoarder won’t miss them as much as if you dispose of them in front of them.

It’s a temptation to respect their boundaries when clearly they don’t respect yours. In order to gain terrain, respect and sanity, you have to give them a taste of their own medicine. That means open war. This doesn’t mean you have to act in an antagonistic manner completely – you can present a cold and detached (almost robotic) mode of operation, like a robot on a mission. This will throw them off balance and force them to be the aggressive ones. You have to be prepared to endure those psychological battles.

I, for one, took a lot of time to engage in such a proactive way because I didn’t want to disrespect my parent’s space, in the same manner that I didn’t want my parent to disrespect mine. And I also didn’t want to get caught and controlled by my vengeance - backed by bottled resentment and anger. And you shouldn’t either. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take control of the situation, especially because they are being immoral.

A substantial problem that I faced was dealing with having to be immoral. Whether we could argue that (in the big picture) this aggressive strategy is nothing compared to what they did, I still had trouble doing actions that I perceived to be disrespectful. And you should. Especially, because it’s your parent – the person you respect the most. But this person in this aspect wasn’t behaving respectfully, which means that I couldn’t either.

If you don’t lay ground rules you’ll be stepped over and you won’t be able to move on in life. This is the main 'conversion' aspect to their behavior. Just like in Cluster B personality disorders, being around hoarders will turn you into them. Don’t overdo it.

I took some of the tactics that professor Sam Vaknin (Narcissism expert) teaches in regards to treating NPD patients, by inducing a process of mortification (and “collapse”) – through “Cold Therapy” – in which you have to escalate and give them a backlash to their behavior. This is a dangerous and delicate process. You shouldn’t become an antagonist, but a lawful “robot” on a mission. No aggression should be necessary. You must measure how prone they are to aggression and make your strategy accordingly, in parallel with their behavior.

The last point to mention in regards to their balancing of their mental landscape in relation to their external physical environment is that hoarding is a form of retreat. But it creates a rift between their house and the outside. It not only pushes people away and close members in, it also makes the external world more “attractive” and their house more horrifying. This helps them not desire to stay at home and escape work as much. They can become workaholics to escape their personal life. And become hoarders to commit to work. It’s not always the case but it’s often a recurring theme to try to exacerbate the 'spiritual' element that each environment prompts and how it impacts them. By changing its presentation and utility they change how they feel about it, and conversely how they feel about everywhere else that’s not 'there'.

In order to understand the pathology of this hoarding compulsion we must focus on how it equates with other likely occurring comorbidities. Because hoarding in essence is, like other psycho-pathologies, an attempt to fill an emptiness. Since the person is unable to regulate negative emotions, instead he/she tries to fill it with tools that may serve some direct or indirect mechanism that will either mitigate negative emotions or inflate possible positive opportune moments.

It could be a gift for someone some time; it could be a sale the person doesn’t want to lose (whether they need the product or not); it could be a pamphlet someone is distributing to which they want to make them smile – there are plenty of reasons to take something home. In essence, there’s always a reward they’re seeking through this behavior. Sometimes, it’s attention, other times power, and other times reassurance they want to get out of it. Buying is an excellent excuse to talk to another human being that will treat them well. It’s a self-soothing strategy.

It’s because they are fragile and emotional dependent on external factors that they often already have some form of additional pathology.

Hoarding, or should I say “lack thereof”, is easily associated to anxiety just like in any drug or gambling addiction; also, depression seems simple to figure as a complement since hoarding is a form of self-sabotage, and giving up on romantic relationships; another, that is also a given on more chaotic hoarder types, is ADHD, since it’s easily understandable how difficulty finishing tasks or focusing attention on one thing or another for long could lead to hoarding all kinds of random objects; also, the most interesting one is NPD, this one shares a lot of similarities with the hoarding pathology, and I could go so far as to wonder whether the same problematics are also present here; to finish this it’s indespensible to point to the most obvious of them all which is OCD, this one is the crux of the emotionality tied to their intense need to not abandon any of their objects.

I could expand on each and every comorbidity, but it’s much more pressing to explain why hoarding shares so much with the narcissistic world view. NPD is based on a false-self that is concocted as a self-defense mechanism to prevent vulnerability. But in the process of building defenses, the person also creates an internal world of 'objects' as mirror of the external world. Naturally, this projection is not a perfect copy of the world. But where does this match hoarding? Well, by creating an inner world of objects the narcissist interacts with them and becomes attatched to those internal illusions; further, because of this, the narcissist treats people like they’re objects (objectification) and this happens because they are not viewed as external entities but as shadows cast by the internal world of objects which is for all intents and purposes the narcissist himself. The narcissist identifies himself with his internal objects, which in turn makes him emotionally attached to the corresponding external entities which he objectifies. This is where hoarding matches perfectly: the emotional commitment (cathexis) to objects and the elevation of objects above people. It’s textbook narcissistic world view.

Narcissism functions as a form of ‘black hole’ with no center – a spiral if you will – where everything swirls and gets pulled in and in the end eaten. This is a practice of consumption. Hoarding feeds on whoever is caught within the ‘event horizon’.

For a deeper understanding of Narcissist predicament I would recommend professor Sam Vaknin’s YouTube channel.

So, as we can see hoarding is in perfect alignment and intersection with many of these personality disorders (I could even include codependent PD or borderline, although I can’t speak for the latter). Hoarding is, ironically, like a summation of this collection of pathological behaviors and disorders.

IQ note: Hoarding is usually, though not always, connected to depression, intellectual disability (having IQ levels 70 and below), borderline intelligence (IQ levels from 71 to 85), anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and obsessive compulsive disorder. Except for information hoarders that have a high IQ.

Usually, hoarding is described through five levels. They go from initial neglect in basic household maintenance shores, compulsive purchasing, inability to dispose of objects, and psychological attachment to them, to making the house totally unusable, making it a health hazard, possibly becoming a physical safety hazard, and completely neglecting even one's body's needs, as well as the extreme levels of clutter filling rooms, blocking entries, even being apparent outside.

The hoarding levels just give us a natural progression of the neglect, and extreme forms of the basic initial behaviors, compulsions, and addictions that characterize hoarding disorder.

They can also help you identify in what stage your hoarder parent is. But these are not fixed stages; you can have an extreme type of hoarding, say clothing, and not have dead animals, or some other chemical spillage; you can have a situation where a lot of mechanical, or electronic parts are hoarded, yet it's circumscribed to a garage or a workshop, and is not impeding basic self-maintenance activities. This is what's really relevant to understand. What matters is safety, health, whether the behaviors are restricting habits, whether they're impeding healthy relationships, and also whether they are impeding the actions the person needs to make to be financially independent.

If the hoard is impeding any of the necessary activities for mental health, and if it is creating dangerous conditions for health and safety, it's essential to pinpoint these problems and fix them.

Hoarding levels are useful to get a general idea, but they shouldn't be strict categories of the seriousness of the situation. Hoarders can be extreme in some regards and not on others. Hoarding doesn't require aggressive purchasing. A hoarder could be a kleptomaniac, or a 'garbage collector', or just someone that gets a lot of gifts, whether it be from their patients, or from clients, or even from advertising companies. There is no single recipe that coalesces in hoarding behavior. This is why I stress the relevance of using the 'hoarding levels' purely as a rough metric, but never losing sight of the importance of diagnosing the hoarder and his behavior for the hurdle it creates in their individual life and the individual lives of those around him.

We have to understand that hoarding affects CoHs differently. Some CoHs may not be much at home; they may even be well developed financially, or have a strong social life, having their life moving and planned out; while other CoHs may struggle a lot and require stable living conditions that they can use to their advantage. We can't use the same metric for any hoarder [behavior] and any CoH living there. A health hazard is much more pressing to a CoH that has allergies (skin, asthma, animal allergies, parasitical infections, etc), for example. Some people are more extroverted and never stay home, while others may be introverted and require their house in order for group projects or as a working environment for tutoring. Each person has their own needs and requirements, and it's how the interpersonal dynamic is affecting them that's relevant.

I was reluctant to even mention hoarding levels because they give a fixed metric, which in turn can give the wrong impression to some CoHs that their living conditions are not as problematic - leading them to a sense of guilt or dismissal of the seriousness of their living situation - which not only minimizes their struggle, but it also becomes a form of self-neglect, and learned helplessness, because the problems are dismissed at the get go, thus making it impossible to face them and fix them.