April 22, 2012
Don’t Touch My Stuff !!
Posted in Compulsive Hoarding, Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Hoarding, mental health tagged Angry, Anxiety, Attachment, Attachment Issues, Boundaries, Breaking boundaries, cleaning house, Compulsive Hoarding, Depression, DID / MPD, DID Survivors, Disaster Survivors, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Don't Touch My Stuff!, Emotional Freedom, emotional pain, Emotional Protection, Estate Sales, Flood Victims, Floods, Garage Sales, Hoarders, Hoarding, Hoarding on A&E, Hoarding: Buried Alive, Invasion of Boundaries, Isolation, Kathy Broady, Lack of privacy, letting go, Liquidation, Losing everything, Memories, Privacy, Professional Organizers, Remembering, selling your things, Stress, Throw out the trash, Tornado Survivors, Trauma Survivors, Violations at 6:16 pm by Kathy Broady
Through the years, some of the most popular articles of the Discussing Dissociation blog has been about compulsive hoarding: Compulsive Hoarding and Dissociative Disorders and Land of the Free?
I can’t explain their popularity on this blog, other than the way a rash of television programs have increased the awareness of the complications about hoarding. However, hoarding issues are typically accompanied by extreme anxiety, depression, isolation, family conflict, self-hatred, chaotic thinking, eating disorders and other problems also common with DID / MPD / trauma survivors. Many emotional struggles are certainly not limited to the Dissociative population. Hoarding is probably one of those disorders that the Dissociative community can potentially share with thousands of people more suited to other mental health communities.
It appears that hoarding is a much bigger issue than once officially recognized. As a social worker who has done many home visits over a span of 25 years, I can say that I have seen hoarding issues repeatedly and yes, in my experience, hoarding is a consistent theme within various mental health populations, including dissociative trauma survivors.
How do we address these issues?
Does the professional “helping” community understand the depths of what is involved?
Do the mental health professionals really know what is needed?
On the various Hoarders shows that I’ve watched on television (such as “Hoarders” on A&E, and “Hoarding: Buried Alive” on TLC), most of these processes are expected to be completed within a matter of a few short days. The interventions are quick, intense, and highly dramatic. The hoarders have obvious struggles, and the gains made in their homes and living situations are typically significant and impressive, even if only one or two rooms demonstrate the successful changes.
Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the groups of people that experience the anxiety, stress, distress, personal gains, relief, and emotional freedom from having professional organizers empty their houses. There are many groups of people, in addition to the hoarder community, that may require assistance in emptying or reducing the amount of items located within a specific property or home. These issues could surface in extremity, for example, after someone dies (especially when there is no one to inherit the stuff), or during a divorce settlement, or after a bankruptcy, or prior to moving to new home, or downsizing from a large home to a small home, or for any other reason people may decide to liquidate their possessions.
To me, just cleaning out a messy closet is a big job! Emptying, or organizing an entire property is an enormous job! It’s an overwhelmingly huge job.
Recently, I hired some professional sales assistants to help me to downsize / sell many of the items from my home / office in order to prepare for a new phase of my life. My children are grown up, and each has moved into their own homes as adults, giving me all kinds of options for what to do with the physical space that lives around me. I don’t particularly like the “empty nest” phrase, and yet for the first time in dozens of years, I have more freedom to do whatever I want to do, wherever I decide to do it. It’s exciting, and yet very weird feeling all at the same time. That’s all a long story, of course, and it has taken several months (years?!!) of hard work to sort through those kinds of things, including what to do with all the leftover “stuff” that everyone has grown out of.
I took weeks of time to pull out the cherished treasures I wanted to keep, and then left the rest for the organizers to pick through, and to present in the way they created a sale for the masses of people they invited to come dig through my things. As much as I thought I had already selected my most important items, it was never that easy, or that clear.
“Wait! Wait! Maybe I want to keep THAT afterall!”
Or, “Wait! Where did you find that? I didn’t SEE that before. Give me that back!”
Or another rough part was seeing my things just tossed in the trash. Can you believe that my favorite coffee cup ended up in the trash?!! My FAVORITE one! I thought I was going to have a melt down right then and there!
Breathe, Kathy, breathe!
Count to 10.
Ok, count to 100, lol.
The whole process was not anywhere near as fun as I had thought it might be.
In fact, it wasn’t fun at all.
It was really painful and horrible, to say the least.
And I chose to do it. It wasn’t forced upon me. It was MY IDEA. ( yeesh, lol).
This changing, transitional experience has been much more complicated and emotional than I ever expected it to be, giving me all kinds of fodder for blog articles, and a much deeper understanding of the intensity felt by hoarders as they go through their housing changes. Even though I had lots of time to prepare prior to my professional organizers arriving, and I was not forced into making these decisions in any way at all, I found myself having far more struggles, and feeling intense emotional turmoil, and frequently overwhelmed with memories (both good and bad) while sorting through the rooms of stuff. Wow. Yeeesh. Gee Whillakers! Jiminy Crickets!! It was a much more difficult experience than I would have ever imagined it would be.
One thing is for sure. For any television production company to expect to go through and toss away / give away 80 – 90 % of a hoarders belongings over a period of just a few days is just ridiculously cruel. Most people — especially those that tend to be collectors in the first place — are not ready to let go with that much finality that quickly, or that easily. There is no wonder the hoarders on the television shows have so many emotional outbursts – the whole process is set up exactly to create that kind of emotional conflict within them. I suppose that makes for interesting television, but it is not very kind to the hoarder.
My experience of working with professional organizers also reminded me of some of the stories I have heard over and over from many of my clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD). Let me ask you a few questions. Can you relate to any of these experiences?
As children or teenagers, or even as adults, have you felt violated when your parents or caregivers or family members rifled through your belongings without your permission to do so?
How invasive did it feel to have people touching your things when they were not invited to do so?
How powerless did you feel to see this, and to know you couldn’t stop it from happening?
How did this affect your personal boundaries?
How did it affect your ability to feel like something – anything – belonged to you, and to only you?
How did it affect your privacy, or lack of having any privacy?
When your boundaries were disrespected and exploited, what did you to do cope with the feelings you had?
With whatever trauma and / or neglect you experienced in your life, did you develop a greater attachment and emotional connection to physical items and personal items as a way to bond with something / anything? Or did the repeated violations leave you distanced and unattached to your personal items, able to easily walk off, staying coldly disconnected and apathetic to having anything of your own?
How would you feel if someone took your things from you? Or if someone threw your favorite items in the trash? Or if someone broke an item that you cherished? Would you have an anxiety attack? Would you be angry? Would you withdraw inside, crashing into depression? Would you find yourself switching from insider person to insider person?
Does it feel good and more under your own control to keep the amount of your personal belongings to a minimum? Does that feel safer for you, or does that feel like deprivation? Do you prefer to have bunches of things, feeling safer being surrounded by stuff? Does having layers of stuff feel like layers of protection?
How do victims of floods, fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes, or other natural disasters feel after suddenly losing all of their stuff? Even if they evacuated with a few things, how would it feel to lose so much, so quickly?
It is interesting to explore these questions with yourself. If you aren’t sure what some of the answers would be, try creating the situation, and let yourself experience it first hand. Experience having someone else / something else take your cherished items from you. Chances are, many of you reading this blog have already experienced these situations in your life. But if you haven’t experienced this, don’t judge other people’s reactions and their big feelings about having “house invaders” mess with their things. These experiences are a lot more difficult than you might have ever realized.
It certainly was for me.
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2012 Kathy Broady and Discussing Dissociation
Pilgrim said,
April 22, 2012 at 7:22 pm
We tried keeping a secret journal once. At home. Hid it under bunches of school stuff in a drawer.
it doesnt feel very good when we see something we gave somebody out in the trash. 
It had stuff in there about what he was doing to us. And about being scared of him.
One day we came home and the journal was in the trash.
They read it.
That made things very much worse for a long time
The only way to stay safe is to not write or talk about it. And make sure no one writes anything down. No evidence.
So i dont anymore. You never know what could happen.
And we only trust our T to touch our stuff. No one else.
Our mom throws out our old stuff without asking. She just does it. Even stuff we made for her
We collect pictures of people we love. We need to have our pictures everywhere. Otherwise the people dont be real.
Jodie
methinkstoo said,
April 22, 2012 at 9:09 pm
We keep stuff too. We keep stuff cause it comforts us tho we never use it. Maybe that’s hoarding? One time – well 2 times – well even more times … we moved. It really does break your heart to see your special stuff not so special to someone else. It hurt so bad we had to run away & quit watching if ANYTHING was ever gonna get gone. It was like major boundry busting when other people that we didn’t even know picked up our stuff – then didn’t buy it … or worse – threw it away. OMG Kathy! It’s terrible. Really Really Terrible. So sorry you havin to do this. But then you are like a turtle & your house fits nicely in your backpack & off you go – free from the junk.
And yes – we had all our personal stuff stolen … more than once by very mean & bad people. The kinda stuff you never get back. Your childhood. Your innocence. Your ability to trust. Yep – all that important stuff got taken away. Can’t talk about it now. Hurts too much. Then we lost it all again trying to get well from losing what was important to begin with. Is there ever an end to hurt & what’s lost? We just wanna live without lost for a bit. PS – Kathy – you are good at telling your story … all your stories. We like reading them. Thank You. 
maddie50 said,
April 22, 2012 at 11:59 pm
We used to keep lots of stuff. Lots of letters and books and random stuff – even bus tickets. We had two drawers stuffed with bus tickets. Don’t know why. We just did. Yhen one day we came home from school and all our stuff was gone and our room was gone and we were moved to another room and then we wouldn’t keep anything. Now we annot bear to buy and keep things. Our important things would fit in small shopping bag. Onnly thing we hoard is probably food now. We have empty nest too Kathy. kids grown up and left home. It’s lonely not fun. Like your stories too Kathy.
Pilgrim said,
April 23, 2012 at 6:53 am
I am a bit of a food hoarder. Always have food stashed away whether in my car or house or classroom or going shopping. I learned this from my grandparents, who grew up during the Depression and had to streal food from the neighbors garden so they could eat. Even in my classroom now i just refilled the snack bucket i have stashed in the cupboard. Makes me feel better that my class always has something to eat.
Also used to have tons of containers. We had to keep everything in a box or plastic container. We even had containers for our containers. Oddly enough after we started therapy we lost the need to have containers and dont have very many anymore.
We also keep quite a bit of our childhood toys but mostly because the inside kids still play with them.
Caroline
kiyacat said,
April 23, 2012 at 10:21 pm
We too keep pictures or people aren’t real. just had to say good bye to our really good physical therapist and now she isn’t real cuz we have nothing of her.
Here’s the other’s post:
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD). Let me ask you a few questions. Can you relate to any of these experiences?
As children or teenagers, or even as adults, have you felt violated when your parents or caregivers or family members rifled through your belongings without your permission to do so?
YES! I even lived with mom as an adult and never felt safe with my stuff. She’d always ask “what is this, where’d you get that, can i see… i just want to look at it…” and pick stuff up without permission. In fact, part of my own mini-hoarding was so the place was trashed so she couldn’t just walk through without breaking her neck. Otherwise she’d go in and open my window, read my letters, go through my desk… At 26 I had to teach her (per my therapist’s instructions) to KNOCK before coming in -she still came in though. Needless to say, when I was just hospitalized 2 weeks ago and they sent us all to group THEN said they were going through our rooms, I had a total panic attack.
How did this affect your personal boundaries?
I felt like I was nothing; i had no boundaries, wasn’t allowed to. Mom was a real person, but I was not. She was allowed to have space, I was not.
When your boundaries were disrespected and exploited, what did you to do cope with the feelings you had?
Nothing because I wasn’t allowed to have feelings, either. I had to stuff all my anger and upsetness or there would be a HUGE fight and I would have to close (god forbid) and lock my bedroom door and she’d be on the other side pounding and threatening to call the police. I always hoped she would so they’d see I was stuck with a crazy woman and get her some help. Well, help me in the process.
With whatever trauma and / or neglect you experienced in your life, did you develop a greater attachment and emotional connection to physical items and personal items as a way to bond with something / anything?
Yep. I have tons of stuff. Especially stuffed animals. They don’t hurt you. Books, too. They’re my friends. They don’t leave or hit me or anything. And I can always ‘go somewhere else’ with them. We day dream and read and no longer have to be in that space or even in that body. I love my stuff. I have a terrible time parting with my stuff. Last year my apartment flooded and when I walked in to all that water, my stomach hit my feet. MY STUFF!!! I thought it would all be ruined. Thankfully very little was hurt, all the water was contained to one side of one room.
How would you feel if someone took your things from you?
As a kid, we moved a lot. What didn’t fit on the truck, didn’t go. I learned this the hard way. :’( I’d get angry and upset, then hit for my emotions, so then we’d swap alters of course, to deal with it all. The loss, the mean parents. The unfairness of it all. You know, as much stuff as I acquire, i can still remember every item i have lost (but I couldn’t tell you everything I own). Sad, isn’t it?
Does it feel good and more under your own control to keep the amount of your personal belongings to a minimum? Does that feel safer for you, or does that feel like deprivation? Do you prefer to have bunches of things, feeling safer being surrounded by stuff? Does having layers of stuff feel like layers of protection?
I’ve always felt safer surrounded by stuff. Later, it occurred to me that, with my bed surrounded by walls of stuff, no one could get to me again. Mind, no one had since I was 12, but the rationale isn’t there until much, much later. Now that I live in my own place, I don’t have to live so cluttered for safety. While I was in the hospital at first our inside kids were upset that there was only one picture on the blank walls. My little put up some she colored or had done in art therapy later. But now that we’re home, our room really does seem cluttered – the walls are covered in art because one really bad time in the past there was nothing but blank walls because we were selling the place. She swore then to never again have a bare wall (the things we think will keep us safe). I’m starting to think I could use a little Zen. But, can I take them down??? Put things away??? PART WITH THEM????
How do victims of floods, fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes, or other natural disasters feel after suddenly losing all of their stuff? Even if they evacuated with a few things, how would it feel to lose so much, so quickly?
I’ve thought about that question, in regards to my own stuff, a LOT over the years. Would I have time to grab things? What would I take? Could I rescue all my treasured items before fire got to them? What might survive an earthquake?? These things keep me awake nights.
Kiyacat
Pilgrim said,
April 24, 2012 at 7:14 am
We dont like to get rid of books.
We have bout a milyon of them.
We got a bunch of our books from when we did be little. And we by books alot
In 1 room the offise we got 2 giant shelfs and the books are piled all up. And bout 100 books on our Kindle.
Wendy
lillielle said,
May 9, 2012 at 11:51 pm
We have a lot of stuff around. It feels safer to have the room messy, to make sure that no one can get to us. Even though the chances of anyone trying now are pretty slim. We still have to hide behind things. We collect penguins and books and other stuffed animals. They feel “safe.” They are safe things. If I lived on my own, I would probably want to create a maze in my room so nobody could get to me unless they knew the way. Always had to hide personal things and keep things safe, don’t write things down or write them in code, code is good…
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