Hello, Edinburgh!

It has been pretty exciting to watch the number of hoarding-related support groups, task forces, and other resources go from roughly zero to, well, a bunch, over the past few years. Many of them are mentioned at places like the Children of Hoarders Inc. site and at the International Exchange on Hoarding. My own blog has been around since the summer of 2006, and I still get excited whenever I find out that someone likes something I've written, particularly when that someone is an ocean away.

A friend of mine just forwarded to me the March 2012 newsletter (815 KB PDF file) from the Compulsive Hoarding Action Group Edinburgh, a “self-help support group for individuals suffering from compulsive hoarding”, and I was absolutely tickled to learn that someone in that great city mentioned my blog:

“Hoarder’s Son” blog – hoarding from a relative’s perspective
This month we discovered a blog written by Joe, the son of a compulsive hoarder. On his site, Joe shares his personal experiences, as well as providing links to blogs written by other children of compulsive hoarders, and general hoarding information. Readers are welcome to comment on blog posts and offer support and advice to other users. “Hoarder’s Son”, and the other blogs linked provide a poignant first-hand view of life with a compulsive hoarder, and display a profound understanding of a much misunderstood problem. You can find the blog at http://hoardersson.blogspot.com/ .

Thank you for those very kind words!

The CHAnGE website has links to a range of support resources, presentations, videos, etc., and, quite aside from mentioning my blog, their newsletters have lots of good information about the latest hoarding research, interviews with support specialists, etc. You can also find CHAnGE on Facebook and twitter. I encourage all of my readers to have a look!

Note: CHAnGE’s March newsletter is not online yet; I'll share the link when it becomes available.
Update: DONE! http://www.changehoarding.org/change_newsletter_mar_2012.pdf

Secret Dragon Hoard

A new addition to the blogroll: The Secret Dragon Hoard.

From the "About Me" section of the blog:

In the middle of everything including an unholy mess. Mid thirties. Depressed. Living with my mother. Who is a major hoarder. This blog is here to document my attempts to CLEAN SHIT UP. And gently try and encourage my mother to try and do the same before we are buried in here.

Stay strong! You are not alone!

San Diego TV Interview: Children of Hoarders

Via Sidney at My Mother In Law Is Still Sitting Between Us comes word that two adult children of hoarders were recently interviewed for an NBC San Diego Special Report segment. Great job, Greg and Alison!

Lessons Learned by a Child of a Hoarder

Recently, one of the members of the Friends and Families of Hoarders and Clutterers group on Yahoo! wrote a truly spectacular note about what she had learned over the years about hoarding, getting help for a hoarder, and the impact of hoarding on the hoarder’s family and friends. It was as fine of a summary of the experiences of many children of hoarders as anything I have ever seen. I wish I had been able to read something like this twenty years ago.

The note, written in memory of the author’s mother, deserves a wide audience. With the author’s kind permission, it’s my privilege to share it here:

Hi, Everybody,

My mom passed away last month at age 87. She’d been having a lot of pain that was hard to manage, advancing dementia, etc. and it was her time and her passing was a blessing, but still, I miss her so much. She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She always thought the best of people; saw the good in them.

I want to share what I feel that I have learned through this group over the years. This is my own personal slant, garnered from years of personal experience and years of reading other people’s posts.

1. Hoarding is a brain disorder. Loved ones cannot change it. It isn’t merely a behavior; there is something wrong with the brain. We can’t expect hoarders to simply change their behavior, but we can and should expect them to seek the help that they need to make serious changes. There are treatment options, but the hoarder has to want to be treated. It is exceedingly rare for a hoarder to want treatment or to be willing to change.

2. Hoarding is a disorder, not a character defect. The hoarder can’t help it, there is something wrong with their brain and it is simply impossible for them to make well-reasoned decisions. However, character does play an important role. In order to make changes, the hoarder has to have the fortitude of character to admit that they have a problem, feel remorse about how their problem is affecting others, and earnestly seek change.

3. Don’t assume that medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, Child Protective Services, Adult Protective Services, or other professionals truly understand this disorder or that they can or will take appropriate action to protect vulnerable children, elders, or adults or the hoarder him or herself. Hoarding is a disease or disorder that is in the early stages of research and effective treatment. Treatment/help is available, but you have to do your own research or reach out to this group or others like it and find a professional that truly understands that this is a disorder and not simply a character defect.

4. Protecting the children is the #1 priority. Over the years, many, many survivor/victims of childhood hoarding households have written in to tell how the hoarding has negatively and permanently damaged them. Also, children live what they learn, and many children who grow up in hoarding households grow up to be hoarders themselves. It is very important to find a knowledgeable professional that is willing to help the non-hoarding parent to ease the children into a healthy living situation, while maintaining regular or intermittent contact with the hoarding parent, if possible.

5. People who love the hoarder have to realize that it is nothing personal, but for every true hoarder the hoard will always be #1. You can’t live with a hoarder and be a happy person unless you are willing to consciously and willingly accept that you will always be #2. The hoarder’s children will always be #2 as well, even if #1—the hoard—is exceedingly unhealthy and physically and emotionally damaging to the children. Even if you, the loved one, had the looks of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, and the charms of the most amazing TV cook/crafter/housekeeper/handyman, etc., the hoarder would still make you #2 and the hoard would be #1. If forced to choose between you and the hoard, or their child and the hoard, they will always choose the hoard. I think that for many of them, if they were forced to give up the hoard or die, they would choose death. Indeed, sometimes hoarders are killed by their hoards, literally being crushed under a mound of useless stuff, and this after years of warnings. If your loved one is a hoarder and you think that he or she is different, then you simply haven’t come the full cycle yet.

6. Loving a hoarder is much like loving an alcoholic. The principles of Al-Anon are very helpful and applicable to the hoarder-lover. The principles of codependency are 100% applicable. In trying to find healthy ways for us and our children to live, we would do well to turn to the writings of Al-Anon and various on-line and library resources from alcohol and drug treatment groups that offer information to family members on how to draw boundaries with love.

7. In order to get healthy, friends and family of hoarders have to be brave. We should be loving, but draw lines in the sand and declare that there are certain unhealthy living choices that we simply will not tolerate. When we do this, we have to be willing and able to stand behind the threat. Sometimes, the hoarder will refuse to get treatment, or to make healthy changes. This means that we may have to leave them in order to find a healthy life for ourselves and/or our children. We may lose everything and have to start all over from scratch.

I want to thank all of you for being my support in these last years as we moved mom out of my parents’ home of 50+ years, moved her into independent living and then into assisted living. Fortunately, she’d been a clean hoarder; in fact, she had a little touch of germ phobia. As her dementia progressed, we were able to exercise more and more control over her life. We managed to move her into an independent living apartment with the promise that she could move back to her home (and her hoard) if she felt that she needed to. Interestingly, this transition was made easier for her because being free of all of that junk and starting out in a clean, tidy apartment was very comfortable and liberating for her. She lived only a block or so away from a dollar store, but as her dementia progressed, one of us would take her downstairs to the dining room while the other daughter did a quick purge of junk from her apartment. Her dementia saved us—she didn’t seem to notice that her precious things were missing. After about a year, we three daughters spent nearly every weekend over a whole summer emptying out her house, and then we finally were able to sell it.

This group helped me so much as we processed the emotional impact of her hoarding. Before dementia set in and we were able to take some control, there were many years of hurt as she consistently chose the hoard over us, her family. In fact, she never really developed a relationship with my now teenage daughter, her last grandchild, because of the hoarding. She’d become so annoyed and afraid that I’d try to get rid of one or more things when I came over that she essentially forbid me from entering her house—politely, always with an excuse. She didn’t want to drive the 40 miles to my home, and I think that her increasing isolation was part of the hoarding behavior, too. I couldn’t go visit her and she wouldn’t come visit me and my family. We’ll never be able to reclaim those lost years, but it helps me enormously to have had this group, which has helped me over the years to understand that it wasn’t that her love for me or my daughter had lessened, but that her love for her stuff just continued to grow and grow, that it was a sort of brain disorder and a disease, and at some point it just overtook her and crowded everything else out of her life.

—Jeanne

Thank you so much for writing this, Jeanne, and thank you for letting me republish it here. I am sure that it will help many people to gain a better understanding of hoarding and the impact of hoarding on the friends and families of hoarders. Please accept my condolences on your mother’s passing.

The Slumber Party We Never Had

Check out a new blog by my new friend (sibling?), The Hoarder's Daughter!

Tracy's Story

A bit of COH history: one of the people mentioned in the recent New York Times article about children of hoarders, Tracy Schroeder, had a galvanizing impact on the Children of Hoarders community.

She shared her heart wrenching story about her mother's death in squalor in the private COH Yahoo Group, and she was kind (and courageous) enough to allow her story to be republished for everyone to read at the COH website. She also was interviewed on television for a local news program.

While my own mother survived her health crisis, it was a very close call, and my story very easily could have been the same as Tracy's story. Unfortunately, many children of hoarders have similar stories to tell.

Some Comments on the New York Times Article

In addition to the New York Times article that I mentioned earlier, its comment thread is rather interesting and worth a look. I chimed in as follows:

While much of the focus is properly on finding ways to treat hoarders themselves, there seems to have been very little attention paid to the treatment needs of the children of hoarders. Indeed, children of hoarders are often mentioned by professionals as being obstacles and problems, rather than as being people in their own right who are hurting and need support at least as much as the hoarders. From the Children of Hoarders website (childrenofhoarders.com), it is plain that many COH (myself included) have been raised in conditions of harrowing squalor, and such children often suffer from social isolation, social anxiety, poor self esteem, and many other issues that can last far into adulthood. Given that hoarders tend to be rather refractory to treatment, as well as the lengthy time typically required for treatment of hoarders, I'd really like to see clinicians and other professionals thinking more holistically about the entire family, particularly since, from a utilitarian perspective, family members may well be far more open to and benefit more from therapy and support than the hoarder is likely to benefit, at least in the short term. The short term is particularly important here, since, for a child of a hoarder, the short term may well encompass critical development periods such as early childhood, adolescence, etc.

Dr. Randy Frost, the co-author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things", responded to my comment as follows:

You raise a great point. Most of the research has focused on the people who hoard and not on family members. We've done one study of family members and have another under way, but virtually nothing has been done on developing treatments or support groups for them. I believe this will happen. There is such a great deal of research on hoarding now that it is only a matter of time.

Someday...