Sweet Potatoes, Narcissism, and Parents Who Hoard

"Sweet Potatoes, Narcissism, and Parents Who Hoard." That sounds like the title of an academic paper, no?

In my previous post, I described a ritual that took place at almost all of my childhood family's holiday dinners: my mom would insist that I loved something that she had repeatedly been told (by me and others) that I had always disliked.

A friend of mine from ChildrenOfHoarders.com read my post, and she forwarded a quote to me from a page about parents with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) :

Narcissistic Parents must be in control. No matter what. A Narcissistic Parent controls his or her children by dictating how these children should feel, should act, and the decisions to be made. This can lead to adult children of Narcissistic Parents being unsure of what they, themselves, like and want out of life. These Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents never learn to be autonomous and make his or her own decisions.

I've heard other children of hoarders discussing the possibility of hoarding being intertwined with NPD, at least in some cases. I recognized that there might be some validity to their assertions, but I hadn't given it a lot of thought. Along comes the quote mentioned above, and I feel like I've been hit on the head with a Clue-by-Four!

While I am definitely autonomous (perhaps to a fault) and can make my own decisions, the rest of that paragraph is right on target, both in terms of how my mom behaved and the question of knowing what I want out of my own life. I used to think I knew what I liked and what I wanted, but I've come to realize how much of "me" has been about fulfilling other people's expectations of those things, rather than developing my own expectations.

Since realizing this (probably only around a year ago), discovering what I "like and want out of life" has been my greatest objective and my greatest challenge. I wish that I could say that I feel like I have been making progress. I think it would be more accurate to say that I have been, and continue to be, developmentally disabled in this area. I'm in my forties.

Anyway, the article that my friend sent to me, the somewhat awkwardly titled "Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents Resources", is well worth reading. I think that around 90% of it is directly applicable to the dynamics in my family.

Mom was a hoarder, and she almost certainly suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She wasn't the only one who suffered.

Hey, Sweet Potato!

(The following is adapted from a post I made earlier today on the Children of Hoarders Yahoo! support group. The context was a comment about parents thinking they know more about their kids than their kids know about themselves. Sure, in some respects, that's true, but in other respects? Well, read on...)

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Holiday dinners were the only time that we would have sweet potatoes when I was a kid. My sisters liked them, and when we grew up and started having holiday dinners at my sisters' houses, sweet potatoes stayed on the menu.

At every such dinner, the sweet potatoes would be passed around the table, they would reach me, and I would politely pass the bowl to the next person without taking any sweet potatoes for myself.

I don't like sweet potatoes.

I don't actually hate sweet potatoes, but they are pretty darned close to the bottom of the list of foods that I am willing to eat. Starvation situations only. Zombie attacks. Nuclear winter. Your basic apocalypses. Like I said, it's not really hate.

Every time, every year, my mom (who was a severe hoarder) would be upset that I did not take any sweet potatoes. More than upset; shocked and stunned, really.

Mom: "But Joe! You love sweet potatoes!"
Joe: "No. I don't like sweet potatoes."
Mom: "But you always eat them!"
Joe: "I don't remember ever liking sweet potatoes, and I don't 'always' eat them. We go through this every year. We've done this for at least thirty years. I might have had a spoonful of them once in the past, just to humor you, but I do not like sweet potatoes."
Mom (with feeling!): "You're terrible!"
Sisters: "Really, mom? Do we have to start this again?"
Mom: "I don't know what's wrong with you people!"

This wasn't some fun little tradition that families joke about. Mom was serious about this. Sometimes the sweet potatoes would be the start of the holiday arguments; sometimes they were just a preamble. (I didn't hate sweet potatoes, but I did learn to hate holidays. Holidays were a time for drama in my family. I'm more of a comedian. A topic for another day, I think.)

I know, I know. You're asking, "Why not just skip serving sweet potatoes entirely? Just serve something else!" We tried that one year, and my mom thought we were just terrible for doing so. "Everyone has sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving! It's not Thanksgiving without sweet potatoes!"

The thing is, mom was an extremely intelligent woman with an amazing memory. I really think that she wasn't kidding: she deeply and truly believed that I loved sweet potatoes and that I had loved them throughout my entire life. It's as though she simply refused to let any evidence to the contrary take root her brain, since she knew that I loved sweet potatoes. I think she finally started to accept the truth around the time I turned 40.

I don't know how much (if any) of my mom's fixation on her son's very special relationship with sweet potatoes might have been tied to cognitive patterns related to her hoarding behavior, how much might have been related to some other psychological issue, or how much was a simple exaggeration of any parent's mistaken memory of their child. What I do know is that once an idea became planted in my mom's mind, it was almost impossible to dislodge it, no matter the evidence against it.

I realize that the sweet potato story sounds like, well, small potatoes, and it's possible that it has nothing to do with hoarding behavior. Nonetheless, countless stories like those, over issues large and small, day after day, presented a major challenge in the relationships between my mother and her family.

Update: Shortly after writing this post, a friend sent me a quote from an article about Narcissistic Personality Disorder that might relate to my mom's focus on my relationship with sweet potatoes. I wrote a new blog post to explore that subject: "Sweet Potatoes, Narcissism, and Parents Who Hoard".

Fault

Few things have made a bigger difference in my life than discovering the Children of Hoarders support group over at Yahoo! groups. I joined the group in March 2006, and a few days later, a fellow who uses the pen name, "norse", also joined. Although he called himself the "class clown" of the COH group, norse was known as much for his profound insights and his capacity to support other children of hoarders as he was known for his good humor. He took a little vacation from the group a couple of years ago, but he is back now, and he is posting up a storm.

Norse's return seems like a good time to revisit something he said almost exactly six years ago, a comforting message that has been included in the footer of every message sent to the Yahoo group for the past few years, something that became an important part of the story of Children of Hoarders Inc. ever since. Here it is:

Our parents' living conditions never were, are not now, and never will be our fault. We don't bear any responsibility for this. We don't need to carry any guilt for it. 

~norse, July 18, 2006

(Note: Messages and content posted to the Children of Hoarders Yahoo! group are confidential. Norse was kind enough to grant permission to Children of Hoarders Inc. and others to use his quote outside of the Yahoo! group.)

Nice Children Stolen from Car

Awesome news! My friend and fellow child of a hoarder, Barbara Allen, author of the Nice Children Stolen from Car blog, has written a book with the same title, and it is now available from Amazon!

Here's a little blurb from Amazon's book description:

Humorous yet heart-wrenching, Barbara Allen's memoir, "Nice Children Stolen From Car," tells the story of her teenage years in the chaotic household of her father, a compulsive hoarder. Through a series of stand-alone vignettes, Allen shares, from a young adult perspective, what it was like for her and her siblings to be raised in a house where nothing was ever thrown away, where no visitors were welcome, where basic necessities like food and running water were not always available. Excerpts from Allen's book have been posted on her blog by the same name and have generated a number of responses like this one: "[Allen] has a true gift... the stories and style remind me a bit of Augusten Burroughs' work..."

Barbara is as wonderful and witty as they come, and I hope that you will consider buying her book!

Update: Now there is a Kindle version of Barbara's book, too!

Siblings: Foster Children and Children of Hoarders?

I've been a fan of David Hoffman's documentaries for a few years, and he recently did a series of short interviews with foster children for the city of Santa Cruz. While being a foster child and being a COH are obviously different experiences, I was struck by the similarities in the language used in this interview with the language used by many COH to describe their own experiences.

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!