The Charm of Dribbling Orange Gloop

Via the Children of Hoarders Facebook Page, I came across a sweet little story about a daughter of a hoarder who found an unexpected obstacle blocking her efforts to be a good mother to her own baby daughter. Her story is a great example of the challenges that many children of hoarders face when trying to build normal, happy lives for themselves and their families. Be sure to check out "A Hoarder’s Daughter Yields to a (Little) Mess" in The New York Times!

PS. The author, Judy Batalion, also wrote an interesting story in Slate about finding romance with another child of a hoarder. The punch line: "after three decades, I had finally found someone I could bring home."

More COH-Oriented Research

I recently heard from Jennifer Park, M.A., that she is performing research into the "Impact of Hoarding on Parent-Adult Child Relationships and Family Functioning" as part of her doctoral dissertation in Psychology at the University of South Florida under the supervision of Professor Eric A. Storch.
As I write this post, she is trying to recruit up to five hundred adult children of hoarders to complete a confidential, anonymous online survey focusing on (1) parent/caretaker’s hoarding behaviors, (2) relationships within the family and with the hoarding parent/caretaker, and (3) impairment associated with the hoarding behaviors.

If you are interested in participating in Ms. Park's research, please visit http://bit.ly/YFAChn for more information and for access to the online questionnaire. Thanks!

UPDATE: The research survey has been completed.

On Point on Perfectionism

On Point®, Trustees of Boston University. 

Many children of hoarders report that their hoarder parents display extreme perfectionism, at least in certain aspects of their lives. In my own family, this is very much the case. My mother was an extreme hoarder, and she was also an extreme perfectionist. For example, she would often have an internal vision of how a room "should" look or how a repair "should" be done, and I think that contributed significantly to her hoarding. She might start to organize a room, but if she didn't have "enough" time, she'd get anxious, stop, and put it off, waiting for a day (that never came) when she would have the time to get the room "just right." There was no such thing as "tidying up" in my childhood home: it was either, "we'll get to it later," or "Stop everything! We have to spend the next three days doing nothing except getting this room organized if we're going to be able to get the furnace fixed!" Of course, we generally never came close to getting the room organized, and any progress that might have been made would rapidly succumb to the laws of entropy.

With that as a preamble, I learned via twitter that Professor Amy Przeworski and psychologist Thomas S. Greenspon recently discussed "The Science and Psychology of Perfectionism" on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook. While the potential role of perfectionism in hoarding was not discussed, the segment was very interesting and engaging. If you're interested in understanding perfectionism a little better, the segment is worth a listen.

PS. You can also download the NPR segment as a 22 MB MP3 file suitable for listening via iPod, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.

PPS. Not long ago, Professor Przeworski also blogged about perfectionism over at Psychology Today.

HuffPo on Hoarding's Harsh Reality

On October 8, 2012, HuffPost Live, the new video streaming network from The Huffington Post, produced a segment on "Hoarding's Harsh Reality." Hosted by Alicia Menendez, the segment featured Frances Boudreaux (author and daughter of a hoarder), Sidney Patrick (blogger and advocate for children of hoarders), and Randy O. Frost (professor of psychology and hoarding researcher).

While the segment began with a general description of hoarding as a disorder, most of the discussion centered around the impact of hoarding on families and children. I think many children of hoarders will find both Ms. Boudreaux and Ms. Patrick to be refreshing and empowering voices. They really did a terrific job of conveying the challenges faced by children of hoarders and other family members.

Other children of hoarders contributed interesting thoughts in the segment's comments section, but, as is typical for internet comment sections, one or two miscreants shared their ignorance, showing that much more work needs to be done to increase awareness of the impact of hoarding on families.

To see the segment, visit "Hoarding's Harsh Reality."

PS. You can buy Frances Boudreaux's book, Where the Sun Don't Shine and the Shadows Don't Play, through Amazon and other booksellers, and you can read Sidney Patrick's blog at My Mother In Law is Still Sitting Between Us.

COH Brochure

There is a house in my neighborhood that is an obvious hoard house.

Now and then, I see a girl, probably around thirteen years old, riding a Razor® scooter up and down the driveway, over and over. I've never seen her ride it on the sidewalk or in the street. She always has such a forlorn look on her face.

I haven't stopped to say hello to her (cue visions of breathless reports on the evening news about a 40-something year old stranger approaching a 13 year old girl in her driveway), but every time I see her, I want to tell her that she isn't alone and that things can get better.

I think I'm going to print out a Children Of Hoarders, Inc. flyer (downloadable as a 470 kB PDF file) and put it in the family's mailbox. Better yet, I should just print up a few to carry in my car, and when I see a kid in such a situation, I shouldn't be afraid to get out of the car, hand a flyer to the kid, and tell them that they are not alone.

Then again, the flyer is written more for an adult than for a teenager. Thoughts?

Click on image to download 470 kB PDF version of COH flyer.

Dust Bunnies

©iStockphoto.com/TheCrimsonMonkey.

I'm guessing that if I ever sign up for an online dating site, this line won't exactly reel 'em in:

"I'm in my forties, I'm fairly accomplished, and, deep inside, I still struggle with feeling like I'm worth less than a dust bunny."

There. I said it.

Tonight, I found myself writing the "dust bunny" sentence in response to a remark someone made about the deep, lasting impact of growing up in an environment where parents appear to value stuff—even stuff that belongs in a biohazard container—more than they value the psychological and physical needs of their children.

I know that I am worth more than a dust bunny.

I just don't always believe it.

After all, I spent just under half of my life surrounded by evidence that I wasn't.

A big part of the struggle is recognizing that the scar is real, that it is significant, and that I am not being a weak, whiny little kid by acknowledging that the sustained conditions of my first eighteen or so years will naturally echo across the decades.

At the same time, a part of me tells me that I'm in my forties, and it's weak and whiny to blame things that happened more than twenty years ago for how I feel today.

Meanwhile, another part of me insists that I grew up surrounded by cobwebs and cat feces, and that I have a hell of a lot of nerve to think that I deserve better than that. If there is anything truly evil in my life, it is that voice, and I speak with it every day.

PS. Before anyone gets too concerned about schizophrenia, I don't actually "hear voices," or anything like that. I just tend to have melodramatic internal dialogues. :)

A Christmas Conflagration

I'm always excited to hear that another child of a hoarder has started to blog, but I was downright giddy to learn that a friend, Lisabeth Grey, has started blogging over at Not My Hoarding Mother. To welcome Ms. Grey to the blogosphere, another friend of mine, Sidney, from the fabulous My Mother-in-Law is Still Sitting Between Us blog, and I are both featuring excerpts from Not My Hoarding Mother on our blogs this week.

Over at Sidney's blog, you can read the tale of "The Derecho and the Elderly Hoarder." (A "derecho" is a powerful, straight-line wind storm that can leave as much damage in its wake as a tornado.) Here, I'm happy to share Lisabeth's all-too-true story about a fire at a hoarder's neighbor's house (as opposed to the more typical fire at a hoarder's house). The setting is Christmas Eve, but instead of calling the story A Christmas Carol, let's call this, "A Christmas Conflagration."

Without further adieu, I yield the soapbox to Ms. Lisabeth Grey:

I called [my hoarding mother] the evening of Christmas Day (which is her birthday as well) to wish her a Merry Xmas and Happy Birthday. She received my cards, and our conversation was normal for us. A little background... I took the geographical solution after high school, and since moving out of state in 1999, I have only been home two times, and to the same town maybe three times. Our contact is now limited to phone for my self preservation. Anyway, I hear this loud pounding noise [through the phone] and she whispers, "Did you hear that? What is that?"

Like I know!?!?

Long story short, it is her neighbors, trying to kick her front door in, since her next door neighbor's house is on fire, vehicle gas tanks are exploding, ammunition is going off, and her grass is on fire. Now, her property has had no mowing for months, no raking, and her fence is locked, double storms over the windows, the water hose is shut off from inside, and she disconnected the doorbell because it scares the cats—11 nearly feral cats inside—and the front door is completely blocked off, goat paths only and stuff piled at least waist high to ceiling high EVERYWHERE. The neighbors are stomping fire in the yard, throwing stuff on her roof to put out burning leaves, and desperately trying to get her attention and get her out.

She opens the side door and sees the neighbors house, and I can hear her reaction, and she finally tells me what is happening. I tell her to "Call 9-1-1! NOW! NOW! NOW!", to turn on the water hose, and then I hang up. She lives in a rural Appalachia, no fire hydrants, on a dirt road, etc. The closest fire stations are four miles and seven miles respectively. The Cliff's Notes on the situation: the folks next door had just sat down to holiday dinner when the homeowner heard something, opened the garage door, and saw fire. He got his wife, two daughters, and three grandkids out. Barefoot, no purses, no wallets, they lost all vehicles, including those in the driveway... And the house is a total loss. Burnt flat. Several houses nearby have fire/heat damage, and the grass in my mother's yard is burned within ten feet of her house. She has siding and roof damage, but her roof was already trashed from hail a few months ago...that she has been delaying repairing.

In the two days since... This is where my angst comes in...

1. It has become all about HER and her INCONVENIENCE of it all, and her fear and drama
2. She is obsessing on it, yet does not acknowledge the level of danger that was incurred by her HOARDING and paranoia
3. She is now firmly ensconced in the museum of petty grudges, as she and the neighbors who lost their home have not spoken for nearly 40 years (and guess who initiated THAT???)

I have posted on my FB about it, and when I find out who is collecting for her neighbors, I plan to send a donation and post that too since many of my FB friends are in that area. My HP is against this and has:

• pointed out they don't speak and it was their fault
• criticized their child rearing
• criticized the woman's decision to be a stay at home mom
• criticized the woman's pride in her yard
• criticized the woman's choice to color her hair at 60 something years old
• pointedly stated that they did not contribute to the flower collection for my father when he passed in 1989 (she nastily, and in the most ugly way ever, REFUSED IT anyway!)

The list goes on and on. I informed her that none of that matters, and they could be the worst people ever, but they LOST EVERYTHING, and I am doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Now in every conversation, I can almost hear her mind working, trying to figure out how to control my donating cash to them.

My heart breaks for the neighbors' family. They raised their kids and are helping raise their grandchildren. Just nice folks.

Narcissism sucks. Hoarding sucks. And I am flatly just sick of it.

—Excerpted (with minor edits) from "My Worst Fear Was Almost A Reality", by Lisabeth Grey.

Thanks for sharing your story, Lisabeth, and welcome to the blogosphere!

I hope that all of my readers will pay Lisabeth a visit at Not My Hoarding Mother, and I invite any other COH bloggers to get in touch with me if they would like to be a guest author here at my little corner of the neighborhood.