I’m extremely wound up with anxiety today. I’d planned to spend time with the in-law side of my family this afternoon but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m sad about this. I slept poorly last night. I’m worrying about money. Nearly 75% of my personal income is spent on medically related necessities; the economic challenges created by this can feel overwhelming. The combination of financial concerns along with my chaotic living environment is agonizing at times.
Right now, I’m watching “Hoarding: Buried Alive” on A&E Television. Even though the show agitates me, I feel as if watching it throws my own problem in my face and forces me to confront my own issues. Although I don’t hoard to the extent that some of the people featured on the show do, I can still totally relate to their feelings, especially their frustration and feelings of being overwhelmed. One thing for sure is that people who want to help solve these hoarding problem aren’t always sensitive to the emotional aspect of hoarding. The “just do it” mentality doesn’t work with hoarders. It would be fabulous if we could just toss out an item if isn’t useful but the point our well-meaning helpers often don’t acknowledge is that we don’t do this easily and sometimes can’t do it emotionally. If tossing out things that aren’t useful was easy to do, then we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in.
Some of the words that describe how hoarders feel are these: frustrated, angry, ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated, confused, overwhelmed, exhausted, baffled, out-of-control, worthless, afraid, paranoid, miserable, hopeless, lonely, guilty, numb, enraged, lost, wounded, helpless, unhappy, sad, chaotic, depressed, grief-filled, loss-filled.
Geralin Thomas, a professional organizer and the founder of Metropolitan Organizing located in Cary, North Carolina, says hoarders are sometimes perfectionists and that trait contributes to the problem: “A lot of hoarders are perfectionists and have rigid beliefs about saving and discarding possessions. Decision making is often excruciating and time-consuming. It’s often less stressful to retain items and defer decisions until a later time thus perpetuating the hoarding problem.”
Another interesting observation is made by Randy Frost, Phd, a psychology professor at Smith College: “Many people who hoard feel that they must read everything, or nearly everything, in the paper and remember it in detail. If they feel they can’t do this, then saving the paper has to do, ever though they never go back to reread it. Most often what happens is that this task becomes so overwhelming that they don’t even bother to read the paper, they just keep it so they can read it later.”
I’m currently evaluating how perfectionism might play into my own struggles with the chaos in my home. ♦
Food for Thought
“The maxim “nothing avails but perfection” may be spelled P A R A L Y S I S” ~Winston Churchill
“Perfectionism is self abuse of the highest order” ~ Anne Wilson Schaef
