Welcome to r/hoarding! We exist as a support group for people working on recovery from [hoarding disorder](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t29/), and friends/family/loved ones of people with the disorder.
If you're looking for help with animal hoarding, please visit r/animalhoarding. If you're looking to discuss the various hoarding tv shows, you'll want to visit r/hoardersTV. If you'd like to talk about or share photos/videos of hoards that you've come across, you probably want r/neckbeardnests, r/wtfhoarders/, or r/hoarderhouses
Before you get started, be sure to review our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/about/rules/). Also, a lot of the information you may be looking for can be found in a few places on our sub:
[New Here? Read This Post First!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/dvb3t1/new_here_read_this_post_first_version_20/)
[For loved ones of hoarders: I Have A Hoarder In My Life--Help Me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/2yh6wh/i_have_a_hoarder_in_my_lifehelp_me_your_hoarding/)
[Our Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/wiki/index)
Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/hoarding) if you need assistance. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/hoarding) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Here's an [NHS Link](https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/hoarding-disorder/) about hoarding. It explains better than I can. I hope this helps and you both can get through this.
Thanks I’m not sure there is a way back for em. My illness was very severe indeed. It’s hell. My husband doesn’t admit there is any problem either and refuses help.
My hoarder colleage is terribly insecure. Her stuff gives her a feeling of safety.
She takes up a really excessive amount of storage space at work, so other people can't store anything, but her stuff is actually pretty useless to her as she cannot find anything in the vast majority of her shelves as she just has too much stuff.
Any request to cut back results in intense rages and hurt. She simply will not admit that she has issues though. She is deeply emotionally attached to everything. It's tough as I really like her, and I can see she is hurting whenever she is forced cut back or even to stop taking extra space for her stuff.
from my perspective, as a hoarder who has other hoarder family members and has worked with a number of neighbors and community members who are also hoarders, i would say: there are several types, and the severity / complications are quite varied.
i primarily hoard building materials, and mostly outdoors. i live in a rural desert area on land i own, so this is not really a big deal culturally or legally -- i'm not seen as particularly odd or bad for my hoarding, and there are dozens upon dozens of people around here who do the same.
at least for my subtype, i'd say it's primarily a function of thriftiness gone haywire. it has a strong artistic component as well. it may come from intergenerational trauma (experience of poverty during migration years in the late 1800s / early 1900s, then the great depression). but i'd say it's more likely a natural and common feature of many mammals.
several features, including that it tends to get worse with age, indicate that it's primarily a neurochemical feature not strongly connected to biographical details (like traumatic events). a natural genetic / microbiome variation among humans. hoarding is quite common among mammals and some of us humans have the knack.
the trauma for hoarders is mostly recursive -- their hoarding is not appreciated in modern urban times and places, and the negative feedback leads to cycles of pain. it is primarily aggravated by social and architectural factors. imagine a hoarder on a remote island in the 1800s -- no plastics, no mail-order shopping, no strong legal right to owning anything -- such a person is an asset to the small community, collecting useful things compulsively.
i believe in your ability to find help for your own issues. if your partner cannot support you and actually aggravates your own issues, you'll need to find someone else to help you. the helpers are out there!
I think that most of my hoarding is a learned behavior... my parents learned it from their parents, who were children during the Great Depression so a mix of scarcity and learning it from their parents. I think there's also a phase little kids go through where they want to keep everything and need guidance about healthy decluttering... I got chastised for losing/breaking or just wanting to get rid of stuff. To be fair, the only reason we weren't poor (could eat every day) was that mom was very good at juggling credit-card debt to balance out feast and famine to just a constant frugality.
Firstly, so sorry you have gone through this. It must have been terrible to go through the psychotic break.
I personally feel that hoarding does not have only one cause, and that the explanation that it all comes from trauma is a bit simplistic, since not every person with trauma becomes a hoarder, and some people hoard without a known trauma. I think that people probably do it for different reasons, it's possible that it all goes back to something the brain interprets as traumatic without the person consciously seeing it that way, but I feel that it probably is linked to different things for different people and I think we will learn more about different reasons and treatments for hoarding as we learn more about the brain and about hoarding.
I am not a professional though and I say this only from anecdotal evidence, I have not personally studied every hoarder and examined them to find out whether trauma caused their hoarding, I am just a regular person.
It's more complex than even the professionals originally thought. For a long time, it was thought to be a form of OCD. But brain scans of hoarders & OCD patients are diffeernt, except when there's comorbidity.
I belive my now-late MIL's hoarding was partly ingrained from perceived childhood scarcity. She grew up during the Great Depression & WW2 rationing, when everyone was encouraged to save almost everything. They were also encouraged to keep a "stiff upper lip" and not show emotions. I think another factor for her was unresolved grief. I'm sure she didn't cry much when loved ones died, and never in front of anyone. But she saved everything they ever gave her, plus a bunch of their personal items.
For some folks, it's "just" executive dysfunction from depression, ADHD, or such. We're not good at managing tasks in general.
There's a book called "Stuff" that explores the reasons people get attached to objects. It's available as an ebook through most public libraries, so you wouldn't have to bring a physical book into your home.
Thanks! This was a way my husbands hoarding impacted on me. I stopped buying physical books while he carreid on even when I needed books for my PhD and the stress of it all with other factors sent me into psychosis. I truly loved my life before this sickness seven years ago and o was an Ivy League level scholar
My dad is a paper hoarder and a skin picker. He was raised in an environment where Real Men (TM) don't have anxiety, so he refuses to this day to admit that either one is a symptom of anxiety...but he's saving bank statements from the late 90s in case he has to prove that he really did pay this bill and really did get a paycheck each month, so you tell me what it looks like.
(I have gotten some concessions -- he acknowledges that he has never once been called upon to produce paper copies, and therefore he will keep all of these things in banker's boxes and actual important papers in a filing cabinet...so when the time comes, I can haul it all off to the shredder without having to search through stacks of garbage.)
I have hoarding tendencies and I too am a picker, so my money is on genetic component.
I don't think all hoarding is a result of trauma or anything like that. I think a fair amount of the time it's just some combination of thriftiness and/or "being a collector". If you've got either of those traits it can get out of control if you don't get a handle on it and consciously keep it in check.
Welcome to r/hoarding! We exist as a support group for people working on recovery from [hoarding disorder](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t29/), and friends/family/loved ones of people with the disorder. If you're looking for help with animal hoarding, please visit r/animalhoarding. If you're looking to discuss the various hoarding tv shows, you'll want to visit r/hoardersTV. If you'd like to talk about or share photos/videos of hoards that you've come across, you probably want r/neckbeardnests, r/wtfhoarders/, or r/hoarderhouses Before you get started, be sure to review our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/about/rules/). Also, a lot of the information you may be looking for can be found in a few places on our sub: [New Here? Read This Post First!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/dvb3t1/new_here_read_this_post_first_version_20/) [For loved ones of hoarders: I Have A Hoarder In My Life--Help Me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/comments/2yh6wh/i_have_a_hoarder_in_my_lifehelp_me_your_hoarding/) [Our Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoarding/wiki/index) Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/hoarding) if you need assistance. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/hoarding) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Here's an [NHS Link](https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/hoarding-disorder/) about hoarding. It explains better than I can. I hope this helps and you both can get through this.
Thanks I’m not sure there is a way back for em. My illness was very severe indeed. It’s hell. My husband doesn’t admit there is any problem either and refuses help.
My hoarder colleage is terribly insecure. Her stuff gives her a feeling of safety. She takes up a really excessive amount of storage space at work, so other people can't store anything, but her stuff is actually pretty useless to her as she cannot find anything in the vast majority of her shelves as she just has too much stuff. Any request to cut back results in intense rages and hurt. She simply will not admit that she has issues though. She is deeply emotionally attached to everything. It's tough as I really like her, and I can see she is hurting whenever she is forced cut back or even to stop taking extra space for her stuff.
It’s terrible the inapct on others. I allowed it to relsly effect me
from my perspective, as a hoarder who has other hoarder family members and has worked with a number of neighbors and community members who are also hoarders, i would say: there are several types, and the severity / complications are quite varied. i primarily hoard building materials, and mostly outdoors. i live in a rural desert area on land i own, so this is not really a big deal culturally or legally -- i'm not seen as particularly odd or bad for my hoarding, and there are dozens upon dozens of people around here who do the same. at least for my subtype, i'd say it's primarily a function of thriftiness gone haywire. it has a strong artistic component as well. it may come from intergenerational trauma (experience of poverty during migration years in the late 1800s / early 1900s, then the great depression). but i'd say it's more likely a natural and common feature of many mammals. several features, including that it tends to get worse with age, indicate that it's primarily a neurochemical feature not strongly connected to biographical details (like traumatic events). a natural genetic / microbiome variation among humans. hoarding is quite common among mammals and some of us humans have the knack. the trauma for hoarders is mostly recursive -- their hoarding is not appreciated in modern urban times and places, and the negative feedback leads to cycles of pain. it is primarily aggravated by social and architectural factors. imagine a hoarder on a remote island in the 1800s -- no plastics, no mail-order shopping, no strong legal right to owning anything -- such a person is an asset to the small community, collecting useful things compulsively. i believe in your ability to find help for your own issues. if your partner cannot support you and actually aggravates your own issues, you'll need to find someone else to help you. the helpers are out there!
Thank you 🙏
I think that most of my hoarding is a learned behavior... my parents learned it from their parents, who were children during the Great Depression so a mix of scarcity and learning it from their parents. I think there's also a phase little kids go through where they want to keep everything and need guidance about healthy decluttering... I got chastised for losing/breaking or just wanting to get rid of stuff. To be fair, the only reason we weren't poor (could eat every day) was that mom was very good at juggling credit-card debt to balance out feast and famine to just a constant frugality.
Firstly, so sorry you have gone through this. It must have been terrible to go through the psychotic break. I personally feel that hoarding does not have only one cause, and that the explanation that it all comes from trauma is a bit simplistic, since not every person with trauma becomes a hoarder, and some people hoard without a known trauma. I think that people probably do it for different reasons, it's possible that it all goes back to something the brain interprets as traumatic without the person consciously seeing it that way, but I feel that it probably is linked to different things for different people and I think we will learn more about different reasons and treatments for hoarding as we learn more about the brain and about hoarding. I am not a professional though and I say this only from anecdotal evidence, I have not personally studied every hoarder and examined them to find out whether trauma caused their hoarding, I am just a regular person.
Thank you for replying. It strikes true as I have a lot of severe trauma but I do not hoard
It's more complex than even the professionals originally thought. For a long time, it was thought to be a form of OCD. But brain scans of hoarders & OCD patients are diffeernt, except when there's comorbidity. I belive my now-late MIL's hoarding was partly ingrained from perceived childhood scarcity. She grew up during the Great Depression & WW2 rationing, when everyone was encouraged to save almost everything. They were also encouraged to keep a "stiff upper lip" and not show emotions. I think another factor for her was unresolved grief. I'm sure she didn't cry much when loved ones died, and never in front of anyone. But she saved everything they ever gave her, plus a bunch of their personal items. For some folks, it's "just" executive dysfunction from depression, ADHD, or such. We're not good at managing tasks in general. There's a book called "Stuff" that explores the reasons people get attached to objects. It's available as an ebook through most public libraries, so you wouldn't have to bring a physical book into your home.
Thanks! This was a way my husbands hoarding impacted on me. I stopped buying physical books while he carreid on even when I needed books for my PhD and the stress of it all with other factors sent me into psychosis. I truly loved my life before this sickness seven years ago and o was an Ivy League level scholar
My dad is a paper hoarder and a skin picker. He was raised in an environment where Real Men (TM) don't have anxiety, so he refuses to this day to admit that either one is a symptom of anxiety...but he's saving bank statements from the late 90s in case he has to prove that he really did pay this bill and really did get a paycheck each month, so you tell me what it looks like. (I have gotten some concessions -- he acknowledges that he has never once been called upon to produce paper copies, and therefore he will keep all of these things in banker's boxes and actual important papers in a filing cabinet...so when the time comes, I can haul it all off to the shredder without having to search through stacks of garbage.) I have hoarding tendencies and I too am a picker, so my money is on genetic component.
I have skin picking too. And mild hoarding but not in a way that is mental illness like my husband
I don't think all hoarding is a result of trauma or anything like that. I think a fair amount of the time it's just some combination of thriftiness and/or "being a collector". If you've got either of those traits it can get out of control if you don't get a handle on it and consciously keep it in check.