There are three pathways to compulsive hoarding syndrome, a medical condition with both behavioural and psychological dimensions. Common indicators include:
- Persistent difficulty discarding possessions, regardless of actual value.
- Accumulation of possessions, interfering with living space and daily life.
There is no single explanation for the cause of this condition, although research does frequently identify three possibilities:
These three divers include a genetic tendency, a deprived childhood, and a traumatic event in adulthood. Although these causes overlap, each pathway does have its own distinctive patterns of treatment.
First Pathway: Genetic Predisposition
The first of the three pathways to compulsive hoarding, questions whether parents pass hoarding on to children in their genes.
Twin studies of two children from the same pregnancy, set environmental influences off against genetic triggers. One landmark study reconfirmed what human scientists already suspected.
Compulsive hoarding behaviour is low to moderately likely to surface in the children of hoarders during adolescence, but considerably more likely among older people.
However, subsequent studies have suggested that this pathway to compulsive hoarding is not the result of a single, dominating gene. It is more a question of vulnerability affecting the way compulsive hoarders process information, value possessions, and avoid anxiety.
Companions to Compulsive Hoarding
However, that said, inherited compulsive hoarding is not that clear cut. This syndrome often appears in parallel to perfectionism, indecision, and strong sentimental attachment to things.
Another large study suggested that hoarding is but one part of greater reality, embracing beliefs about possessions, avoidance generally, and the relationship between our minds and our brains.
Treatments for the First Pathway to Hoarding
Treatments for genetically-inherited hoarding, focus on changing thinking rather than tackling the behaviour head on. This typically includes thinking, decision-making, and toleration of uncertainty.
Medication may support these three techniques, although there is no medication for hoarding alone. Progress is often slow but steady, and may help ensure early symptoms do not spin out into severe clutter.
Wrapping Up Inherited Hoarding Disorder
In summary, the first of the three pathways to compulsive hoarding, often emerges gradually in adolescence or early adulthood.
Second Pathway: Childhood Environment
Deprivation in childhood, meaning the lack of something important, can stem from poverty or emotional neglect. But it can also arise in chaotic homes, foster care situations, or living with a hoarding parent. Collecting possessions in later life compensates for a lack of having them previously, according to this approach.
Emotional deprivation in childhood leads to attachment to possessions in later life. Scarcity teaches that objects are valuable and must be kept. These objects then become sources of safety in the phenomenon we call compulsive hoarding.
This pathway to compulsive hoarding is often characterised by disorderly accumulation of possessions. A strong sentimental attachment to this clutter helps calm emotions.
Scientific research confirms that people displaying hoarding disorder are more likely to have experienced troubled childhoods. Other studies suggest that insecure parental bonding correlates with hoarding.
Treatments for the Second Pathway to Hoarding
Therapy focuses on building emotional security, and a healthy attachment to people rather than things. Techniques may include cognitive behavioural, and trauma related therapies, with or without family or group support.
Wrapping Up Childhood-Deprived Hoarding
The urge to accumulate possessions diminishes, when emotional needs are met. However, relapse may occur following stressful moments. This suggests that treatments suppress the desire, rather than removing it.
Third Pathway: Adult Trauma
A significant traumatic event can trigger hoarding in a previously tidy person. Typical traumas include loss of a loved one, or divorce / total separation. Other reasons are financial collapse. burglary or fire, or a sudden medical crisis.
Trauma disrupts a sense of safety. Objects become anchors of control, and discarding them evokes fear of further loss. Compulsive hoarders may say, ‘I have lost so much already, I cannot lose anything else’.
There’s ample scientific evidence for this third pathway to compulsive hoarding. For example, people with hoarding disorder often report significantly more traumatic events. And moreover, to reinforce this finding, the extent of hoarding is often more severe after a more significant trauma.
Companions to Trauma-Based Compulsive Hoarding
Symptoms of trauma-based compulsive hoarding may reflect the trigger that caused them:
- There is often a sudden onset after the event.
- The cluttered objects may relate to the trauma.
- There may be parallel anxiety, depression, or grief.
Hence this behaviour pattern may be more starkly reactive, compared to the other two pathways to compulsive hoarding.
Treatments for the Third Pathway to Hoarding
Related hoarding often begins shortly after the trauma. Hence, we may hope for a good recovery, once the person has worked through the trauma. Treatments may include grief counseling, trauma-based cognitive behavioural therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and practical coaching for decluttering.
Once the loss is integrated emotionally, objects lose their symbolic role, and clients often discard voluntarily. Progress is sometimes faster than with genetic cases, because the behaviour is tied to a trigger rather than lifelong personality traits.
Treatments for the Third Pathway to Hoarding
A shadow of hoarding remains after the trauma subsides, although there is no absolute cure. Proven ways to manage the symptoms include making homes safer to reduce distress, and discarding clutter perhaps leading to a hoarded house clearance.
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