Hoarding disorder is a persistent difficultly discarding possessions, because the person believes they are worth keeping. The condition can affect the person’s lifestyle to the extent they live in unhygienic, even unsafe conditions. However, hoarding disorder affects families too, and that’s the subject of this post.
We came across an article on Cureus website, that assesses the impact of hoarding on family members, especially significant others. We share this information on our website because we believe this will be useful to others affected by hoarding. Especially as many may not understand the condition.
How Hoarding Disorder Affects Families Too
Hoarders often conceal their difficulty, because the enormity overwhelms them, and they feel anxious. They may become ashamed, even distressed as their clutter grows, and their living conditions deteriorate. Close family members may become frustrated by their apparent inability to make simple decisions.
Relationships within families of hoarders can reach breaking point, especially among significant others who share the home. This article helps shed the light on affected family members, many of whom may have nowhere else to turn for help. However, we must mention at this point that what follows is for information only, and is not medical advice.
A Study of Impact on a Spouse
Sometimes hoarding disorder affects families quite severely too. Cureus mentions a husband who became severely depressed, almost suicidal by his wife’s hoarding. The case study describes the situation as follows:
- The hoarding wife continuously cluttered stuff she insisted on buying.
- The hoarded items were piled counter-top-high throughout the home.
- The husband had difficulty getting around a house he felt was unsafe.
- Piled clutter blocked the entrances, and he could not use the shower.
- The work tops were covered with boxes, and stuff throughout the home.
- The husband no longer trusted the food in case it was was rotting.
- The husband worried his wife’s spending could get them into debt.
Hoarding Disorder Affects the Whole Family
Cureus reports that the husband was deeply concerned about his wife. He had tried to persuade her that they had a problem, but she simply did not understand. Sometimes she agreed to adapt, but soon forgot about it. Most times she just made excuses, because giving up the clutter was to stressful for her.
This situation reached this point, since it began twenty years previously. It steadily worsened, but accelerated to becoming extreme in the past few years. The husband threatened to walk out, but he could not. Instead, he felt so helpless and hopeless that he tried to take his own life.
The wife was almost obsessively secretive about her hoarding, to the extent she would not allow visits, even for emergencies. She would not allow a doctor to call, after she had a bad fall over the clutter. The husband was retired, and helplessly dis-empowered. He was living proof that hoarding disorder affects families, sometimes very seriously.
Is It Possible to Stop Hoarding?
To attempt to answer this question, we first need to understand how hoarding begins, in other words its drivers. The website Mind, suggests five possible triggers that can cause someone to start hoarding:
- Painful feelings and difficult experiences that are tough to accept, or even to describe. Hoarding may mask this pain, or make coping easier.
- Worrying about mistakes and / or striving for perfection may make decision-making a challenge. This can complicate deciding something is trash, and throwing it away.
- Experiencing deprivation, money worries, and so on in childhood may make people want to hang on to their possessions. These may provide a sense of security and belonging.
- Personal traumas in the past can trigger hoarding. Here we think, for example of bullying, harassment, racism, losing a partner, and so on. Feeling lonely and isolated could also cause it.
- However, hoarding can also be the outward sign of a genetic predisposition to hang onto things. Hoarding does run in families to an extent. Even living with a hoarder can trigger the condition.
Is It Possible to ‘Cure’ Hoarding Then?
It’s probably not practical to attempt to break the chain that triggers hoarding from the past. Sure, we can attempt to reason with the hoarder, or even ask a psychologist to intervene. However, the evidence suggests that ‘once a hoarder, always a hoarder’ is most likely to prevail.
This suggests that the best that families can do, is to try to manage the situation. One could for example explain that hoarding disorder affects families, and that it’s only fair to get rid of the worst of the clutter from time to time.
Speak to Avery Associates If We Can Help
Clearing a hoarded house of clutter can be a challenge many prefer to avoid. Avery Associates offers a house clearance service that includes identifying anything of value, that should not be thrown away. Please call 0800 567 7769 (or 0208 640 00 44 during office hours) if you would like to explore our extensive experience.
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