Compulsive hoarding is a mental condition whereby an affected person accumulates possessions, that they are unable to let go of. We came across an article describing hoarding due to deprivation and loss.
This piece centred on adult hoarders who grew up in care situations where they were deprived of sufficient food and other necessities. There was a far greater probability of these children becoming hoarders when they became adults.
Are you wondering whether other traumas might have a similar effect? Let’s drill down deeper and unpack the evidence. This suggests that a variety of traumas could result in affected people being unable to let go of possessions easily.
Hoarding As a Reaction to Trauma
Being deprived of food and other necessities as a child, is a traumatic event that is impossible to wipe away from memory. The link to hoarding is quite straightforward. Trauma almost inevitably involves the loss of something, while hoarding is a desperate need to hang on to things.
Understanding hoarding due to trauma, deprivation and loss therefore helps us appreciate the condition, and approach it in a realistic way.
Let’s Define Hoarding Before We Continue
A hoarder has ongoing difficulty with shedding possessions, due to an obsession to save them. This could be for ‘rainy days’, or because they believe they have intrinsic value. Hoarders can become angry if someone tries to force the issue.
Impact of Deprivation and Loss
The drivers of hoarding include thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Their outcome can become so extreme that it affects living space, friends and family, and health too. Few hoarders willingly seek help. And why should they, when they love their clutter, and it compensates for them for a trauma that happened in their past?
A study by Landau, Lervolino and colleagues is quite clear on the matter. They confirm that ‘traumatic life events and early material deprivation have been identified as potential environmental risk factors for the development of pathological hoarding behavior’.
Other research has shown that clinically-diagnosed hoarders are notably more likely to have experienced trauma in their lifetimes. This sample was also more likely to display extreme hoarding due to ‘deprivation and loss’.
Hoarding, Trauma Connecting the Dots
All traumas involve the loss of something, be it a relationship, a belief, or a treasured possession. When we understand this fact, and gently share it with a hoarder, we may be able to help them without embarrassing them or shaming them further.
Psychology Today introduces an interesting angle at this point. We know that memories of trauma can keep coming back after the event is long passed. Is hoarding then a subconscious attempt to soften the ongoing blow?
Compulsive hoarding then becomes a sub-conscientious attempt to fill the gap left by something we lost. This could, for example, be the death of a loved one, or a retrenchment from a job that meant the world to us.
Some hoarders respond to personal loss, by hanging on to symbols of those better times. The love they felt for a family pet may be compensated by the accumulation of clutter. Hoarding due to deprivation and loss takes on a new meaning, when we view it this way.
Grasping Control Through Hoarding
Trauma can leave us with a sense of helplessness in an unsympathetic world, where we no longer feel in control. Perhaps this is why compulsive hoarders reject our offer of help to de-clutter their home? Help from others diminishes their control over their lives. Rejecting help affirms their independence.
Deprivation and Loss and Helplessness
Loss of confidence often follows on trauma, as sure as night follows day. People who hoard as a result of trauma may try to stop collecting, but find the pleasure it brings overwhelming.
The habit grows and grows until it pushes their daily activities aside. They avoid counter measures because such decisions could turn out to be mistakes, and making these can be what they fear most.
People who suffer severe trauma often blame themselves for what happened, because they cannot accept that much of life is beyond their direct control. However, there are always things we can do about our situation, when we change the narrative we are telling ourselves.
There Are Things We Can Do
Hoarding due to deprivation and loss can seem like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this does not mean that hoarders’ friends are helpless. To the contrary, there are things their friends can do to help, provided the hoarder makes the final decisions themself.
Many hoarders spiral down into isolation, to escape the well-intentioned words of friends who criticize them. It is difficult to reach out from a deep hole of depression. Our task as friends of hoarders is to reach out with respect and support. Not just impulsively give the help, because we believe that it is genuinely ‘the right thing’ to do.
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