Hoarding

I recently watched several episodes of a reality-type show called "Hoarders". It's a one-hour show similar to the extreme makeover show, where each week they profile a new set of freaks. At the end of the show, the houses are usually, relatively clean. I say relatively, because the absolutely deplorable condition of the house prior to the show is truly and unbelievably disgusting.

Hoarders are people who are extreme OCD sufferers. They throw almost nothing away and often live in absolute filth. In almost all cases, they constantly bring more and more stuff into their homes until their houses are literally unlivable. One family had to live in a tent outside their home due to a bed-bug infestation. My skin has been itching ever since.

Believe me when I tell you that there is no way for you to imagine the inside of their homes if you didn't see it for yourself. It's stupefying. In almost every case, there were rooms in their homes where they couldn't even enter anymore due to the fact that it was completely full of crap. Sometimes there were multiple rooms in this state.

I fancy myself a student of behavioral psychology insofar as I've read and/or watched numerous portrayals of bizarre activity. I'm fascinated with the freakish - Munchausen and Munchausen-by-proxy syndromes, Pica, Anxiety disorders, OCD, Tourette's, Anorexia, Bulimia, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, you name it. I'm also fascinated with physical extremism - Dwarfs, Giants, Morbidly Obese, rare and often debilitating skin/bone conditions, etc.

But, in all my endeavours, I've never come across hoarding. I've heard that at least one of my in-laws exhibits all of the symptoms of being a hoarder, but I never really believed it could have been as bad as how it was described. I realize now that I was mistaken.

Now, coming from a family with a restaurant-menu selection of neuroses, I'm hardly one to judge anybody else on their particular brand of crazy. That said, Hoarding might be the most devious (and possibly the most devastating) mental-illness I've yet encountered. As I understand it, it's a gradual process - like slowly boiling a frog. If done slowly enough, the frog will not realize it's being boiled and will simply eventually die.

Hoarders live in a constant fire hazard. Due to the fact that nothing can ever get truly clean with all the clutter, it's also extraordinarily unhygienic. So much so, as a matter of fact, children living in a hoarder's home are regularly at risk for being placed in protective custody.

I think the most bizarre aspect of this "disease" is the fact that, the people who have it, and realize they have it, STILL can't overcome it without a huge amount of psychological help. Even then, a lot of them fail. Even when the kids have been taken out of the home due to the hoarding, the parent(s) STILL completely lose their minds when faced with the prospect of throwing away ANY of their garbage. Seriously - garbage.

Finally, and maybe scariest of all, it seems to be somewhat contagious. For instance, there was a couple on one show where the wife was really angry at the husband for hoarding a bunch of useless crap all throughout the house, in the basement and the garage, and even spilling out onto the lawn.

The cleanup crew (a crew of about a dozen, with two or three trucks to haul away as much stuff as possible) and the therapists and the family friends convinced the guy that he needed to let go of his crap. He was upset, but willing to do it for the sake of his 3 year old son.

Was the wife happy? Oh, no, because when they got into the house, it turned out that SHE was AT LEAST as bad as he was. Worse, really, because she didn't think she had the problem - she blamed it all on him. She fought tooth and nail over EVERY SINGLE ITEM that they wanted to throw away - every item.

My takeaway from this was that, if you can stand to live in that kind of environment, you are probably a hoarder, too. You just don't realize it yet! The only situations I saw where there were people living like that and NOT feeling like it was normal or ok were the kids who had no choice but to live there. Adults have the luxury of choosing to put up with it - which is why the only reason many of the people who finally (and reluctantly) agreed to accept help for their disorder were people who were faced with the very real prospect of losing their loved-ones - their kids, their spouses, extended family members, etc.

This whole business was very eye-opening for me. I've seldom seen such a disparity between being aware of a problem and being able to do something about. In this case, GI Joe was dead-wrong... Knowing is certainly NOT half the battle!

Now, excuse me while I go take a shower... yuck.