What is Compulsive Hoarding?

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How many times before to throw away some old object you thought: “Should I keep it? Maybe it will be useful...?” It is never easy to let go of our stuff, but there are people for whom it is almost impossible. They cannot distinguish between what is important and what is not; they are affected by a pathology: Compulsive Hoarding.

What is Compulsive Hoarding? 

Let's see.

Compulsive Hoarding is often defined as “pathological collecting,” and its is the pathological tendency to keep massive amounts of useless objects to the point that parts of the house (if not the whole house) of the affected become uninhabitable. This usually creates many problems in the life of the subjects, one of them being that they are constantly forced to justify themselves in front of family and friends.

Why do compulsive hoarders keep so much “useless junk” around? Researchers have found that the hoarders are excessively involved towards their properties. Every old grocery receipt, or depleted pen is perceived as part of the subject's person and of his past; so these objects that most people would define “junk”, have a great emotional importance for the hoarder. 

Also, it exists a “functional” hoarding: some compulsive hoarder do not throw away the old hairdryer, or the old toaster, because they believe that they might be useful in the future.

The accumulation of stuff is directly related to complications in planning and organizing: those affected by pathological collecting have limited “mental categories”, and problems in cataloging objects.

Some researches in neuroscience show that the brains of the hoarders handles the problem “throw away or not?” in a very different way from “normal” brains. Specifically, the prefrontal cortex reacts very energically when the subjects are asked to throw away old things. This cerebral area is also stimulated when there is a need to take difficult decisions, or to evaluate feelings or rational thoughts. In fact, compulsive hoarders often lack of decision-making skills.

When a subject recognizes as exaggerate his tendency to keep his stuff , he should see a psychotherapist. Sadly though, compulsive hoarding is only discovered after the subject see a therapist, because it is almost never the original reason. This happens because many compulsive hoarders suffer from depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. One of those reasons is usually what make them set their first appointments.

An efficient therapy includes many exercises to learn how to organize one's mind and how to take decisions, so to lead the patients to reconsider their relations with old, broken, or worthless objects.

Source: http://www.crescita-personale.it/

Publication Date: 09/21/2012

Check out the original article here