A whole lot of people consider hoarding as something extreme – a house crammed to the ceiling with possessions. But it tends to begin step by step, and research has found it may well begin in adolescence or even childhood.
The information people have about it often comes from documentaries about severe cases, specializing in overflowing piles of possessions. But this narrow view of what hoarding is means people often don’t get help until the behaviour is devastating their lives.
Psychologists still don’t fully understand why people hoard. It was only as recently as 2013 that hoarding disorder was added to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a guide utilized by clinicians within the US.
Early intervention could make a life-changing difference to individuals who struggle with hoarding behaviour, their families and the communities they live in. It could also help children with hoarding tendencies to learn the way to manage their possessions.
It can start from childhood
Participants in retrospective studies of adults found the median age hoarding behaviour began was 11-15.
As a part of my PhD researchI interviewed several individuals with hoarding behaviour who described attachments to possessions and difficulty in discarding them from childhood.
Some participants said hoarding tendencies and behavior had either begun, or became tougher to administer, once they began university.
One participant felt his hoarding difficulties began when he left university. He said the responsibility that got here with “the tip of … student accounts” led to bother discarding things. This was not something my PhD team and I had heard of before.
Some of our participants talked about how, in childhood, their families had encouraged them to discard possessions, or had discarded them for them. This was distressing for several reasons, including the emotional attachment that they had formed to those possessions.
Previous research has suggested that when children exhibit hoarding tendenciesparents may help to maintain them in check. Parents may control the kid’s living space by tidying or discarding possessions for them, although the latter may make hoarding tendencies worse.
One of the hallmarks of hoarding is that the attachments to possessions might be quite similar to people who non-hoarders form, but they’re stronger and related to a wider range of things. This causes attachments to things that others would see as having little or no value. There’s all the time a use, a story, an emotion or a memory attached to a possession for somebody who hoards.
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If we would like to grasp how best to assist individuals with hoarding tendencies, we’d like more studies into hoarding during childhood so we are able to understand why it’s so much harder for some children to organise and discard things.
How does it start?
There are different routes to hoarding, with some researchers suggesting that it may well start in childhood with no apparent trigger. For other people, it happens later in life and is triggered by a specific event. For example, research shows a link between events akin to relationship changes and the start or worsening of hoarding symptoms.
We do know hoarding might be related to difficulties in processing informationearly emotional deprivation, traumatic events and the meanings that folks attach to their possessions. These meanings often include valuing possessions for his or her future usefulness or seeing them as repositories for memory.
Before things get extreme
Early intervention is essential in adults too. One of the hallmarks of hoarding disorder is an accumulation of possessions which clutter and congest the lively living areas of an individual’s home, akin to their kitchen or bathroom moderately than their attic or garage.
It’s comprehensible that psychologists use this as a benchmark on condition that many individuals gather loads of possessions but not everyone has a hoarding disorder. And there’s no must pathologise people who find themselves just keen collectors.
But hoarding situations where individuals are unable to cook of their kitchen, wash of their bathroom, entertain friends and even live of their lounge, don’t occur overnight. Hoarding behaviour starts long before someone’s possessions take over their home. The longer it goes on for, the harder it’s for the person to deal with it.
My PhD focused on understanding the processes which lead people to those sorts of situations. I used the term hoarding behaviour to incorporate less extreme circumstances.
The results of my research was a model called “struggling to administer”. It conceptualised hoarding as a set of connected difficulties in individuals with managing each possessions and life.
Unlike other models which focus more on thoughts and behaviorthe struggling to administer model asked what difficulties an individual has with keeping on top of their possessions while life happens around them.
It included things like undergoing life transitions where an individual’s relationship with possessions might change. For example, once they move house or are navigating health challenges, and situations where a number of life events occur without delay.
Hoarding behaviour is a spectrum. If you’re interested to know morethere are many online resources with information and support services, including community interest company Clouds End.
We must look beyond the clutter and disorganised possessions to see what’s happening beneath the physical stuff.