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You're right Fierce. Full blown hoarding seems awful and must make life really difficult for everyone involved. I will never understand the full nature of the disease. I'm sorry you have had to go through so much. I'm glad they were able to find the hormonal issue with you and do something for you.
Thanks, BL. I was pretty bad, but I did have a husband around who noticed after a while what I was going through wasn't just a sudden bout of laziness. He was the one who suggested I had depression, and I never had put 2 & 2 together until he figured it out.
I feel worse for my mother and even more for my father. They just don't think in psychological terms, and I can't seem to counsel them into some understanding themselves.
That woman last night broke my heart. I knew she needed some real therapy, not a crash course in 3 days to get rid of her things. It must be like being asked to get off drugs when you have been an addict for years and years and it's all you know. It has to be the scariest thing in their minds to let go of something they have done and or had for all those years.
Yeah....the time limit they have is rediculous. Three days to clean that? No way. I can barely clean my house in three days :lol
I'm sure they could clean it if they just went in and took everything and dumped it. The problem with this method is that they are dealing with people who hang on to these things for a reason (even if it's only in their head). There's no way they can tackle the mental issues in that short of a time. I feel like they should give the people intense therapy before they bring the cleaning crew in. Maybe things would move faster if the therapist had made some headway in the whole mental part before the guys came in to dump everything. It almost seems backwards. Remember that OCD show they used to have? Those people had weeks of therapy before being asked to confront their anxiety head on and realize they could get through it.
I'm still trying to figure out just what that girl saw in the guy featured on last night's show. In addition to his hoarding issues, and being a slob, I think he may also have a case of ADHD. It seemed like he couldn't follow through on a lot of things once he bought supplies....for beer making, knife making, etc. I didn't see him being "depressed" like the woman featured on last night's show.
Speaking of that woman, I didn't see her husband helping out with the cleaning of the house. He spoke enough on the show, but I didn't see him helping with the cleanup.
I still cannot understand how the spouses don't just say, "Enough, I live here too and I would like to be able to walk from one room to another without falling down and killing myself!" I don't know if they have tried time and time again and it all has fallen on deaf ears or if they figure it is just easier to enable.
I couldn't help but think what would happen if one of them had a medical emergency or a house fire! There is no way an EMT crew could get into some of those rooms with a gurney!
According to the daughter, any time the issue was brought up, the mom would shut down or get upset and start saying mean things. I think about the emergency issue too. We had a tenant once who was 1/2 of what the lady last night was. The landlady wrote to her 3 times to get the place straightened up or find another place to live as it is a hazard for the other tenants as well. She ended up moving instead of cleaning......and left about 1/2 the stuff for us to throw out!
Sorry to keep bringing up my mother. But I guess this is a little therapeutic for me.
My mother didn't always appear to be this way. But in the 80's, she began saving newspapers.
Our basement ended up with stacks and stacks of brown paper bags filled with newspapers. I know by the time they all went away, some of them were over 10 years old.
I don't remember how long that lasted, when the time came that the family on the whole said "enough" and started to do something about it. (Me, my parents, and my oldest sister all lived together for a long time).
For a long time, my mother's excuse was, "i need to go through them to cut out things for myself" and for my oldest sister. She would do that sometimes - pull out a bag, go through it - page by page by page - cut some stuff out, and throw out the rest.
When my parents took an extended vacation, my sister went through some for her. Page by page. Only threw out what she went through.
I don't recall when my dad finally reached a breaking point and threw some bags away. Not all, some. I think he did it when she wasn't around.
She found out. And she went BERZERK. Her sense of trust in him went in the trash with those papers. She was despondent. Distraught.
She eventually got over it, but I'm not honestly sure how much. They have a fractured relationship to this day, and I think it's been something like 20 years.
In retrospect, I wish those papers were still there. Because maybe she wouldn't have moved on from newspapers to ALL kinds of papers.
My dad has said many times that if emergency services had to come in to help her, they wouldn't be able to because there's no room in her bedroom. It's her bed, a narrow walkway beside it, and stacks of boxes & papers.
MamaC says:I think that's it. That sounds like my dad. And the sad thing is, HE himself has ended up depressed and worn out over it.Quote:
I still cannot understand how the spouses don't just say, "Enough, I live here too and I would like to be able to walk from one room to another without falling down and killing myself!" I don't know if they have tried time and time again and it all has fallen on deaf ears or if they figure it is just easier to enable.
Sigh. I wish I could get therapy for them. My mother really isn't at a point where the show would be interested in her, and I wouldn't do that TO her. But if my dad wasn't there and me and my sisters, I think she'd be as bad as the woman with the dead cats under stuff.
Fierce Critter, your Mom sounds identical to a relative of mine. It's actually really sad.
I think getting the hoarders to undergo some therapy BEFORE the few days on camera is excellent. However, the show may be unwilling to pay for a lot of therapy beforehand. What if for any reason the horder then decides not to be filmed - that investment in counseling has been lost to the production company.
It concerns me that according to the last caption of the program, the horder often has not actually made contact with the doctor and started treatment. That sounds very bad - are they going to end up buried in junk once again? I think there is a high possibility of that happening. They just go out and get more stuff at yard sales, etc. and you are back where you started.