Emotional Hoarders

Emotional Hoarders

My husband and I watch a reality show called Hoarders. It is about people who have collected so much stuff. The garbage in their homes has made it unsafe for them to live there. Their homes are infested with rodents, roaches, animal feces and sometimes human feces is all about the house. 

The electricity, and plumbing is defective. Sometimes the roofs are caving in because of non repair.

Because of the condition of the house they can’t get professionals in to fix these things, from fear of being reported to officials. Fearing their children will be taken by CPS keeps them living in secret isolation.

Sometimes the other spouse in the home is not a hoarder but they stay because of love and try to endure or deny the emotional health of their loved one. It accumulates so gradually over time it becomes their normal as well.

I have never watched an episode that the phycologists on the team does not trace the behavior back to an event with a family member or loved one, or to a major trauma or loss in their lives. 

Some of us have become emotional hoarders. We have collected all the emotional stuff through out the years and because of our pain have just placed it anywhere.

Thinking it will be easier to deal with later. Collecting each new sparkling thing that brings fleeting emotional distraction, trying to bring some relief to our pain. Or trying to control the uncontrollable. 

We make piles or fill shelves and boxes in our rooms of experiences, with things we don't want to deal with at the moment.

Then rush out to purchase or experience, new things to get a momentary good feeling. Trying to forget the horrible feelings we are running from. 

We prepare relationship meals, creating messes, leaving the cleanup for later and never returning to clean up before moving on to something or someone new.

We step over the clutter of our pain, guilt, shame, grief, anger, resentment along with many other deposits of emotional clutter. Until it is so great we don't even realize we are now walking on top of mounds of the discarded emotions, which has collected over the years. 

All our stuff rotting and giving off a putrid smell to our once safe house of life. We ignore or deny that roaches and rodents have moved into the unresolved garbage, discarded in our once orderly, safe place. Ignoring or even denying the massive hoard of emotional stuff we have collected. 

We have the best of intentions. We have a use for it all. Just not the time or energy to sort through the massive stock pile of life's stuff. We now isolate from the outside world so they will not discover our dirty secret. We gravitate to a tiny, little less dirty, space and make our bed. 

Surrounded with all the mounds of my past decisions I deceive myself into thinking I will do something with all this later.

We may realize we need help to clear out our collection of good intentions and misplaced garbage. But the very condition of this shocking, cluttered, rotting, mound of my life, may cause me to isolate myself from everyone and everything that could help me!

Our fear and shame keep us away from the very thing we are crying out for. Someone, anyone who can understand the situations that brought me to this very sick and broken place. Most of us will not get help at this stage of hoarding without outside intervention.

Maybe even someone threatening to expose my unsafe and unhealthy mess!   

Just threatening to take the excessive piles of MY stuff away. Sends me in to a state of panic. I desperately want and need help, but I don’t want to let go of the stuff I can control in exchange for the unknown process. I may cling desperately to what appears to others as outdated useless mounds of garbage.

Collections of things with meaning only I can see. I couldn’t control the event that ravaged my emotional health and imprisoned me with chains of unresolved emotional issues. But I can collect things randomly in massive amounts.

Placing them anywhere I chose. Unable to see I am not in control of the things, they are burying me alive.

Without my dealing with the excessive clutter in my life I will be buried alive under all that I held precious. Each item now rotting from the neglect!

Each person I love and need driven away from me so they won’t see the horrible mess I have made. Others leaving so they can survive in a healthy safe uncluttered environment.

Unconsciously I am driving them away before they too can wound me in a manner I may not survive through!

I desperately need the spiritual advisors to come and see my mess. I need to call for the professional organizers to help sort through the things that I need to keep and help me remove the useless collection of stuff.

I need the massive Got Junk trucks to back up to my place and receive the chosen discards from my emotional hoarded life.

I need friends and family to allow me to sort through the rooms of my excessive hoarded pain. Supporting me, as I, decide which items I believe to be necessary to continue on with my journey. They can help support me while I make each decision.

My friends and family along with professionals, helping those who love me, to understand that true wholeness only comes from me deciding to let go.

Those who have been where I now am, can advise and give their suggestions with empathy and not judgement.

I need them to know that I am viewing the value of items through my pain, not the worth of the objects in their reality.

I must choose to release and even give away things I have collected to insulate myself from dealing with the true issues in my life. I must be willing and actively participate in the process. 

I can allow those I trust to continue to sort piles of clutter with me only if I trust they will make decisions the way I would make decisions. Not judging, but lovingly presenting a different perspective, will help me to release more of the useless stuff I want to hold on to.

I may reach the floor of a hoarded room to only find my neglect has cause structural damage, sometimes unrepairable. I may have to face the devastating truth that it was I who allowed things to stay piled and contaminated by the rodent feces of anger and unforgiven trauma. Causing this present structure to be condemned and unlivable.

The cost of repairs may outweigh the overall worth of the structure or relationship, I have been living in.

I may have to relocate. Move from all the past memories relocating to a more structurally sound location. 

I can restore my emotional house to order. Together with the help of those trained to guide me truthfully through my hoard.

Along with those who love me, we can have a new beginning, while still living in the same location. I can choose to release the old stuff and regain my life! 

I can relocate my usable stuff, to a new place, in the same structure.

Now having room to move about and enjoy my salvaged treasures. Although arranged in different rooms, they are still the same treasures from my past.

I now have access to them and can share them with those I love. 

If this structure is unsalvageable I have to choose to move on, to rekindle old relationships in new surroundings.

Relieved I no longer have to hide in shame and guilt. I can now come out into the light of truth to find deep joy and satisfaction from cleaning up the hoard of the past.

Restoring order will help to make a fresh, clean place for the discovered truth.

This is my journey. I haven't arrived yet, but I am in process!