Hoarding: A Life of Clutter

Bobby's a hoarder. Once something goes into Bobby's apartment, it never goes out again. Bob cannot throw anything away.

This was my living room. It is now chaos city here. I have so many beautiful things hiding here. I can't enjoy them. This is where I'm now sleeping, because everything is moved over. The other room is the bedroom, which actually I cannot use anymore. And it was a originally maintained as a library.

The debris, if I stand on it, lose my head. So I'm walking around in an unbalanced world. Whoa. Just crazy. Oops.

Bob's got hundreds of things, but not a single home comfort.

For instance, I know that every once in a while, I would like to watch a television program. And I know I have a TV over here somewhere. And five or six years, maybe, I haven't seen it. Where are you? Oh, there it is. All right, let's see if it's alive. Ah! Wonderful. It's alive.

A lot of it stems from my childhood. I was considered a different kind of person-- artist or artistic or whatever. I was beaten and bullied. And I do mean every day. The fear of being seen was the fear of being hit. Spending 16 years of your life being physically beaten causes problems. I think anyone would agree with that.

In a way, I've created, I think, a nest. I always say I'm in my bird's nest. I don't know if I'm going to lay an egg or not. But I think that you have a wall around you. And people can't see you. Therefore, you're safe.

In OCD, the person is bombarded by intrusive, fearful thoughts. Because Bob's hoarding is his way of trying to contain his fears, the thought of throwing things away is terrifying.

When I think about throwing things away, the fear is there. It's very real. Getting rid of the clutter, the anxiety is so stressful that you just simply don't even want to think about it. I feel protected, and yet at the same time, I feel buried alive. I desperately need to perform some action that's going to result in clearing this up.

It's a good thing we're dancers, because we have to be very, very graceful. We can have an avalanche, I call it, I can just, like, touch this stack, and the whole thing come careening down.

Shirley says her hoarding began more than 30 years ago when she was burgled.

I started hoarding after our house was robbed. Three years later, my father was killed in a robbery attempt. And I started feeling more and more fearful. And somehow, I guess I got this convoluted idea that if I had more stuff, I'd be protected.

Somehow the clutter makes me feel safe. Like a neighbor said it in a joke, well, if the robbers came to your house, they'd come in and they'd see such a mess that they'd say, the house has already been ransacked. And they'd go home. And the reality is our house hasn't been robbed since then.

Hoarders are hard to treat. Going to the house to persuade them to throw things away is the most effective way to change them. Dr. Randy Frost, one of the world's leading experts on hoarding, has been to Shirley's house a couple of times.

Shirley, this is your living room, right?

Right. This is the living room.

Now, the last time I was here, I remembered it being pretty cluttered like this. But maybe there's some things that have changed. That chair over there is now cleared out. Is that right?

Right. I actually sat in this last week.

Oh, OK. Is there an organizational scheme here to all of this?v

No. There was just space, and I put it there.

All right.

It's a treasure hunt, that's what it is.

OK. That was my next question. How do you find things in here that you need?

I don't.

How do other people manage their possessions?

They don't have so much stuff.

In part, yeah. That's certainly true.

Today, Dr. Frost is going to try and help Shirley throw something away. He knows that he's likely to encounter resistance.

How about over here. Why are you saving that?

Because it's so beautiful. I just thought it would--

OK. So, it doesn't have any value in terms of your need. No instrumental value, we call it, for you. You don't need that for anything, right?

No. But I'm not willing to throw it away.

We've had lots of people in our studies who describe their homes as cocoons or bunkers and so forth. It's really this sense of being vulnerable seems to be involved somehow. These possessions come to signal safety. Even though a newspaper really isn't going to offer any protection, it sort of feels like, I'm vulnerable again or being violated if I lose it or get rid of it. You could see with Shirley the wall that we hit with that picture.

OK, Shirley. Here's the challenge. Can you throw this away?

I'll consider it for the future. But for right now, I really am not willing to throw that away.

OK.

Shirley has been in treatment for a year. Although her achievements seem limited, very few hoarders manage to get as far as she has. But the next phase of the treatment is going to be more difficult.

The next step is to throw things away despite feeling bad and get over that feeling. What she'll have to face is pushing herself through some of the distress that she's going to experience when she throws something away.

I basically feel like my house is a reclamation project in process. And a coming attraction will be next year, we're going to do the living room. And that way I'll be able to sit on my sofa and watch TV in the living room, like real, normal people. And I'm looking forward to it.