The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [58]
As the cleanup progresses, the morning meetings provide a good opportunity to give the hoarder lots of encouragement and praise for his or her participation, especially in front of family members. Cleaning is challenging, and hoarders are working on new skills as they go through it. Positive feedback helps reinforce that.
Every hoarder has issues, even if it’s a Stage 1 hoarder like Brad, who was attached to his computer stash. Going over those issues will alert team members to possible behaviors that could pop up during the cleaning.
Once the cleaning begins in earnest, many of the underlying psychological and emotional issues that plague a hoarder may surface in unexpected ways, with lots of drama and probably some panic. During cleanup, helpers are not only stripping hoarders of their possessions, but also removing a comforting behavior that has made up for a lot of hurt.
There’s no such thing as too much praise for a hoarder who is trying to de-clutter. Extreme hoarders have felt like failures for years, maybe decades, and it may take a while for them to accept the praise. The solution is to pour it on—not false praise, but sincere acknowledgment for the hard work they are doing. Appreciation is something everyone wants in life, and it’s no different for a hoarder. Ironically, that need for appreciation is something that has usually fueled the hoarding.
A hoarder’s behavior during a cleanup is driven by a sometimes fragile emotional state that is best navigated with social workers, therapists, or clergy. But family members can also get on board and really help once they know what the process is likely to dredge up.
▶ Freaking Out
Being clean scared Aimee. She didn’t know where anything was in her newly cleaned rooms. Suddenly, she was losing control of the stuff that she’d kept cataloged in her brain. Every evening after the cleaners left, we learned, Aimee would become irrational and start looking for things that randomly came to mind. Because many of these things had already been moved or discarded, when she couldn’t find them, she called me. Realizing what Aimee was going through, I made her daily call a part of her process. I told her that while I fully expected her to call me, she had to do so before 9:00 p.m. This arrangement allowed her to accept and own her behavior, but also put some limits on it.
The freak-out is actually a good sign. Many hoarders have literally built a wall of trash around themselves to mentally and physically protect them from the real world. A cleanup crew is tearing down this wall of protection. A hoarder who shows no emotions at all is probably not processing the cleanup seriously. Chances are that the house will be full again very soon.
▶ Stonewalling
At first, Nika, a Stage 3 clothes hoarder, didn’t engage in the cleaning process at all. She sat like a lump on a pile of clothing in the living room and wouldn’t even talk to the cleaning crew. I could see that she was refusing to face the fear and anxiety of the cleaning. She was retreating away from reality. So I pushed over one of her piles.
It was an eight-foot stack of clothing and shoes, and I “accidentally” hit it with my hip, hard. When it came tumbling down, Nika lost her cool. She jumped up to grab her things and start piling them back up, all the while yelling at me to quit messing with her stuff.
My goal is always to get a hoarder engaged in a positive way, but if that doesn’t happen then I’ll accept their anger. After my little accident, Nika realized that working with us was the only way to protect her valuables, and she joined in the cleanup. Knocking over her beloved pile may not have been a textbook psychological move, but it did get Nika to do things she hadn’t done in years: engage, take control, and make decisions.
The hoarder has usually been avoiding emotions for so long that getting back in touch with them is scary and painful. We want hoarders to reconnect with their emotions, and expressing