The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [60]
When cleaning starts, hoarders tend to pick up and clutch items in their hands without putting them down. Pretty soon their arms and pockets start to fill up like they are a squirrel storing for the winter. They talk very fast and won’t look people in the eye. These are sure signs that anxiety is taking over. Someone having an anxiety attack simply can’t function.
Dealing with anxiety is not necessarily the job of the cleanup crew, which is why it’s essential to have a trusted and empathetic advocate on call—a therapist, social worker, or clergyman—who is not involved in the physical cleanup. Depending on the severity of the hoarder’s anxiety, the cleanup may be halted briefly, or for a longer time if other professional and emotional support is needed.
Trying to power through the cleaning process with a hoarder having an anxiety attack will only make it worse. Ignoring these emotions and not listening to the hoarder could cause major issues down the road for the cleaning and the relationship.
▶ Retreating into Denial
Most hoarders are in denial at some level. Even hoarders who finally seem ready to clean up may head right into denial once the process begins. That’s where Thalia went. Even before she locked herself in her car and tried to swallow the pills, Thalia was rationalizing everything. She talked about how all of her things had importance, her mess wasn’t that bad, and she wasn’t even a hoarder.
Unlike the other potential responses, denial is a dealbreaker . I’ll clean up a house full of anxiety any day of the week, but a house full of denial will stay full. When I hear denial from a hoarder, I stop everything and we talk. Often the hoarder will admit to being scared and that the process is hard. I will assure the hoarder that I respect that honesty and the fact that he or she is willing to take on such a difficult challenge. On some jobs that same conversation has been repeated every day.
I had planned to give Thalia two days to come around and hopefully face her issues. I frequently reminded her that when my crew first came on she had already acknowledged that her hoarding was a problem. I asked her how that had changed. I was waiting for the moment when she would admit that she needed to stop hoarding. Most of the hoarders I work with eventually get there, but Thalia never did.
When a hoarder like Thalia keeps insisting that everything is fine, then the cleanup is probably premature. When I hear denial, I don’t get angry, because I’ve come to understand that it’s an integral part of a hoarder’s mental process. But I also don’t waste my time trying to clean up a house that I know will be full again in six months.
▶ Dealing with Grief
Not every hoarder is grieving from a recent loss, but some have had deaths or divorces that they are still processing. Others grieve the loss of their stuff. This is normal, and helpers have a great opportunity to support a hoarder who needs to work through grief and let it go.
When I started cleaning houses for a living, my first paying customer was my grandmother. She hired me to help clean out her basement, which was full of gardening equipment, tools, and boxes of my late grandfather’s things. My grandmother was not a hoarder; we were just trying to help each other out.
While I simply wanted to get the job done, about halfway through, I realized that she was struggling emotionally. She wasn’t ready yet to let my grandfather’s things go. Instead, she wanted to spend time enjoying the happy memories those things brought up.
I had been volunteering for about two years at Comfort Zone Camp, a camp for bereaved children in Richmond, Virginia. As part of our counselor training, they taught us some techniques for encouraging kids to talk about their grief. When I saw that my grandmother was deep in that same grieving place, I decided to use some of the techniques I had learned with the kids.
So, instead