The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [79]
One problem for Lucy was that her therapist didn’t seem to get any insight into the extent of her issues. The therapist had never seen her house or spoken with her children. Like many hoarders, Lucy was saying the right things to hide her problem. She said that the therapist told her that she was doing just fine.
Aside from the lack of help she got from therapy, Lucy had also lost her main connection with the world when she retired, which contributed to a somewhat bleak picture of her situation. She was hoarding again, and she didn’t appear to have much incentive to stop. But for now, I still have to give Lucy a thumbs-up. The fact is that her relationship with her kids got much better after the cleanup. They used to yell at one another about the hoarding, but afterward they started to focus less on the hoarding and more on enjoying one another’s company outside the house.
Lucy is still trying, and her life got better, just not quite to where her family hoped it could be. Sometimes the family wants a cleanup much more than the hoarder does. That’s when the family just has to accept the relationship for what it is.
NIKA
Nika started off well, meeting with her organizer once a week. But after she started buying clothes again a few months after her cleanup, she canceled her organizer appointment. The organizer called Nika a few more times, but she never heard back. Eventually she gave up.
Even though she was a mid-stage hoarder, I was concerned about Nika because during her cleaning I noticed that her husband, Andre, understandably, wasn’t very encouraging. He had lived with this for years and had doubts. He was eager for the house to be clean, but he had adopted an attitude of “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Living with someone who was skeptical instead of supportive made it easy for Nika to let herself off the hook. If Andre didn’t think it was possible, why would Nika even bother to try? The lack of support was Nika’s main challenge.
I suspect that Nika decided that the organizer was pushing her too hard, and she just gave up on trying. Mid-stage hoarders like Nika have a good chance for a full recovery, but only if they have a few key factors in their favor. Support from loved ones can help these hoarders gather the energy to fight years of bad habits. Or therapy and organizational tips can give highly motivated hoarders the tools they need to build new habits and ways of thinking. Nika had a great organizer, but not the motivation or support to stick with it.
Once she quit meeting with her organizer, Nika didn’t have any elements of success working in her favor. I haven’t heard from her since her cleanup, and although her house is no doubt cleaner and she is in a better situation than before, I suspect she is still buying clothes.
ROXANNE
Roxanne had been hoarding in her trailer home ever since her children were young. She was forced to clean up at age sixty at her social worker’s insistence, so that home health care could safely visit the house.
At her age and given the amount of time she had been hoarding, it would have been a struggle for anyone to change those entrenched habits. Even though we might think of her as only a mid-stage hoarder, Roxanne had the additional challenge of being poor. A lifelong smoker and heavy drinker, she had developed throat cancer. Her liver was failing and she had to wear a colostomy bag. Doctors had told Roxanne that even with treatment, her time was short. Her goal was to get the trailer de-cluttered enough for hospice to be able to care for her during the cancer’s end stages, and we did that.
Roxanne had no family support. Her daughter hadn’t visited in ten years, and although the social worker had contacted her and explained Roxanne’s situation, the daughter wasn’t interested. Roxanne