Retired and downsizing

I was retired from psychiatric practice and preparing to downsize and move to Lincoln. It was the time to wrestle a bit with what to keep and what to let go of. Thoughts of keeping everything entered my mind which, of course, led to to my wondering if I was actually on a hoarding spectrum. After all, isn’t everyone always gathering things and letting other things go and experiencing the satisfaction of the former and disappointment after the latter and still wanting more?

I wasn’t happy imagining myself on a hoarding spectrum, so for reassurance, I looked for outright differences between me and traditional hoarders. These were, of course, obvious. People who weren’t hoarders seemed comfortable with symbolic meanings and emotions behind some of the things they collected and kept. People who were hoarders, at least in my experience, seemed not to operate with those features. For example, downsizers like me want to keep items because we don’t feel ready to let go of them because… we don’t feel ready to. That’s a feeling, an emotion. Hoarders, in contrast — or so it seemed to me — give as reasons for holding onto something petty rationalizations and weak excuses. I never remembered them mentioning symbolic meanings for the stuff they collected. And the only emotion they manifested, at least in my memory, was an anxiety and fear of stuff being taken from them.

Regrets

In my practice, this topic of hoarding was of no particular interest. Yes, sometimes there was a spouse in the background complaining, but that was only a distraction from my patient’s purpose in consulting me. Sometimes there were neighbor’s complaints that pointed to a public health hazard. I’d visit, see for myself, and give police and public health authorities the green light to intervene. That was it. I never saw a patient for actual treatment for hoarding because hoarders simply weren’t the ones who complained. Those were the spouses and neighbors.

My epiphany

I knew that research had always admitted that the causes for hoarding behavior were unclear; that stressful life events like death of a loved one, divorce, eviction, material deprivation, and losses like possessions in a fire — truly rocky roads — had long been under consideration but never advancing beyond the rank of “suspected.” For me, retired and in lockdown, there was ample time for reflecting. I could see more clearly, here and now, that that formulation was sadly incomplete. It made no reference to life events that never happened. Maybe, I found myself thinking, for some, it was not the “rocky road” that was the cause of the hoarding but the “road never taken,” meaning the loss of a something was not a loss but an absence. I began to be aware that maybe the hoarder’s complaints never went beyond the fear of something being taken from them because there was no need to say more; that said it all. Their fear wasn’t of something being taken from their custody or ownership. Their fear was of losing part of their Selves.

“What If”s

I revisited the common definition of hoarding. I read that it was “a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them.” But now I wondered, what if the hoarding behavior was because something was already missing and the hoarding served as an antidote for that? Moreover, what if hoarded stuff represented a gathering of substances to hold on to because they kept you from disappearing? They helped you hold on to yourself…your Self? What if, in this way, hoarders felt grounded and safe? Might parting with any of it — with any part of one’s Self — have been experienced as an amputation of a body part? And might this be why hoarders seem to be going nowhere, just waiting; unappreciated, useless, and aging together just like their clutter of stuff and, in their own way, buried in it, even though not yet dead.

Putting myself in the hoarder’s shoes elicited from me the following lament:

I feel empty. I have to keep that relentless sense of emptiness at bay. It’s as if something of me is missing but I don’t know what that is. I never did, except that it was some “thing.” Which is why I collect and keep “things.” Their meaning is that they’re mine — thus, I have more — thus, I am more. I am what I have; I have, therefore I am – that sort of meaning. Thus, letting things go means a part of me is gone. That’s how it feels, anyway. It may look like I’m trying to fill an emptiness already here. I’m just trying to keep it from getting worse, keep myself — my Self — from disappearing.

Think of it this way and using different metaphors, I can see my hoarding as essentially my home-made field dressing for a wound I have that won’t heal, a hemorrhaging that won’t stop. It’s an instinct, aimed at keeping a fragile and limited sense of “wholeness” from slipping away even further. In short, I’m here only because all that stuff is here with me.

Back in my own shoes, and lockdown increasingly unlocking, I was left with one final “what if”: What if this hypothetical formulation of mine is actually a path that could lead inside a hoarder’s head. And what if — once a corrective-type emotional experience can be identified, prescribed, and applied — that’s also a path that can lead the hoarder out?