Note: This is now ancient history, but relevant, the seeds of doubt. This is me talking from a couple years ago ; I didn't have nearly the current revelations at the time, I was still working with the established "hoarding" and "hoarder" terminology ( which I'm now calling to abolish ). But the reasoning and the concerns are still valid, considering the level of understanding as of that time. I now consider that there is possibly no such thing as "hoarding" period, based on the fact that no proper clear and complete case examples have been presented in the "hoarding" books ; and that each case should instead be dealt with using the Systems Approach, asking The Questions, and considering mitigation according to the profile thus developed, without loss of generality. So, as far as the rant went, it describes the seeds of doubt of the whole "hoarding" concept very much in line with the current, much stronger understanding.
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Original video: [Rant - True Hoarding or False Hoarding ? An Information Problem ?]
Is it true hoarding or false hoarding ?
Is there such a thing ?
That question has been on my mind lately.
The definition of hoarding according to books, and the DSM according to the books -
.. it seems to me is sufficiently wishy-washy and multifaceted that almost anyone can qualify at one time or another.
I remember I was moving from my University Residence back to the city via my mom's place.
I temporarily landed at my mom's place, with a whole lot of my stuff, and the living room definitely resembled what anyone would call a giant messy inaccessible hoard at that time, but that was just a collision of two different apartments in one, and it eventually got moved apart without any further inconvenience.
All these definitions and different scenarios, different types, different facets of it, are such that I think - there could be zero common elements between two separate cases, and they would still call it "hoarding" - the specialists - therapists, consultants, book authors..
You got a "hoard", you are "hoarding", you are a "hoarder", they would say, and yet..
Is there or is there not an active acquisition habit ?
Is there or is there not "emotional attachment", as they call it, to all these objects ?
I know for sure I don't have it, emotional attachment..
My attachment is largely logical and informational and, sure, "obsessive compulsive" in places, some of those are compulsions, some of those are obsessions, but nonetheless I don't feel there is any emotional attachment, there is no distress as they call it, from.. no emotional distress, at least, as they describe it in books.
It does not change with time - if something was discarded wrongly, the emotional and logical components don't change with time for me.
A thing that was discarded wrongly years ago - I still feel bad about it, I'm still unhappy about it, I still remember it to exactly the same degree.
So I definitely disagree that I personally have "emotional attachment".
I call it logical and informational, but..
I also don't have an active acquisition habit.
I can walk up and down a dollar store, or any store for that matter, and buy precisely nothing without any trouble whatsoever.
I can look at everything in great detail, but I will not buy anything, because I don't need to, for various reasons, which I also explained separately, some of them, so..
And yet a significant other comes in and says, there's a "hoard", you are a "hoarder"..
A consultant, a therapist comes in, they also start treatment, dealing with it like with a "hoard", so..
And yet it's a whole different degree and a whole different game, compared to, say, some elderly senile person.
And another distinction is, I believe with favorable conditions - time, energy, lack of distractions, lack of stress - I, or someone like me, would be well in a position to clean up the "hoard" perfectly well - to not admit any new materials, to process what has been piled up, to sort it, to organize it, to consume materials, to process bits that represent information, to the point where it would be no longer classified as a hoard by any definition.
So, is that true "hoarding" or false "hoarding" ?
I have my doubts.
I think there's definitely much that is wrong with all these definitions and labels.
How can you describe something as a condition, classify something as a condition, and a health condition, a mental condition, a psychological condition, when there can be zero common elements between two cases ? ( p.s. besides the "Dysfunction in Possessions", that is )
That does not make sense to me.
That does not add up.
So, intuitively, tentatively, I would assume that there is indeed such a thing as true "hoarding" and false "hoarding".
Perhaps I would delineate it as someone who could, given favorable conditions, get their stuff under control, versus someone who couldn't, who would continue acquiring, continue consuming space, fail or be unable to or refuse to organize, and so on and so forth.
So that's what I think.
In this project, this quest to find, identify, verbalize and share insights and methods to mitigate this, I think there's a chance to be helping both of those categories. Perhaps false "hoarding" more than true "hoarding", but I believe there is improvement to be made.
And a second related insight I made was, I think it's largely an information problem.
It's less about stuff and more about information..
Perhaps not completely, but.. and, it's more about information for false "hoarding", but there is definitely a large degree of information, information related issues in both.
Now, I'm an IT guy, I'm a programmer and a system administrator, databases, all that jazz..
So you could think, yes, it's natural for me to think of everything as an information problem, because, well, when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail, and my hammer is information handling, so..
And yet, I really do believe this, and..
I'll demonstrate with one example for a start.
Let's say you are in need of some tool, let's say a hammer, a particular hammer, and it got misplaced in the "hoard", or in some some sort of clutter, in a very cluttered garage..
Now, you might spend half a day searching for it ; fail to find it ; and then be forced, because you do need to complete some work with that, be forced to go to a store and buy another one, perhaps an identical one ; spending half a day searching for it, and some amount of money ; and then some additional space to store the new one ; only to find the original one a month and a half later ; so now you have two, and the return period on the new one has now expired.
How is this an information problem ?
There was one tiny bit of information that was crucial to handling this in this way or better, and that is ..
Where was the original hammer ?
What happened to it ?
And perhaps the truth is, during some reshuffling, during some attempt at a clean up, or a move, or you had to shove things out of the way to accommodate something or other, or to do something.. it got shoved into some drawer or box or some place not native to it, and then that fact completely slipped your mind.
So there's this small bit of information - where's the original hammer - that, not having it caused all of this trouble, and you simply didn't think of making a record or a note of that in the shuffle.
You didn't have time. ( p.s. from the future - Aha! There's a cue - persistent resource shortage, of time in this case )
You didn't think it would come to this.
You'd think you would have cleaned up, organized things better by the time you needed it, and so on and so forth.
And I think, by the way, a solution to that would be having a good organization system and including some sort of inventory tracking system, to keep good track of your stuff - where everything is supposed to be, and combined with actively overseeing that it goes there.
So that's just.. but that's just one example, where a huge problem resulted from not having a bit of information, and it could have been solved with a bit of information, or generally an information discipline, of keeping a good physical and informational organization system.
That's just one obvious example.
Generally, it's an information problem in so many different ways - knowing how to organize, knowing where things are, having the right methods and tools and skills and systems in place to handle this information problem better, having information on what you have, having information on where you have it, and then on a higher level why you have it, is worth considering..
Having a better perspective on the realistic usefulness of this to you, or on ways to use something, how much of it you have.
There's also these mementos, these keepsakes type of items, that definitely touch on the information aspect, and they are in fact being tokens, representatives of information..
Mementos from a vacation, that remind you that you went on this vacation, and where you got this particular item, and under what circumstances..
That's all information, and I could go on like that forever.
But, I am fairly confident that it is to a large degree an information problem, not problem with stuff, and as such it can be solved as an information problem, by information related solutions, and.. which, again, I am very well positioned to be tackling, being an IT guy, a programmer..
And I have actually my own systems that I've been developing to that effect and using successfully to solve just these kinds of problems, among them tracking items.
Need to have suitable information systems, need to have discipline, and this may well alleviate much of these problems.
Anyway, this is all very much food for thought and an open-ended question.
I'll be examining and sharing more of methods, insights and so on, but I wanted to get this out there, and perhaps other people will chime in with their thoughts.
I've also been thinking whether "hoarding" and "hoards" should be considered merely a technical condition ( p.s. from the future - Yes!!!), separate from whatever compulsions, obsessions, attachments and whatever other emotional, psychological aspects might be involved.
In saying all this, by the way, I don't mean to imply that people shouldn't seek appropriate psychological or medical help, counselling - by all means, you should.
But, at the same time, I have a feeling that often these fine professionals aren't suitably equipped to handle those other informational aspects.
In any case, I believe we should always look for the root causes and underlying issues that.. that lead to the technical condition of "hoarding" and the "hoard", and only then can we determine how to best approach this, whatever that involves.
I'm a technical guy so.. and I have an knack for solving problems, and I think these are largely problems that can be solved, to at least improve the situation significantly.
I'm not any kind of health related professional, as I mentioned in the intro, not even close, I am not qualified to be advising or not advising anything health or psychological related, by all means, consult the appropriate professionals.
All of this is just my opinions.
That's it.
Bye for now !
( p.s. from the future - this was absolutely on point, as the more recent revelations since then show abundantly )