For a recovering hoarder — I gave away everything I had accumulated over six years in one cathartic sweep last year — A&E TV’s hit new show ‘Hoarders‘ is a fascinating morality tale of how our possessions own us as much as we own them –
Each 60-minute episode of Hoarders is a fascinating look inside the lives of two different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis. Whether they’re facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, they are all desperately in need of help. In a fly-on-the-wall style, we’ll capture the drama as experts work to put each on the road to recovery. But cleaning is just the first step, like taking drugs away from an addict. The healing won’t be easy. For some, throwing away even the tiniest thing — a sponge, a button, an empty box — is so painful that they will not be able to allow the cleaning to be completed, no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer’s guidance give them the strength to recover. At the end of each episode we’ll find out who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay and who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.
Rob Walker adds in his NYT column ‘Consumed’ –
Hoarding has been considered a subtype or a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but recent research suggests that it is something distinct, according to Gail Steketee, dean of the school of social work at Boston University and co-author of a forthcoming book, “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things.” While most hoarders have trouble controlling the urge to acquire, the more severe problems involve an irrational reluctance to let go, out of fear that they’ll throw out something they need or because of the memories a thing represents. “People who hoard are saving things for the same reasons that the rest of us are,” she says. Only more so.
@hoardersTV on Twitter underlines the idea that the freaks on the reality show aren’t all that different from the rest of us –
We all have something that is hard to give up. What object has sentimental value to you?
What are you hoarding? Feel free to share your deepest darkest secrets in the comments below.
