Arpita Bose, a retired architect, is fully aware that she has many more things than she needs. Her kitchen storage is overloaded, she has enough tableware to host a wedding party, and there are items from her wedding, the birth of her children, her upbringing, and her childhood. Most of these only exist because of her “emotional value of her”, but she refuses to get rid of them.
Bose suffers from a classic case of hoarding disorder (HD), defined by the American Psychiatric Association as people who “have persistent difficulty disposing of or getting rid of their possessions due to a perceived need to store them. Attempts to part with possessions create considerable distress and lead to the decision to save them. The resulting clutter disrupts the ability to use living spaces.”
So why do people hoard and what can they do to break this pattern?
A byproduct of history.
Sanjana Prasad, a Bangalore-based trauma-informed psychologist and psychotherapist, takes us back in time to understand how history can influence hoarding among Indians. “Historically and collectively as a society, we’ve always operated from the notion that there aren’t enough resources,” she says, noting that this mindset seeps into everything we do, including our tendency to hoard.
According to Prasad, Indians have a lot of generational trauma from the fact that the British Raj established their rule and took away resources from us, which we eventually “dealt with” by turning each other against each other, creating divisions in our own society and truly believing that survival was in Game. While the divide existed before we were colonized, it became more polarized after the British Raj. So much so that this meant providing for ourselves, even if it meant deprivation for someone else. a plastic bag,” she states.
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In short, our brains are constantly preoccupied with survival, which, in turn, causes us to accumulate things. “The survival brain tells us that if we don’t hoard to the point of depriving others, we’re not safe,” he says. , noting that we often end up looking for ways to keep things closer to ourselves. I’ll have to be prepared for it. This could be one of the main reasons why, as a society, we engage in hoarding behavior more often,” she says.
Understanding the Symptoms of Hoarding
Hoarding disorder (HD) comes from your genes. “Hoarding is hereditary. Heritability (a measure of how well differences in people’s genes explain differences in their traits) is between 36% and 50%, with the remaining variation attributable to non-shared environmental factors,” says Dr. Alok Kulkarni, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist at the Manas Institute of Mental Health, Hubli.
According to him, people who meet diagnostic criteria for HD experience persistent difficulty discarding or parting with their possessions due to a perceived need to save them. Items include newspapers, old clothes, bags, books, and paperwork. Disposal difficulties, he adds, are usually motivated by the perceived usefulness or aesthetic value of items, a strong sentimental attachment to possessions, fear of losing important information, a desire to avoid waste, or a combination of these factors. These difficulties result in the disorganized accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromise their intended use.
Sometimes it is so severe that affected people may not be able to sleep in their beds, cook in the kitchen, or sit on the couches in their living rooms. in garages, yards, vehicles, and even workplaces,” she says, adding that these people may end up paying for private storage spaces or asking family or friends to store items in their homes.
And yes, too many things can put people at risk for fires, falls, poor sanitation, and other health risks, adds Dr. Kulkarni. “Quality of life is severely affected and people with hoarding disorder have strained interpersonal relationships. You can also see judicial processes that range from forced clearings to evictions,” he says.
There are several common factors in the lives of people prone to hoarding, adds Prasad. To begin with, they often feel like they don’t feel like they belong. Hoarding helps them deal with this feeling of not belonging, she adds. As Dr. Kulkarni points out, other medical conditions, such as traumatic brain injury, cerebrovascular disease, CNS infections, such as herpes simplex encephalitis, and neurogenetic conditions, such as Prader-Willi syndrome, may trigger the urge to hoard. A diagnosis of hoarding disorder can only be made after ruling out other medical conditions, including autism spectrum disorder or a neurodegenerative disorder such as Alzheimer’s disease, adds Dr. Kulkarni.
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how do i handle it
Dr. Kulkarni believes that the intervention with the strongest evidence base for HD is a multicomponent psychological treatment that is based on a cognitive behavioral model. “This involves motivational interviewing to address ambivalence about therapy, educating on hoarding, goal setting, organization, decision-making, and problem-solving skills training; exposure to classification, discarding and non-acquisition; and cognitive strategies to facilitate these aforementioned interventions,” he says.
And yes, it helps to work with a mental health professional to understand the reason for the hoarding, Prasad says, adding that it’s important to dig into the past to understand how this behavior manifests in their lives. “Through therapy, trauma processing can be done to help these people move from their survival states into “rest and digest” mode, which should automatically help them choose healthier ways to deal with difficulties in life. their lives in the future and, more importantly, break the generational belief patterns that have been solidified. in the way you work,” she says.
Divya Naik is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist.
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