What is Compulsive Hoarding (Hoarding Disorder)
There are a lot of compulsions a person with OCD suffers from. They may wash their hands more frequently than normal or even scrubs the wall over and over again. In order to do away of the recurrence of unwanted thoughts, individuals most likely result to performing repetitive actions and behaviors.
Having heard of compulsive hoarding, what comes into your mind? What is your hoarding definition? Compulsive hoarding is best defined as excessively acquiring or keeping unnecessary things, to the extent that one fails to discard any of it. All things that a hoarder has acquired will be kept inside his house, making narrow living space and working on daily life’s activity not easy.
A person who compulsively hoards is suffering from hoarding syndrome. There are a lot of underlying causes of hoarding syndrome; namely family history, genetic predisposition, and response to any traumatic or stressful life events.
Research shows that a predisposing factor to hoarding syndrome is the familial history. Family upbringing greatly affects an individual’s personality. They say that this particular syndrome begins at the adolescence stage and usually worsens as the person ages.
According to Freud’s psychosexual developmental theory, there are five stages of development an individual must undergo. The first stage is the oral stage, followed by anal, phallic, latency and lastly, the genitalia stage. In relation to hoarding syndrome, a maladaptation happened during the anal stage of the person. In this stage, an individual must have developed most of his bodily functions; do toilet training, muscular control and walking. When a person accomplishes his anal stage, he is to develop will power and self-control in him. But, in a hoarder’s case he was not able to meet the said stage. Most likely the person will develop impulsivity and compulsion; greediness and hoarding are just a few of the manifestations of a person whose anal stage was not satisfied at all.
In addition to the cause of compulsive hoarding, a response to any traumatic or stressful life events can also be a risk factor for persons with hoarding syndrome. Loss, in particular, is one of the debilitating events that can be experienced by an individual. More so, death or loss of a loved one is an example. Because of the experience of loss, the individual has developed in him fears of losing something whether it is something important or not.
Furthermore, hoarding syndrome is much associated with perfectionism. Even though a hoarder seemed to be messy and disorganized, the root could be because of him being a perfectionist. As a perfectionist, all work and decisions must be perfect. Nevertheless, perfectionist, who’s trying to be perfect all the time, tends to have problems in decision making. They can’t make the right decision of keeping a thing or not. So in order for them to avoid too much deciding, they simply keep everything.
Above all, compulsive hoarding poses a lot of health threats to an individual. They are at risk for fires, and any other injuries. So in order for this individual to be saved from any health threat, they must be treated immediately.
To get help for one’s hoarding compulsions there are inpatient and outpatient hoarding treatment centers that are staffed with experienced counselors and therapists that can evaluate a persons needs and establish a treatment program for them. With treatment a hoarder can change their compulsive behaviors for life and free themselves of the troubles related to living in a mess.
Read more here on → Hoarding Disorder: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment
