Hoarding - what causes it?

I can agree that certain parts of medicine have become PC such as changing the status of Transgenders in the DSM etc, however, I fail to see how labeling hoarding as anxiety and OCD is part of any political correctness framework. Its honestly rather straightforward. Doctors treat symptoms, NOT a diagnosis when it comes to mental illness. Beyond any shadow of a doubt the symptoms that they are exhibiting are anxiety, OCD, and often times depression.

 

a) The proliferation of obesity is commonly referred to as an 'epidemic'. Many medicos also actually regard it as a disease state.

b) Poor impulse control has NOTHING to do with IQ, or even poverty.

c) Hoarding has NOTHING to do with 'love'.

There is an 'epidemic' of obesity, and hoarding is a function of poor impulse control.

 

Impulse is unpremeditated, and it stems from a compelling desire or irrationality. I would argue that in some cases it could be a reaction to a perceived lack of being loved. In any case it involves a deficiency that can be real, exaggerated, imaginary, or even physiological. The latter form can involve internal irritability (e.g. metabolic imbalance, allergic tension fatigue).

I don't see where the extent of control is the deciding factor. A compelling irrationality is not resolved by tougher control efforts. Hence "poor impulse control" is not inclusive enough. On the other hand, it would sure grease the wheels of OCD tendency.

 

Yes, I do, doesn't everyone have stacks of money hidden in their home? Some people think they have stacks of money in the bank but they won't when the bank doors won't open or the IRS seizes their account.

Some people think they have stacks of money in their 401k, but they dont, all they have is hope and faith.

I also have a room full of food and new clothes. Not because I am prepping for the apocalypse but because here on the ranch there often can be hard times and money is short.

In the sixties I was taught in public school that hoarding was having more than is needed for your immediate needs while others had nothing and that was immoral, I disagreed then and i disagree now. We all had the same opportunity to plan for the future(the destitute excluded).

 

1) 'lack of love'? 'internal irritability'? these are 'complexifiers', designed to avoid calling a spade a spade. hoarders lack impulse control .. and while comorbidities can certainly exist, they almost always stem from this essential defect. the core of the problem is that poor impulse control.

2) and of course impulse control is the deciding factor. it's behind almost all similar issues (obesity, addiction, gambling, shopaholism, etc). impulse control is learned in childhood, and some people simply miss this essential learning. The problem may be kept in check via the presence of others (marriage, work, parenting, or any other people-centred activity) for years or decades, only to surface once all the pressure is off. Or it may be apparent from teen years.

FTR, the impulse, in the case of hoarding, is to do nothing. the sufferer isn't genuinely attached to the stuff ... they just don't want to do the relentless work of maintaining a home. all apparent 'dependence' (upon the hoard) is simply deep resistance to external demands for order, it's not actually about the margarine containers and trash bags.

 

Your arguments are strong until the very end. Mess with diminishing a collector's/hoarder's stuff and they go bananas. It's got to be some kind of mental attachment. Same with pedophiles, sex addicts and some murderers: putting exaggerated mental value/indulgence where is doesn't belong.

Edit: It's the same thing with getting too carried away with wild game hunting or excessive youthful persistence in killing bird pests with a BB gun. It's just runaway indulgence of the mind, "never enough." That's definitely not an impulse reaction but a mindset pattern, an adopted habit.

Correction is not done by throttling the impulse, but by changing/diminishing/renouncing the attachment/desire.

 

Definitely not the case. Her mother was not the least bit untidy, even living alone in her old age. Her mother was a functional alcoholic and a heavy smoker though.

I think probably something snapped and there was no going back. When a woman loses her baby there is no undoing that. She was also under a lot of stress at the time trying to provide for her other children, while her husband was off spending all his money picking up women in bars and betting on the horse races. What they used to call a "good for nothing" husband back then.

Ironically her own family had forbid her to marry him, and then practically disowned her when she rebelled against their wishes and married him anyway. Before they got married he made it very clear to her that he wasn't going to provide for her.

He later went on to have countless affairs with other married women, and as unbelievable as it may sound, on more than one occasion I'm told these married women bought him expensive cars. Supposedly he was a real charmer.

 

There's your answer. Poor impulse control

 

Could have something to do with lack of love. Her mother's mother died when she was still very young (although she came from a fairly wealthy family) so there may have been an absence of a motherly role. And then her mother, in turn, was off perpetually drinking and partying all the time in France, and didn't have much care for her daughter.

It's difficult to say how much of this was affected by life circumstance and how much has a genetic component.

I think it's safe to say she did not feel loved and was, in a sense, rejected by her own mother, so she rushed into a relationship with a guy.

 

Yes ... 'going bananas' is the hoarder acting out their resistance to change. It's not 'mental attachment', it's simply focusing their resistance (to change) upon objects. They're screaming "I must keep that!", but what they're really screaming is "I don't want order, because order equates to the relentless daily work I don't want to do! Keeping my stuff allows me to continue being unable to clean!"

Correction is done by teaching impulse control. It's never too late to learn, but it requires very committed partners in the enterprise. In practice, people with this particular deficit should never live alone. They need to be treated like small children (which is essentially what they are), and compelled to be answerable to others 24/7.

 

And there's your answer again, back a generation. It always comes back to poor modelling of self control. It's never about 'love', although there are bleeding hearts who would like you to think so. PLENTY of people survive zero love (orphans raised in institutions etc) without becoming hoarders.

 

I'm guilty of it! I save every new paper because I'm an semi-pit master and use them to start the cans. And I also horde Ammo simply because I love reloading it, but from time to time I burn a lot of it up camping and boating and summer plinking, other then that I'm almost normal, I THINK

 

If it's organised and clean, it's not an issue. If it's sitting there, not touched for months or years, it's a 'hoard'

 

A) You're not a shrink, so stop trying to psychoanalyze people.

B) You're not a doctor or else you wouldn't refer to them as "medicos".

C) Just because an error has become commonplace doesn't make it any less of an error. It has become commonplace for people to pronounce "our" as "are" (and to spell it that way), but it's still wrong. It has become commonplace to spell the past tense of "lead" as "l-e-a-d" instead of "l-e-d", but it's still wrong. And it has become commonplace to believe that just because Hillary Clinton hasn't been prosecuted that she must be innocent, but it's still wrong. Similarly, using epidemic to describe something that people do to themselves is a misuse of terminology. There is no epidemic of drug abuse, there is no epidemic of obesity, and there is no epidemic of the misuse of terminology by the general public, although it has become frighteningly widespread. These are not diseases.

D) Poor impulse control has a lot to do with IQ, and poverty is correlated with IQ, so poor impulse control is correlated with poverty.
"“It has been known for some time that intelligence and self-control are related, but we didn’t know why. Our study implicates the function of a specific brain structure, the anterior prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last brain structures to fully mature”, said Dr. Shamosh."
https://www.psychologicalscience.or...nk-between-intelligence-and-self-control.html
"But, as averages, [IQ does] measure something significant about groups of individuals, correlating quite well, for instance, with income."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-fight-poverty-raise-iq-scores-1450396683

E) Your suggestion in the next post that hoarding comes from being too lazy to clean up is also way off base. If that were the only consideration, they would have no problem letting someone else clean up, but that's not the case. They refuse to let other people touch their stuff or to throw anything away for them. So you know nothing about hoarding, stop trying to pretend you do.

This whole article would be good for you to read, but here's a particularly apt quote: "In other words, hoarders assign too much value to their possessions, making it difficult or impossible to decide to get rid of them."
http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/...-brain-a-unique-problem-with-decision-making/
So you see it has absolutely zero to do with laziness or impulse control. Question: Why do they assign too much value to their possessions? Because of a lack of love in their lives, either real or perceived.

But very few of them turn out "normal". They tend to have severe emotional problems of one kind or another, and hoarding can be one of them.

 

IQ itself is a function of impulse control. Poor parental attention to focus, discipline, routine, and commitment (all features of good impulse control) .. result in poor educational outcomes in children. But even prior to that, poor parental attention to engagement with the infant child has significant negative impact on synaptic development - directly affecting IQ. ALL of this is seen in caregivers with poor impulse control.

Poverty (in the west) is also a function of impulse control. Poverty, addictions, obesity, hoarding, gambling, 'stupidity' etc ... all are related. It's very basic stuff. There is considerably less complexity than the thwarters of efficacious healthcare would have you believe.

And lastly, you're missing a vital point about the laziness thing. People who are determined to protect their hard-won 'lifestyle' (that of the hoarder, in this case) will necessarily transfer their outrage and grief (at being asked to change) to the objects they use to avoid responsibility. You're looking at the picture from a simplistic and credulous perspective, in believing what the patient is saying. You're not factoring in that such people will do almost anything (lie, cheat, steal) to retain the chaos which 'prevents' them from getting off their arse.

PS: you misfired on another couple of observations, but I let you figure that out.

 

My friend Bob is kind of borderline I think. He still has all his bowling scores from 30 years ago and golf cards for each mens club event. But he is meticulous. He saves every receipt and checks them against every bill. Almost everything he owns is as comfortable as an old shoe which he has plenty of. He has a little trouble making decisions - like what to order in a restaurant. He seems to contain it to his garage. I think because it drives his wife nuts. As far as I know he had no problems as a kid and he is quite well to do. So I have no idea what causes it.

 

I find it hard to reconcile domestic laziness with the concomitant ambition and motive in such persons. No, they just want more and more and more. There must be more than one type of "pathology" in this syndrome, and apparently you have encountered only the laggard type.

 

That's a stiff requirement that sounds good in theory and may work in a viable partnership, but it gets sabotaged when the relentless offender has the upper hand, as homeowner or provider for subordinates. The "offender" makes sure the domestic "adversaries" are fighting a losing battle.

 

So much opinion and not an ounce of fact to back it up. I provided facts and links, you provided nothing. Except in third world countries and among the extremely poor, early childhood factors have relatively little to do with IQ, and what factors do have to do with IQ, the most important is nutrition, but like height, IQ has an upper limit which can be stymied by insufficient nutrition, but an excess of nutrition won't raise the child's upper limit. The child's upper limit is a function of heredity, with the child's IQ being generally within one standard deviation of the parents' IQ. And since IQ and impulse control are correlated but not causally related, your claim that IQ is a function of impulse control is so much bullshit, too. Sociopaths are a classic example of high IQ/low impulse control people. I would provide facts and links to back this up, but since you haven't read or responded to the ones I've already provided, I won't even bother.

I'm not paying any attention to what hoarders are saying, I am providing my perspective as someone who also had a high attachment to stuff. It has nothing to do with laziness. And I defy you to provide one study that suggests that it does.

 

Absolutely. They're some of the reasons why hoarding can be so intractable.

 

You have been seduced by the 'IQ is genetic' propaganda. It isn't. It's (in the absence of birth defect or brain injury) a product of late gestation and early childhood. The foundations for intellect are laid down in infancy, and built upon right up until early adulthood. I'm going to assume you're a lay person or in a non-related field, since you seem unaware of just how synaptic pathways are triggered and firmed. You haven't even mentioned the importance of synaptic efficiency in IQ. You also appear to be unaware of research into stimulus deprivation and poor carer engagement - two fields which demonstrate well, just important environment is to IQ.

Upshot, there is no 'upper limit' to the IQ. Thinking that there is, however, suggests to me that there may be exceptions. IOW .. it's an incredibly dumb conclusion. Not to mention, an absolutely terrible approach to parenting. "my kid can't do the math because he's stupid. it's not because I failed to support his math learning" "he's stuck with being a dumb-dumb .. he'll have to be a janitor" ... and lastly, my favourite "yay .. I don't have to do anything, because he's just dumb".

Meantime ... I KNEW it (my bold). All along, my suspicion was high. Thanks for coming clean.

 

I partially agree with you. It's just IQ is both a function of environment and biology, not only environment. Yes, how a child is brought up is extremely important, though there are still limits. Yes, there are limits to human intelligence.

 

What you call "propaganda" I call research and science. Look into the studies of twins raised apart. Not only are their personalities extremely similar, their IQ's are nearly identical, within three points, generally speaking. The only times stimulus deprivation and poor care interfere with synaptic development are in the most extreme cases, like less than one in a thousand in developed countries. All efforts at raising IQ's have failed dismally. Head Start, the most ambitious such program, seemed to have some positive effect at the elementary school level, but the effect had disappeared by high school, with the children who had participated not doing any better than their siblings and neighbors who had not. Educational approaches to raising IQ fail because IQ determines how well you learn, not vice versa. Even the vaunted Mozart effect was later debunked.

"Contrary to popular opinion, research finds no cognitive benefits to musical training"
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/12/muting-the-mozart-effect/

 

I disagree. Most strongly.

Parent as though the intellect of your children is entirely in your hands, and you will do far far better than a parent who chooses to believe it's our of his/her hands.

 

The twin studies are flawed. IQ begins late in pregnancy.

And any education-based attempts to raise IQ are flawed in their very premise. IQ (and learning ability) is built by the home environment, not by school.