Hoarding and endless grief for lost things

• I have major hoarding problems, co-morbid with depression and anxiety, for extra fun and challenge. This is further complicated by the fact that I often grieve for lost, broken or discarded things endlessly, and the feelings never seem to heal. These feelings add to my depression and inhibit dealing with the hoarding issues. Can anyone offer advice not so much on how to get rid of items but on how to deal with sustained distress from having done so? I have hoarding problems that go back to early childhood. I can’t remember a time when I was comfortable getting rid of stuff. I have also suffered severe depression and anxiety since my early teens (I’m now in my mid-30s), which complicate the hoarding tendencies. I am on medication and currently in long-term therapy for the depression and I have discussed hoarding issues. However, it’s not my therapist’s specialty and I think non-hoarders find it difficult to even imagine how deep the feelings go. I don’t buy many things – I’m generally very frugal – but items I already own and free stuff are a major problem. I have read Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, which I thought was extremely insightful, but failed to help me with the grief I experience over things already lost. One of the points made in the book was that hoarders often over-estimate the grief or distress that they will feel once they have got rid of an item. The implication is that if they can actually decide to part with something, they will either find that the process was not as painful as they anticipated, or that the distress diminishes over time. My problem is that I often grieve things for years and years after they are gone, and the grief only seems to grow. As someone with depression, my negative feelings are very, very resilient – I did not have a single good day between October 2009 and about February 2012, so the idea that “you’ll feel bad but it will pass” does not really work for me. I remember being pressured to get rid of things as a child – and all those things still haunt me. Everyday items (like household china) that got broken haunt me. A few years ago, my ex got into difficulties while moving house, and had to leave all his old college work and poems behind. When I found out, even though the things were not mine, I was distraught. And now, every time I think of the lost things, I can go into a spiral of misery that lasts hours or days. The emotion always feels fresh and raw. This particularly applies to things that were taken from me, but I also regret many things I chose at the time to get rid of. I feel as if I am bearing the weight not only of the things I currently hoard but that I am dragging behind me all these ghost items that are physically lost but emotionally still present. My memory is too good – and my mind is always running over and over the loss, like probing the space left by a missing tooth. I don’t try to evoke these thoughts but other things remind me, and then I can’t get rid of them. Both the hoarding and the emotional reaction to parting with items are extremely debilitating. It sounds terrible, but in some ways I grieve the loss of things more than people, partly because I think I could have saved them and I didn’t. There was little I could have done to save my grandmother’s life, but I feel if I had done more or cared more or tried harder, I could have saved all these other things from being lost. The loss is bound up with guilt. Do I love these things? Sometimes yes – in many other cases, no. They feel… indefinably important. I worry more about what will happen to them than to me. I am aware that I am *severely* emotionally messed up and that disproportionate attachments to things are likely related to my fear of people (including my own family) and inability to bond with them. I generally regret and blame myself for most things I’ve done or not done in my life, and the losses are also connected to this. I have had multiple breakdowns and been hospitalised for depression, and I am trying to get to the root of my overall problems, but I feel I need specific help for the hoarding aspects too, which so far has been hard to come by. Clearly, knowing that the pain of getting rid of something might follow you around for years and grow, is a massive disincentive to parting with anything. I was just wondering if anyone else experiences the same problems of unprocessed or extended grief for lost items (or knows someone else who does), and if they might possibly have any advice for me? Or advice for dealing with my underlying turbulent headsoup that might help with the hoarding problems? Sorry for the monstrously long post… Thank you if you’ve made it this far. I wasn't sure where this question should go, but I was thinking Health (in terms of obvious shaky mental health implications).

• Answer:

  I'm a neuroscientist by profession, and (with the caveat that neuroscience is largely an unknown field of study), it sounds like you probably have a wiring problem with your brain. Many if not most people do respond to losses like you do. Just not losses of things. It has to do (maybe?) with the fact that the amygdala, the part of the brain that is involved in certain types of emotional processing, never really heals. In some animals (not well understood in humans b/c we can't test them the same way), changes in the amygdala after trauma, fear, etc., are irreversible, for a lifetime. Or at least, for months and months and months, for as long as the experiments have been done. It's rather impressive how long the amygdala can remember things. The amygdala does forget but it's not easy or complete, and requires certain types of interventions, and is situation specific. It sounds like you are having similar amygdala changes for objects instead of people, which could be the result of a miswiring. And it so happens that the amygdala has a really long memory. Just my guess. The bad news -- there isn't a cure. That is, there isn't a chemical cure. However, if you do have an amygdala problem, you might benefit from the same types of treatments (not cures) that have been used and developed for decades for people who suffer from PTSD and trauma. Finding a therapist who can actually help you is going to be a challenge, but maybe look for someone with a PhD and many years of specific experience. I would look for therapists that specialize in either hoarding or trauma, who have PhDs, and who have been practicing for a while. You should interview ~5-10 prospects before choosing one for yourself. You can print this if you like. Basically what exists in the canon of amygdala cures is: exposure therapy, mindfulness meditation, yoga, storytelling where you can get outside support, EMDR, and recently there is some evidence of low dose psychedelics (psilocybin) helping in ptsd. You might also need huge lifestyle changes in your future to avoid more trauma for yourself, which basically amount to finding ways to a) bring fewer objects into your life that you'll lose, and b) finding a good home for objects when you have to part with them, or maybe even using some kind of ritual or ceremony, to minimize the trauma. PS, this is probably not a "chemical imbalance." "Chemical imbalance" is a term pharma companies have invented to sell us chemicals. Some problems are not "chemical" in that you have some chemicals that can be imbalanced. You probably have a physical wiring problem where way too many areas of your brain are connected to your amygdala than should be. Chemicals might soothe some of the effects of that, but they probably cannot be "rebalanced" in any way, just like if you grew an arm in the wrong place on your body, there isn't any chemical that could put it back where it belongs. (Sorry for the unpleasant analogy.) If everyone were wired the way you are, the world would look much different. We would probably have cultures designed around caring for "stuff" just like we care for people. So you are different from most people, it sounds like, even if it's invisible, and it's your challenge to find a place for yourself when you are different from the norm. I hope that's not too harsh of a thing to write. Your task is probably coping with your past losses in some of the imperfect ways that exist for other sorts of trauma, which will probably help ~40-75% with your feelings if done diligently. Though maybe you can get complete relief, it really depends on your own brain. Then (super important) working to minimize trauma in your future. Learning to say "no" to new stuff that you can't part with, for example. It sounds like a life-long challenge, probably, because if you continue to behave like regular people and accumulate stuff and throw it away, you will continue to traumatize yourself. So you'd need to find a way to manage in our world with your particular brain. And wait for scientists like me to discover better cures. I'm sorry that sounds bleak, but that's just my completely non medical opinion as a research scientist on the brain.