Readers who follow this blog know how I feel about too much “stuff” and my own struggles with it, and why. I asked my readers for a guest post on hoarding, either their own experiences as a hoarder or their experiences living with a parent who was a hoarder. Dr. Brandi Stupica, of Professor Parenting, bravely volunteered not only to write a guest post, but to put her name on it. Follow her blog, by the way, for more about parenting from the perspective of a developmental psychologist. Also follow her on Facebook, even just to see her adorable baby. This guest post shines a light on this disorder and its terrible impact. Children of hoarders have particularly difficult relationships with their parents, probably because they act like the disorder is so “rational” yet children grow up in shameful squalor, believing that their parents care more about their hoard than they do about their children’s distress. This guest post is honest and moving, and thank you to my reader who shared it.

My mother is a bipolar, narcissistic hoarder. Normally, I would do the politically correct thing and say she is a person with so-and-so disorders, but in this case I know that those three words perfectly describe my mother. This post is about her hoarding, but her other comorbid psychopathologies feed her hoarding and have shaped my experiences with her.

When I turned nine, my mother started a cleaning business (Oh, the irony!) that she ran when she wasn’t working at her a full-time day job. Needless to say, she was barely at home. My father refused to do any housework. Instead, he forced me to take over what he saw as my mother’s duties at home. From the ages of nine to seventeen, I cooked dinner and kept house while I also raised my little sister and little brother. While my parents were still married, my mother’s hoarding wasn’t readily apparent because I took it upon my self to throw away anything I determined to be garbage or junk. Then, my parents separated and her hoarding took off like a rocket into space.

My parents’ separation and divorce set off my mom’s hoarding tendencies for two reasons. One, she no longer had the long shadow of my father’s abusive control looming over her, reigning in her tendency to “collect.” Two, because I chose to live with my father after the separation, I was never in charge of keeping her house running—I was only in charge of running my father’s household. She quickly started collecting Mary Moos, stupid little cow figures engaged in anthropomorphic behavior. She also started hoarding clothes. Her weight ballooned up and down and she bought new clothes for every new size without discarding the old clothes that no longer fit. She neglected housekeeping to the point that there would be six loads of dirty clothes stacked in the hallway with a load in the washer and a load in the dryer. The dirty dishes would build up and fester until she would either buy new dishes or finally break and spend hours doing dishes. As a result, she also, by default, started hoarding dishes and Tupperware. Her hoarding became so bad that I chose to live with my father who beat me with belts and hairbrushes when he wasn’t calling me a slut and a liar. At least at my father’s it was easier to keep house because there was less garbage and I could have my friends over and not be embarrassed by a load of dishes rotting in putrid water.

Then, when I was 15, I started going to therapy, which made me realize that my life was not typical and not okay. I didn’t deserve to be abused and neglected. I started to fight back, which resulted in a huge fight with police presence and me finishing out my last year and a half of high school under the custody of my mother. Her hoarding had been slowly getting worse, but now, with my new view of the world, life with her seemed like an upgrade. She didn’t beat me. She didn’t call me a whore. Instead of dealing with her hoarding, I spent nearly all of my time at my boyfriend’s house.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I finally felt the tethers of her hoarding start to loosen. I didn’t remain unscathed, however. I wasn’t able to go home for breaks and holidays because during my first quarter of college (10 weeks), she had hoarded so much in my room that I couldn’t sleep in it. She had started to collect people’s unwanted furniture. If I went home, I had to sleep on the couch. I spent my breaks with friends and holidays with boyfriends. One of my roommates took me home with her for a long weekend and that was the first time in over 10 years that I had the opportunity to sprawl out on the living room floor to watch television. That one experience touched me deeply. It’s remained my picture of what a good life for my child(ren) should look like ever since.

My mother’s hoarding is greatly influenced by major life changes over that she cannot control. Her hoarding started when she and my father separated. She had to get a storage unit bigger than my first apartment in DC to hold her growing hoard after I left for college. When I was a junior in college, a friend of hers died in Iraq. That Christmas she put up a Marine-themed tree in honor of him. The tree is still up, untouched, 10 years later. Shortly after his death, she upgraded to a larger storage unit. When she had a fall-out with my aunt, she got a second storage unit. When I got married and moved 6 hours away, her basement became unusable. When my sister went to college, her garage became unusable. When her dog died, she replaced him with three dogs and a fleet of 10 vehicles in various stages of disrepair and usability. Buy stocks in storage unit companies if my brother ever moves out. Her hoarding also escalates when she is going through a manic episode because of her wild spending and when she is going through a depressive episode because she doesn’t have the energy or focus to throw anything away.

Her hoarding seems to stem from her relationship with her father. From what she has recounted to me, he was a nasty, brutish man; more cruel than my father. She has many memories of working hard and saving to buy prized possessions and gifts for him as a child only to have her father sell her treasures or outright reject her gifts. For example, she saved her paper delivery money for over a year so she could buy a moped. A few months after she bought it, her father put an ad in the classifieds, sold it, and kept the money. She also tends to hoard things that remind her of happy things from her childhood. Specifically, she hoards vintage toys she had as a child (that her parents sold) and Christmas decorations. I can only imagine that her hoarding stems from such painful memories as a way of coping with her past traumas. She has, of course, made no such connection despite several observations made out loud in her presence that her “collecting” and her father’s theft of her possessions seem like they might be connected. The denial runs quite deep.

Her hoarding has left marks on me. Much like Dr. Psych Mom consciously decided not to be an anxious parent, I have consciously become an anti-hoarder. I revel in donating unused items and throwing things away. It comes at a price, though. I have pangs of anxiety whenever I receive a gift because I might have to keep the present or get rid of it, which will make me feel bad. My mother’s hoarding still affects me directly too. This past summer, my husband and I agreed to stay at her house for a few days while we visited family. We thought that she would de-clutter and clean the areas that we were going to be staying in. She had not. The kitchen, bathroom, living room, and dining room were all uninhabitable and dangerous. There wasn’t a clean, flat surface anywhere in the house that we could change our newborn. We arrived at 10pm. By 2am, we had booked a hotel room for the remainder of our stay. We stayed up all night just like in Hoarders fearful of dying from the hoard that surrounded us. We wouldn’t let our baby touch anything. Because we can’t gather at her house, her hoarding has forced us to endure long visits with her narcissism at our house. Her grandchildren will never be able to spend the night at Grandma’s. Every time she visits, she brings ass-loads of stuff that my husband and I have to donate and throw away. If we let her, she’d hoard our house too. In the end, I’ve managed to salvage what I can of my relationship with my mother and my son’s relationship with his Grandmother by creating clear, firm boundaries for my mother’s “gifting.”

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Thanks again to Brandi, and till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Parental Hoarding Is One Of The Most Difficult Things To Discuss.

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Order Dr. Rodman’s newest book, 52 Emails to Transform Your Marriage and order her first book: How to Talk to Your Kids about Your Divorce: Healthy, Effective Communication Techniques for Your Changing Family

This blog is not intended as medical advice or diagnosis and should in no way replace consultation with a medical professional. If you try this advice and it does not work for you, you cannot sue me. This is only my opinion, based on my background, training, and experience as a therapist and person

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