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pktechgirlbackupA++, would read again.
As I've been saying about autism and depression for years: it is possible for a psychological disorder to simultaneously be over diagnosed yet have its treatment methods underutilized. In some ways, people with real clinical disorders are the large print versions of everyone else, making it easier to see problems and test solutions. Proving exercise helps clinical depression* is easier than proving exercise helps you when you're having a bad day, but it's easy to see how the knowledge transfers.
Stuff fits into that rather well. I watch Hoarders as a motivational tool, and they continually present you with truly awful cases- people who are are about to lose their children, spouse, or home due to their hoarding- but don't really explain why, beyond "it's a disease." Stuff goes into the psychology behind it: hoarding is associated with a constellation of other issues, including:
Not surprisingly, I see at least a few issues in me, my family, my friends, the people across the street, etc. This is where it would be really useful to find the hoarding equivalent of exercise, but the book doesn't cover that, apparently because it doesn't exist yet. We're only just beginning to understand hoarding and how it differs from OCD, and treatment is in its infancy. If the hoarding was brought on by specific trauma you can often help by treating the trauma, but many cases are not. They did mention the downward arrow technique as a tool, which looks neat.
Pulling back from the content a bit, the book was extremely well written, well organized, and easy to read while still conveying the weight of the subject matter. Highly recommended.
As I've been saying about autism and depression for years: it is possible for a psychological disorder to simultaneously be over diagnosed yet have its treatment methods underutilized. In some ways, people with real clinical disorders are the large print versions of everyone else, making it easier to see problems and test solutions. Proving exercise helps clinical depression* is easier than proving exercise helps you when you're having a bad day, but it's easy to see how the knowledge transfers.
Stuff fits into that rather well. I watch Hoarders as a motivational tool, and they continually present you with truly awful cases- people who are are about to lose their children, spouse, or home due to their hoarding- but don't really explain why, beyond "it's a disease." Stuff goes into the psychology behind it: hoarding is associated with a constellation of other issues, including:
- slow decision making
- uncertainty in relationships with people and highly variable relationships with people
- emotional deprivation in childhood (far moreso than physical deprivation, which surprised me)
- intelligence (which is not the impression you'd get watching Hoarders, but of course the people who need to accept expensive 11th hour help in exchange for parading their problems on TV are not a random sample)
- over anthropomorphism of objects
- the construct of your stuff being an extension of you.
- fear of waste/belief that being wasteful accrues you bad karma
- fear of mistakes/fear of being wrong/perfectionism
- greater than baseline need to prepare for eventualities
- a lot of time spent thinking about using your stuff, relative to actually using it
- a need for completeness
- unwillingness to suffer short term pain for long term gains (possibly because they don't believe the long term gains will materialize)
- ability to minimize the immediate term pain of not cleaning by filtering things out
Not surprisingly, I see at least a few issues in me, my family, my friends, the people across the street, etc. This is where it would be really useful to find the hoarding equivalent of exercise, but the book doesn't cover that, apparently because it doesn't exist yet. We're only just beginning to understand hoarding and how it differs from OCD, and treatment is in its infancy. If the hoarding was brought on by specific trauma you can often help by treating the trauma, but many cases are not. They did mention the downward arrow technique as a tool, which looks neat.
Pulling back from the content a bit, the book was extremely well written, well organized, and easy to read while still conveying the weight of the subject matter. Highly recommended.
