To coincide with National Hoarding Awareness Week, we are delighted to be adding a new team to our Housing Support Services, with the introduction of a Hoarding Support Service.
Working alongside our customers to help make positive improvements to their lives and their family circumstances is central to the work of our Housing Support team.
Hoarding is often unrecognised and misunderstood and can often be seen as just “having too many things”.
The reality of the situation of often much more complex and can include, or lead to, issues with mental health and the safety of homes.
With the introduction of our new Hoarding Support Service, we are now offering practical, hands-on support to customers who may have an issue with hoarding or struggling with the condition of their home.
Why do people become hoarders?
Hoarding is a recognised mental disorder, and numerous factors can contribute to the development of hoarding behaviour in different people, including personality types and past traumatic experiences.
When a person suffers from depression and anxiety, they might start hoarding as a coping mechanism. Common items that people hoard can include newspapers, books, containers, clothes, plastic bags, animals, and many other things.
Emotional Irregularity - When a person suffers from depression and anxiety, they might start hoarding as a coping mechanism. Continuously acquiring unneeded items while at the same time not discarding any of their current possession is a behaviour demonstrated by people trying to overcome depression.
Perfectionism - Hoarders fear making the mistake of throwing away items they think might be valuable. This appears strange when you see a house full of clutter and rubbish. A hoarder’s perfectionist tendency tells them they need the clutter.
Emotional Attachment - Among all the reasons a person becomes a hoarder is when they become too attached emotionally to his/her possessions, they try to hold on to them even when they don’t need them or after acquiring new ones. Compulsive hoarders become too attached emotionally to their belongings to let them go.
Difficulty Processing Information - Compulsive hoarders have difficulty or the inability to categorize items into valuable and non-valuable. So, everything to them has the same significant value, meaning they can’t recognize items that should be disposed of.
A Personal Trauma - Experts believe that there is a link between experiencing personal trauma and the onset of compulsive hoarding. This could well be another of the reasons a person starts hoarding. The emotional distress might stretch back to childhood but hoarding normally starts at the age of 13 years old.
Dread of Waste - Hoarders feel they have the responsibility of holding on and keeping items that might become useful one day. They think that discarding items now might lead to them needing new ones in the future for the same purpose, so they keep them even though these items are usually never used.
Get in touch
If hoarding has touched your life or the life of a family member, please do get in touch.
Our friendly, supportive hoarding coaches, who we’ll introduce to you later this week, would be delighted to come and meet with you, it is a brave step but help and support can make things so much easier – please do get in touch.