When dealing with a hoarder, what you should not say to the hoarder are calling their possessions "trash" or "junk" and never threaten to throw the hoarders items away without their permission.
Instead when dealing with a hoarder, focus on their safety, harm reduction and empathy.
Never say to the hoarder these following things:
"What kind of person lives like this?"
Saying this and shaming the hoarders character or the state of the hoarders home is actually counterproductive and will damage your relationship with the hoarder.
"If you don't clean this up, I'm leaving now and calling the authorities."
Using ultimatums and threats even if you don't mean them, triggers a fight or flight response in the hoarder and results in anger or a refusal to accept any future help.
"This is just garbage/junk."
Using words like this that are devaluing, makes the hoarder feel criticized and ashamed.
And so you should try to adopt the language that they use for their items, like "things" or "collections" to build trust.
And don't say to the hoarder "Why don't you just throw this away?"
Unlike to yourself, to a hoarder the objects, even if junk or trash are tied to an intense emotional memories or memories or even a perceived potential use.
And over simplifying the process also invalidates their feelings and causes the hoarder to shut down.
If you throw away a hoarder's stuff, what happens is it often triggers severe psychological distress in the hoarder and also deepens mistrust.
The hoarding is a complex mental health disorder and so throwing away a hoarder's stuff will often result in trauma, intense anger and even a total breakdown of relationships, and the hoarder may even frequently replace items, which accelerates the accumulation of clutter.
Forcing a cleanout of a hoarders house rarely solves the actual underlying issues of hoarding disorder and can even have several cascading effects that can make the hoarding worse.
Without addressing the root compulsive hoarding behaviors, the void, which is left by the items that are removed and discarded can result in and cause severe anxiety and prompt the hoarder to rapidly replace the thrown out objects or even hoard new objects to regain their sense of comfort and control.
Also throwing away the hoarders belongings, usually also leads to feelings of betrayal and causes the hoarder to also become resentful, defensive and secretive, which makes it much harder to offer the hoarder future professional help.
And for people who hoard, the hoarders belongings are also tied to intense emotional attachment, a fear of future loss and a need for control and throwing away these items can also cause deep feelings of violation and grief in the hoarder.
Hoarders have personality traits that center on a deep emotional attachment to possessions, perfectionism and even extreme indecisiveness.
Instead of just simple clutter these personality types and traits in hoarders reflects a psychological struggle to discard items as a result of intense anxiety or even the perceived future utility of worthless objects.
Hoarders often display a specific combination of psychological and behavioral markers, which include avoidance, anxiety over loss, perfectionism, intense emotional attachment and indecisiveness.
Avoidance in hoarders involves procrastinating on cleaning or organizing to avoid the mental strain the process causes the hoarder.
Anxiety over loss, in hoarding involves the concept of discarding or throwing out items that trigger profound distress, which often feels like a loss of identity.
Perfectionism in hoarding is a paralyzing fear of making the "wrong" decision about what they should get rid of or having a need to keep things exactly as they are.
Intense emotional attachment in hoarding, involves attributing deep sentimental or functional value to objects that other people see as completely useless.
And indecisiveness in hoarding, involves difficulty in categorizing objects or even deciding what to keep and what to discard, which leads to paralysis in organizing spaces.
Some hoarders do acknowledge that they need help and many hoarders experience what is known as "clutter blindness," as well as deep shame and even believe genuinely that the items that they have are valuable, which means that the hoarder does not perceive the true severity of their situation of hoarding.
A hoarder's self awareness or insight is categorized into 3 levels, which includes, good or fair insight, poor insight and absent insight/delusional beliefs.
In absent insight/delusional beliefs, the hoarder is completely convinced that their behavior is not a problem and that they truly need all of their possessions, even when they are confronted with undeniable evidence.
With poor insight, the hoarder believes their hoarding is necessary or normal, often defending the clutter and minimizing the impact it has on their daily life or family members.
And for the good or fair insight, the hoarder recognizes that their hoarding beliefs and behaviors are problematic and clutter their living spaces.
For hoarders with poor insight or absent insight, the reality of their situation is usually masked by psychological defenses, or even a distorted attachment to objects.
The mental illness that most hoarders have is OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is characterized by unwanted and intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors.
Other mental illnesses that most hoarders have are OCPD or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, ADHD, Major depressive disorder, dementia and schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia results in delusions or disorganized thinking, which can lead to paranoia about losing necessary items or collecting of strange objects.
Having conditions like dementia or Alzheimer's can also cause cognitive decline and confusion, which leads to the accumulation of items that are not needed.
Major Depressive Disorder, results in severe lack of energy, motivation or even feelings of worthlessness and can prevent someone from organizing or cleaning.
ADHD or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder can result in executive dysfunction, including having difficulty in organizing, prioritizing, and completing tasks, which can lead to uncontrolled clutter.
OCPD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, involves perfectionism, extreme control and even an inability to delegate or discard things.
The common root cause of hoarding is often information and processing deficits, emotional attachment and beliefs as well as ADHD, Depression, OCD, Anxiety and even Alzheimer's Dementia and Trauma and loss.
Although there's no 100 percent root cause of hoarding as hoarding can be caused by several things.
Stressful life events, such as a major loss, divorce, or eviction, frequently trigger or exacerbate hoarding tendencies.
Some researchers believe it can also serve as a coping mechanism for childhood experiences of poverty, hardship, or having personal belongings taken away.
People who hoard form deep emotional attachments to inanimate objects.
Belongings are often used to fulfill psychological needs, such as providing comfort, security, or a connection to memories.
The core drive for hoarding is often a belief that the item will be needed later or that discarding it is a waste, causing immense distress.
People with hoarding disorder process information uniquely, often focusing heavily on unusual details (shape, color, texture) rather than the function of an item.
A person who is a hoarder can also be described as having "messy house syndrome" which is an informal term that is mainly used to describe someone with a severe hoarding disorder or Diogenes syndrome.
Messy house syndrome is characterized by a person having an extreme inability to organize or keep a household clean, which results in massive clutter, unsanitary living conditions and even severe hoarding of useless objects.
A messy house is not always a sign of any syndrome or mental health issue, unless the messy house gets really severe.
A messy house can sometimes just be a result of having a busy schedule or even personal preference.
But when a person has messy house syndrome, it instead points to severe and unmanageable disorganization.
The messy house syndrome is often a manifestation of an underlying mental health condition or even physical health condition.
Common underlying mental health and physical health conditions that lead to messy house syndrome and a messy house include, depression, hoarding disorder, Alzheimer's or Dementia, OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Neurodivergence like ADHD.
OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can create rigid fears in people around throwing things away that they don't actually need to keep.
For neurodivergence, conditions like autism or ADHD can also cause people to experience extreme difficulty with time management, organization and execute daily living tasks, including cleaning.
A person with Alzheimer's disease or dementia can also experience messy houses and messy house syndrome as the cognitive decline in dementia and Alzheimer's can cause a loss of ability to sequence, plan and even execute their daily living tasks including cleaning of their home.
People with hoarding disorders also have an intense attachment to their possessions that are paired with deep anxiety about throwing these items away or discarding these items, which leads to unclean and unlivable living spaces.
And depression also often drains the motivation, energy and executive function of the person that is required to complete their routine household tasks.
Messy house syndrome goes much further than just a slightly messy room and can lead to other issues, which include.
Elevated levels of stress, because living in chronic clutter is also proven to spike the stress hormone cortisol in your body.
Strong resistance or even distress when someone attempts to clean or reduce their clutter.
Severe avoidance of social activities or even problems with employment that are caused by shame or even the inability to invite people over.
Poor personal hygiene, malnutrition or even a lack of self care.
Unsanitary conditions, which include odors from rotting decay, pest infestations or even unwashed dishes.
And even having piles of trash that is and has accumulated, food or useless objects, which crowd a person's living spaces and walking spaces.