Tales for the journey: The Store - (Compulsive caring)

My secret storeroom was full of old and dusty things.  Some of them had once been very valuable indeed, while others were just junk.  It was so crowded in there that it was hard to see which was which.  The room was small, dimly lit and musty, and for as long as I could remember it had been my job to look after it.

I knew what the others would say to me if they knew about my secret store.  “This store is messy!  You have not been minding it properly.  You must sort it all out so that you can throw out all the junk!”  I did not want to be ashamed of it if anyone saw inside, so I set about cleaning the store, sorting it all, cleaning out the boxes and ordering all the items. 

There was a lot in there but gradually I got a sense of what was in there, and I even created my own filing system.  I kept changing the system as I discovered more and more in there. For a small room it contained a lot.  The others never asked me what I was doing.  They just went on playing out in the sun while I was busy organising the store.

After many months of ordering and sorting I became impatient, and I decided to spend all day, every day in the store.  I foolishly believed that if I managed to sort it out, then I would be free of my obligation and would be able at last to play outside in the sun.  Day and night I worked, sorting and ordering and creating a dozen new filing systems each day.

A healing path (2) Living the Dream: clutter

I am sure that the whole issue of clutter, hoarding and messiness at home is a reenactment of the Dream of the Womb.  Five years ago, when I  asked the local university statistics department to analyse the first 500 responses to the research questionnaire, I was amazed to find that  over 45% of the respondents with evidence of their twin agreed strongly with the statement:

"There is at least one room (including shed or garage) in my home that is completely full of stuff"

This  result was a complete surprise. This statement seemed to unearth a group of people who were not necessarily "compulsive" hoarders, but who at least had a strong tendency to hoard, to the extent that  at least part of their home could not be used for  its original purpose because of the accumulation of stuff in it.  There are various definitions of hoarding:

Definition: Pathological or compulsive hoarding is a specific type of behavior characterized by acquiring and failing to throw out a large number of items that would appear to have little or no value to others, such as notes, flyers, or newspapers. Compulsive hoarding can, though does not inevitably, lead to severe cluttering of the person’s home so that it is no longer able to function as a viable living space, causing significant distress or impairment of work or social life.

The Medical Definition

In 1996 Randy O Frost and Tamara L Hartl defined compulsive hoarding with the following:

• The acquisition of, and failure to discard, possessions that appear to be of useless or of limited value.
• Living spaces so cluttered that using the room as intended is impossible
• Significant distress or impairment to function.

 But the mystery is, how would this be related to being a womb twin survivor?

Healing (12): Sorting out the clutter

In your dream of the womb there is Someone Else who was once alive and responsive. If there was no miscarriage, then the Someone Else turned into Something else. If you have a cluttering problem, then you are trying to reconstruct a lost dream of your wombtwin who died but remained there alongside as lifeless human flesh.

There are three aspects of the Dream that are reflected in this style of symbolic behaviour: the body of your wombtwin is reflected in the things you gather around you; the relationship that once was and is gone for all time is now an impossible dream; the tiny life that was so soon snuffed out is reflected in the projects that remain unfinished.

The amniotic sac: bags in the midst of hoarding

So. Clutter. Hoarding.  So much of this is about bags and containers generally.  This is a quote from a hoarder:


I collect bags (sacs) because I am worried I might need one and be out of them.  I can't throw them away.  Sacs are so symbolic,  I am horrified when someone throws an empty bag out and I sometimes rescue them to avoid the anxiety.  


I have had a small insight recently about hoarding  (over half of the people who complete the questionnaire give the strongest response to the statement:


"At least one room in my home (including a shed or garage) is completely full of stuff."

I have been observing an extreme hoarder for five years now. He goes out every day, puts things into bags or boxes, carries them home and NEVER looks at them again.  His whole house is full of bags  and boxes of stuff.  It's the containers that matter, not the stuff inside.

Now I am beginning to find a slight connection with identical twinning, but it's not that clear and I have been mystified as I think: if hoarding is to do with being a womb twin survivor, then what if the bags are the amniotic sacs? What if the identical twin developed in a separate sac? That happens in about a third of twin pregnancies that make it to birth, but we don't know how many lost twins are created in that configuration.  If this is the hoarding scenario and if this is how you were in the womb, then we truly do have a bag that was once half of you - you would be bonded for life to that bag!


Is this the hoarding scenario?

I am working with someone who is learning how to teach others to overcome hoarding. If we can find the true reason why people do this, then we can help them to heal. That would be wonderful! So if you are a hoarder, please make contact, as we need all the stories we can get! 

Hoarding: connections to pre-birth experiences?

I am trying to find some kind of clue to why so many (over half) of the womb twin survivors who complete the Womb Twin questionnaire say a strong "Agree" to the statement: " There is at least one room in my home, including a shed or garage, that is completely full of stuff."
We have the new hoarding questionnaire (see link at top of this page) and that is helping.

So far, the clues are:

SPACE: there are conflicted issues here, about clearing space but quickly filling it up again.

ENERGY: a lot of energy wasted in NOT clearing, and a lot of energy needed to clear.

WILLINGNESS: it seems like a fabulous thing to be clean clear and tidy but somehow there is sabotage, as if deep down the hoarder is not willing to clear it and let it go.

HOLDING ON: things  with am emotional connection. An attachment to thungs as if they have feelings of their own.

Now I have to see what pre-birth experience may trigger this behaviour.

Comments welcomed

Hoarding

I am going through the research study, ready to give my report on Friday 30th. Once again, hoarding is there, just as it was a couple of years ago. More than half of the people who  complete the questionnaire  give a strong YES to.....

"There is  at least one room in my home, including a shed or garage, that is completely full of stuff."

Are you a hoarder? Did you do the questionnaire and give that question a strong YES?  Maybe you have just happened upon this blog and want to explore the idea that hoarding is an attachment disorder.  Whoever you are, if you have a hoarding thing do complete my special questionnaire and let's see what we can learn together about this mysterious and self sabotaging compulsion.

Here

Hoarding - a disorder of attachment?

MY MOTHERS GARDEN

In the suburban setting of a quiet tree-lined street in Granada Hills, California we see a 61 year old woman pushing a grocery cart to her front door. We watch her climb through a window covered in ivy and cob webs into her house, stepping on top of stacks of newspapers, piles of debris, rotting material, clothing, and toys; a living mass of waste that has literally pushed her out of the house and into her garden.

My Mother’s Garden is the story of Eugenia Lester whose hoarding disorder has entered a dangerous and life threatening stage. Directed by her daughter Cynthia, it documents how one family comes together to cope with their mother’s disorder and rebuild a lost sense of family. My Mother’s Garden was an official selection of the 2006 New York IFP Market and was a finalist for the IFP Socially Conscious Documentary Award. The film has also received support from the 2007 New York State Council For the Arts and the 2007 Pacific Pioneer Fund.

Director’s statement:

My personal journey through this documentary was necessary to heal the wounds of abandonment, isolation, and dependency that are often present when raised by a parent with a persistent mental illness. Though my brothers and I are now adults, we all feel a deep need for a stabilizing center for our family, a permanent place to call home. This longing for stability has caused disorder in our lives, both socially and emotionally. Through this documentary, I am applying my experience in social work, art therapy, and filmmaking to my own family. I hope that the film can be therapeutic as well as a creative work of art that will help bring awareness to the issue of mental illness and also reach others who are sympathetic to this subject matter. Cynthia Lester Director

Take a look at this

The family got her out of the house for eight weeks and they cleared it out for her. She fell into bed and into despair. "Everythings gone" she said, mourning her stuff.

It is becoming clear that hoarding is an attachment disorder, but only in the sense that the stuff stands in for something ( or maybe Someone ) else. A house filled with clutter is a mausoleum to the dead. The task of the clutterer is to hold on - never let go.

Wombtwin survivors hoard, we know that. Are hoarders wombtwin survivors? We should be asking that question, because if they are, we can help.

Hoarding behaviour

Well I have said it before and I'll say it again: wombtwin survivors tend to be hoarders. More than half of the questionnaire responders voted as A to:

There is at least one room in my home, including a shed or garage, that is completely full of stuff.

However, a further 25% of them gave that idea a fat zero. So why are so many wombtwin survivors significant hoarders and yet others not all all? A mystery. I'm examining the questionnaire results carefully to see what I can find but Im no statistician.

BTW: I am almost up to the 300 mark, and scientists say 300 is a reliable cohort worthy of analysis, so if you haven't done it yet, do have a go! (click here to do it now)

So, to take this a little further, I have set up another online form, this time with WUFOO who are completely wonderful and organise your surveys for you in a way I could not have dreamed of five years ago when I first set up the reserach questionnaire.

If you click here you will find a simple little survey asking you to respond to questions about your own hoarding behavior, just to give me a clearer idea. Do try it. If you think you have already guessed why your hoarding is linked to being a wombtwin survivor, then please leave a comment and lets talk about this.

In fact, all comments are welcomed, as always.

Our newsletter, vanished twins and hoarding

I thought: Ill set up a monthly newsletter for members and associates. Three weeks later its done. It is an interesting idea - who do I send it to? Just members and associates? Well, I sent it to people who are directly involved with this project and whose email addresses I have. If you are reading this and think you would like to be on the list, just click here to subscribe.

I hope that as many more people hear about this project the word will spread. There is so much ignorance about the reality of " vanishing twin" phenomenon. Here is what one mother, who conceived through IVF, said on her blog:

"Before week 10 there is a 1 in 5 chance of having a "vanished twin" where one embryo is absorbed into the uterus lining. "

The embryo is not "absorbed". The body of the embryo dies and gradually disintegrates but the cord and the sac do not. They are not living tissue and therefore cannot die. Some remnants of the sac and cord may still be visible after birth, attached to the placenta. For the survivor, these little remains are there as the aftermath of a tragedy that is beyond words. It could be that the tendency to hoard material such as paper and other reminders of the past is a wordless way to express a deep sense of someone beloved gone away, leaving only a cord and an empty sac to show that this little lost twin had ever existed.

There is an article about this here.

The question "There is at least one room (including shed or garage) in my home that is completely full of stuff" has produced an unexpected result. Surviving twins, whose twin was stillborn or died close to birth, are very likely to be hoarders, more so than other wombtwin survivors. Hoarders collect multiple, identical versions of the same kind of thing and gather the whole collection in their home and hold on tight, never to let go. Is this some kind of symbolic behaviour, related to not wanting your twin to be taken away? I put this question in because it was being mentioned quite a lot in the stories but it seems that there is a lot of hoarding going on, and it usually gets an A. Not a teeny weeny bit of clutter, like a glory hole under the stairs: this is a whole area of the home sacrificed to the stuff. Now I have over 200 forms returned the research is getting more and more fascinating!

A nice little break, thinking abut this. How back to data entry. Only 40 to go now.Then there will be silence while I analyse it all. More on this later.