Understanding why people hoard

Understanding Why People Hoard

When a person hoards, s/he collects meaningless junk – old newspapers, journals, appliances and sometimes, even waste.

Having an inmate who hoards can give rise to a great deal of interpersonal relationships within the family. It can distance them due to the repulsion the hoard can create and also due to impairment in normal daily activities. It can even extend to the social level, whereby the hoarder will disconnect from his friends and neighbours due to embarrassment.

To others, the hoarding behaviour comes across as a collection of meaningless items. However, the rationale and psychology behind it is much deeper.

Following are common reasons as to why people hoard:

SENTIMENTAL CLUTTER Practically, for all the hoarders, the junk accumulated has a sentimental value attached to it. This is due to the association of the accumulation of clutter with

comfort in their lives. The items collected can also remind them of their lost loved ones or some memory in their lives and can cause sentimental triggers, making the hoarder finding it difficult to part with that item.

NO WILL TO PART WITH THE ITEM It is not just a two-dimensional will that is absent from the hoarder to part with an item of sentimental value. The lack of will is wrapped and layered with many rationales and emotions. Hoarders prolong their decision making process of dumping an item by employing the reason that the parting will have serious repercussions in some form or another. Researchers have found that the decision making process has shown excessive activation in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain associated with the process. It gives rise to conflicting information and uncertainty. This ultimately leads to the person retaining the item rather than trashing it.

NO ORDER IN THE PILE It is said that organising, is well-planned hoarding. Of course, this type of hoarding might or might not hurt anybody. But one of the main features of a hoard is that it is unorganised clutter. Since it is unorganised, it leads to impairment in daily functioning or daily routine and it also repels anybody in contact with the hoarder. However repulsive it might be, the hoarder finds some logic in it. To him/her, it can be the only way of bringing order and security in his/her life.

FORESEEING A lot of hoarders retain an item due to some foresight. A hoarder, more often than not, are faced with questions with the tag “What if….?” or “Just in case…?” or “Suppose that…?”

Hoarders accumulate items with the presumption that they will be of use later or there will be a change in the prices or the reason that discarding that item

would put them in a dilemma in the future, when they need it. The irony is that they do not foresee dangers which should be considered, such as the chaos the junk will cause or the diseases that it will bring in the future.

MEMORY HOARDING A hoarder with such a facet to his hoarding behaviour will be retaining the item in order to supplement a mental note to an event, person or thing that the hoarded item might trigger. They feel that the item will be indispensible at a later date to make them recall certain important things. People with memory hoarding have the distorted belief that they will need this memory someday and also that it would be catastrophic if this memory wasn’t totally accurate.

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