This might get messy: hoarding and my mental health

Topics mentioned: hoarding, autism and mental health, ADHD and mental health, OCD, anxiety

About: Hoarding is when someone collects and keeps too many things, they can't manage the mess and find it hard or impossible to throw things away. It can have a big impact on your mental health and your day-to-day life.

Rachel, 25, describes her experience of hoarding as a neurodivergent person and offers tips for anyone else struggling with hoarding.

Hoarding is a horrible experience. It can also be hard to talk about.

I don’t get as scared speaking about my eating disorder, depression, OCD or neurodiversity but ‘admitting’ my hoarding has my muscles screaming at me to stop typing.

Hoarding is stigmatised. Cleanliness, neatness and organisation are social values that have been used and are still used to exclude neurodivergent, female, gender diverse, LGBTQ+ individuals, minoritised racial identities and people with disabilities. Tidiness is seen as something everyone should aim for and that everyone can do despite differences in time, brain processing or health conditions. As the mocking ‘documentaries’ of hoarding show, messiness is seen as being lazy and irresponsible.

The reality of hoarding is not so neat. I don’t choose or want to hoard – I hate it. It’s not a bad habit - it’s a sign of my emotional distress – a pain that I can’t share for fear of judgement.

Hoarding is a coping mechanism for me which means it can be triggered when any of my conditions become overwhelming and is different each time. ADHD means my brain works differently and it takes more energy for me to recognise the consequences of not putting things away or to work out if I will need something again. When I am feeling low, I’m not being lazy, I just don’t have the energy.

If I am struggling with my eating disorder, I may start to hoard packets so I can check I didn’t ‘accidentally’ eat too much. At other times, it’s triggered by an ASD terror of growing up or change. Sometimes it’s OCD ‘magical thinking’ that throwing away an empty box might somehow result in someone dying. If I feel low, I can use it to punish myself as I know an untidy room will make me feel worse.

Other times I can’t tell why the thought of deleting my three SD cards of screenshots or deleting a spam email makes me shaky with panic. I spiral and feel powerless to stop.

Stigma makes it hard to ask for help so I was scared to share my struggles with my mum.

My mum is naturally neat and efficient. She doesn’t get as attached to things as I do or worry about imaginary potential future uses of everyday items. Mess doesn’t make sense to her and so my hoarding looked like a frustrating problem.

This misunderstanding caused lots of arguments and upset when she would throw things out without telling me, refuse to let me do anything until I had tidied or make comments like ‘I don’t understand how you can live like this, it’s disgusting.’ I was scared that I would be made to throw things out before I was ready and I felt ashamed of letting her down. I tried to hide my mess, but the anxiety just made it worse.

Over time, I explained the emotions behind the hoarding and she can tell how it changes when I am stressed or low. She doesn’t let me hoard but we work together to help me manage it. We try to address the underlying anxiety but if this isn’t possible because of time or stress, we have some strategies to minimise it.

At 25, I sit on my floor surrounded by chaos. I feel ashamed, disgusting, selfish and wasteful when people have so little. I curse myself for ‘letting’ it get bad again. If you struggle with hoarding, you’re not alone and you are not to blame. It may not be visible to other people, but this is how you struggle and that should be recognised, not mocked or punished.