A Hoarder's Guide To Recovery

 I am lost. 

Completely, utterly lost in the chaos of my own making. If you don't believe me, go check out my video about hoarding. I have fully addressed the guilt and pleasure I simultaneously feel from hoarding. 

Additionally, this video has been about learning to acknowledge and developing the willingness to seek help for my issues. I also realized that my Hoarding just might be the accumulation of Trauma going unchecked and unhealed. 

I suffer from a lack, that sprouted from financial challenges I faced as a First-Generation Immigrant in Canada. While I want to acknowledge that in an imperfect world, no-one is immune from hurt, pain, unimaginable torment from their own minds and hearts, I have come to recognize the accumulated baggage of my financial challenges and hoarding are interlinked by one thing; a predetermined threat to my survival.

When my survival is threatened, everything simply shuts down. Nothing else matters except my survival. Nothing and No-one. 

To be honest, it's a form of survival mechanism as complex as physics and thermodynamics combined. I am still struggling to name it, placate it on its own aisle and just altogether file it away in search of freedom. But our challenges are not something we choose. They choose us. 

I know this so deeply in my bones. 

So here are some thoughts and feelings about hoarding, from the perspective of a Hoarder: 

I substitute Hoarding for the feeling of Emotional Safety: 

I did not receive this feeling my whole life. I have sought it from my caretakers, and then from relationships. It was not until I grew closer to Allah (SWT) that I realized only he could provide me this feeling. Yet, he still wanted me to work through my problems and feelings of lack. So here we are, talking in a blog post about the millions of things that I could store up in my heart and still not find the right meaning for. 

So, years ago I took the easy route and gave up. There are not enough designer shoes in the world to fill my void. But, that has not stopped me from trying. That alongside boxes, trinkets and about 10 shirts of the same style. 

Which led me to my next discovery; 

I don't actually need this stuff to feel alive. I also don't need to go through the purging of said items to feel alive. When we get close to healing from feeling fragile, we actually discover that stuff is means to an end, not an end in itself. This all sounds philosophical to date, so let's go ahead and channel it into something more applicable: 

List of things I realized I could live without 

1. Multiple Shirts of the Same Variety

2. Multiple Jackets, Gloves, Scarves

3. Memorabilia

4. Books (Which I ended up using as a form of hoarding)

5. Multiple Dish Sets

6. Piling on Loads of Makeup Palettes

7. Old Textbooks

8. Old Sentimental Birthday Cards from friendships I have outgrown and People I will never see again due to this Ironic World where we always have to say Goodbye when we don't really know how to

9. Fantasies of Inheriting Riches through Careers that would Killy anyone's soul

10. Working myself right down to the Ground to be like the girl on the magazine cover, or any cover on any high school yearbook for that matter 

These are my Top 10. What are yours?