Stuff by Gail Steketee Read Free Book Online

After her mother died, Irene stopped receiving birthday or holiday cards from her father, though she knew that he wrote to other people. Perhaps he feared contributing to her clutter, or perhaps out of frustration he'd lost interest in communicating with her, so different were they in their views of the world. We have often wondered whether cold and distant parenting may be a contributing factor in the development of hoarding. In several recent studies, people with hoarding problems recalled disconnected relationships with their parents, particularly their fathers.
    In contrast, Irene was extremely close to her mother. Whenever she faced a crisis, she turned to her mother for advice and comfort. She came to value anything connected with her mother, especially after her death.
    Irene's earliest memories were of a very happy childhood, filled with lots of children and activities. She walked to school with the neighborhood kids. They all gathered together after school and on weekends, and there was always someone around to play with. When she was in the second grade, however, her family moved to the suburbs. With only one other child in the new neighborhood, Irene felt isolated and alone. She rode the bus to school by herself and found the bus driver loud and menacing. He frequently yelled at the kids. She was frightened of him and avoided speaking to anyone on the bus. Her teacher seemed no better. Irene was so scared, she seldom spoke in class and began to dread going to school. "I was scared all the time," she told me. "It was horrible."
    Under these conditions, she began to devise strategies to manage her emotions. She recalled getting wrapped up in objects as a child. "Things were fun, interesting, and different," she said. "They were removed from emotional life—soothing. All my fears were gone." She elaborated: "Things were less complex than people, less moody. People either leave or hurt you." Ironically, it was her things that eventually caused her husband to leave.
    Fear still permeated Irene's life nearly fifty years later. During one of our sessions, she admitted, "Every day, I wake up in fear," although she couldn't articulate exactly what she was afraid of. She coped with her fear by surrounding herself with things, just as she had as a child. One day she told me, "You know, yesterday, without thinking about it, I sat down and built a little fortress around myself. It felt nice, comfortable." She made a number of such comments during the time we worked together.
    Around the age of seven or eight, Irene began ordering and arranging her possessions in peculiar ways. She arranged her books and papers so they were perpendicular and perfectly aligned with the edge of the desk. At first this compulsion was mild and did not interfere with her life. But over time the feeling got stronger, and she began to spend hours arranging and rearranging things. She had trouble getting her homework done, doing her chores, and even getting ready for school on time. If she was prevented from doing her arranging or interrupted in the middle, she felt uncomfortable and anxious. This was the first hint for Irene of problems related to possessions, and it is consistent with research finding symmetry obsessions and arranging compulsions in children who also have hoarding problems. Since symmetry, arranging, and hoarding all have to do with physical objects, the connection may suggest a deeper problem with how people interact with the physical world or separate themselves from it. Luckily for Irene, the symmetry obsessions and arranging compulsions eventually disappeared.
    During those early school years, Irene began to gain weight and had struggled with her weight ever since. At one point in high school, her eating habits became rigid and unusual. In retrospect, she thought that she may have been anorexic at the time. Now she believed that her weight and hoarding were connected: "My body and my house are kind of the same thing. I take