Preface: the following series and experiences are my own. While I am the adult child of a hoarder (ACOH), my aim is to create a supportive, warm and magic environment – where you know you aren’t alone. Where you can learn some of what I have growing up on my own, starting at age 18. I am hoping to be helpful to many, instead of focusing on the one I couldn’t help. My perspectives come from my situation and the tools I’ve acquired over the years will be shared with credit (if I can find an appropriate source).
Home is where the heart is. Perhaps the cliche seems benign to you.
To me, a house and a home are different. I lived in a house my entire childhood. One that was full of stuff, anxiety, and layers upon layers of feelings. For me, the feelings were often conflicting. I felt safe but knew I wasn’t. I felt love but I also felt like an inconvenience and unwanted. I felt able to control my own space (my room) but at some point, even that became encroached upon. I felt like I mattered but not in the context of the mental illness.
During my healing process, I’ve considered the juxtaposition of my feelings extensively. I love therapy and the way it has formed my future through healing. It was hard, worthwhile work. My healing is not complete. One day at a time. During therapy, I was encouraged to work with the moving pendulum of feelings, to build the foundation out of pieces that worked for me, to become more steady and grounded. I’ve learned that my home building starts within me and flows outward to the physical world, where building habits is important to maintain the foundations.
For me, I’ve noticed there are four differences between a house and a home (I promise I’ll get to the habits right away!):
1. A house is a structure, the home is the warming, private, magic energy that is within it. I’ve been in both and my childhood had a mixture with a majority of the time being anxious and tense energy. It has been difficult to describe over the years and I’ve come to the conclusion that the best experience to describe it is a pendulum. The stability within swung from one extreme to the other and didn’t cease to be moving. The habit tied to this difference is being conscious and self-aware. Understanding that the energy you put into the world is a choice and there are many ways to change the energy within a home.
2. The foundation is the most important piece of a home. I mean this literally, as part of the structural house and also in the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of the household members inside. Careful, thoughtful and planned maintenance on any purchase, relationship or partnership is needed. I experienced key foundational issues in the relationships we had with the world as a hoarding family. No one was allowed in. We were barely allowed out. It was hard to see the situation for what it was as a child. As I grew older, I started to realize what I was missing from my day to day including:
– Personal hygiene
– Emotional regulation
-Mental health
-Functional care tasks (Chores lol)
3. Home includes self care. Home is where you learn how to take care of yourself first, because you were given the space to do so. I was in a bit of a different situation. I took care of my hoarding parent in a lot of ways. I tried to be good enough. I worked really hard to be a kid she could brag about. I didn’t realize until I was in my early teens that something was off. “Take care of your house first” is an addage I’ve heard in the professional world and I think it’s true in a hoarding situation. The reality is I lived in duality constantly. I was expected to be great at whatever I chose to do. I was taught to be a “good guest” and would clean up at a family member’s or friend’s house. I was viewed as polite and praised endlessly for it. Yet, it was hard for me to reconcile why we didn’t do the same things at home. Why didn’t we wash the dishes or have clean laundry or do chores? It was constantly exhausting to have to lie about the state of the house to family and friends, try to find things because the stuff didn’t have a “home” within the system and to attempt to be a normal kid.
4. Homes are places you look forward to going. It is a safe place where you can take respite from the world. It is a place where your dreams can swirl about, waiting to land on your shoulder and be brought into reality. It’s a place that is physically satisfying and emotionally fulfilling to have crafted. You put your own stamp on it. Me? I painted my walls shades of green and blue.
Once I realized that I wanted to build my house into a place I could experience and dig into love, I started to build habits around the maintenance of our home:
1. Understand what is enough – I mean, everyone isn’t at 100% all the time. Facts. I needed to figure out where I was at, where my bare minimum was and start there. Over years, I’ve raised my standard. Not setting the bar too high was important.
When I started, the habit of taking out the trash on a designated day was a big deal. I worked on that one habit for months. If everything else fell apart, I had that success sitting in my back pocket.
2. Have a plan to backtrack and NOT be perfect – Life happens. When you’re an ACOH, that little bit of chaos can create a bunch of anxiety – I’m personally thrown off when something comes my way. It’s triggering.
I’ve learned to deal with it because being an anxious mess all the time is no way to live. Having expectations of myself and others that are sky high are no way to live. Sometimes that will mean that dishes sit on the counter for 3 or 4 days. Sometimes that will mean having to accept different energy levels, that your body was in fight or flight for so long that it has no idea how to relax so you have to force yourself to. Having a written plan as part of my habit toolkit was very important. I could reference it when I was low energy and needed to still make decisions. You’re rewiring your brain and doing a lot of mental exercise is exhausting. Be okay with that.
Order the pizza every so often, take a bath, read a comic book. Little set backs don’t mean failure – that’s all or nothing thinking and it’s dangerous.
3. Pick one habit at a time – goodness gracious, be gentle with yourself. If you’ve been through a hoarding situation as a kid, your brain is stuck in survival mode, your day to day habits are not established and you are also trying to build a life. That’s a lot. You’re okay to focus on one thing at a time. I’m going to write a bit about the Hoop Exercise and Timer Exercise later this month as considerations while you’re habit building.
4. Realize it is not your Hoarding Parent’s house – This is YOUR space. YOU get to decide how it turns out. Even if you’ve inherited the opportunity to have this type of OCD, there is opportunity to learn, reverse and break the cycle. You are capable and you are able to distance from what is their choice in their mental illness and what yours is. By taking care of your environment, you are putting something good into the world. You are working on the stigma of mental health. You are being a better version of yourself.
By taking more care of myself, working to understand what habits and risks would make our house into a home, I have been able to work through different aspects of being an ACOH. I’m not perfect and I’m not done but I’m good enough. I’m full of hope. My heart is full of warm, comfort, magic and change as I move along the journey. I hope you can find the same. Make your house into a home. Create your own magical, warm and supportive space.
