On Today’s Hoarders Show, This Woman Claims Her House Is Haunted By Demons…

I wonder if she might be more willing to get rid of most of her crap if someone told her those things have negative energy that might be the root of the problem. She was telling all the strange things going wrong in the home. She is living in a domestic violence shelter with her children now….

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4meAndyou · F

I read somewhere that the hoarding illness is caused by a deep sense of personal loss.

It can be a death, or the loss of a spouse, and some people are just wired so they can't get over it at all. They compensate themselves for the loss by collecting junk, or even buying new things, until they are practically drowning in their own stuff.

They all exhibit rage or horrifying grief if they are restrained or absent when all the junk is cleaned up and taken away. It usually goes hand in hand with PTSD and/or deep depression.

Seeing demons sounds like some sort of hallucination associated with the PTSD...similar to paranoid schizoprhenia.

Of course, with so many obvious symptoms, the hoarder you saw on tv could actually have a mixed cocktail of mental health problems.

cherokeepatti · 61-69, F

@4meAndyou The woman had brain surgery before this started. I believe it is something physical with her. And as far as loss a woman in Tulsa was married to a wealthy mansion, lived in a small mansion and was shopping like crazy so much it caused a rift between her and her husband with her hoarding. He eventually divorced her and that home was full of new purchases still in bags, shoeboxes etc. and piled up everywhere even on the stairs going up to the 2nd floor. Seemed more like compulsive shopping than to fill any kind of loss. I had a sister-in-law that way. In the first years when her husband was in college she’d go to thrift stores or buy on clearance at deep discounts. Her husband graduated and got a good job at an oil company and then bought a house, they had one baby and then she got pregnant with twins and the shopping accelerated. She thought she had to dress all 3 children alike all the time. She would still go clearance shopping for new items but she might get 3 or 4 of the same outfit for each child in different colors so that they had 3 or 4 matching sets. I don’t know if all those clothes were even worn she had so many. She would go out shopping almost every day and not try to put things away and it started accumulating. They moved to another state when he got his job transferred and it got worse. I was never inside that new home but I can only imagine. Her shopping habits ended up causing them to divorce when he started limiting how much she could spend and she even got a job before that but she wanted to keep spending what he made like it was water or something.

4meAndyou · F

@cherokeepatti Sad. Since I have a friend in RL who is a hoarder, I can't even watch that stuff on tv. Makes me want to cry for him.