The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter by Matt Paxton, Phaedra Hise Page A

limits and boundaries. Margaret, for example, loved her animals because they made her happy. One dog, or maybe even three, would have been manageable for her. But she wasn’t able to put that limit on herself. In Margaret’s mind, if one dog made her happy, a hundred dogs would make her a hundred times happier. Putting a limit on how many dogs she could accept into her household would be like putting a limit on her happiness, and she wasn’t willing to do that.
    For hoarders who shop (or Dumpster dive), it’s the same issue. Purchasing an item gives them a rush of temporary joy, so purchasing more items seems like it should give them an even bigger rush. The collecting gets out of hand when hoarders become so compulsive that they can’t limit it. It’s also a problem when hoarding is the only thing that brings the person happiness, instead of family, friendships, hobbies, work, exercise, or other pastimes.
    Dr. Suzanne Chabaud, who works with OCD patients and hoarders at her clinic in New Orleans, points out that hoarders need to learn to have appropriate boundaries. A shopping hoarder may be buying lots of items ostensibly for her husband and her children, but in actuality they don’t want them. The shopaholic isn’t respecting their boundaries. She is focused on what she wants for them instead of what they actually want—or need from her.
    Conversely, hoarders may put limits into place that aren’t appropriate, such as when they don’t let people come into their lives to help or simply to form friendships. These limits, like the hoarding itself, may be in response to the imagined and unnamed fears and threats that plague the hoarder’s life.

AVOIDING REALITY
    Whatever the triggers that set off the hoarding may be, or whatever boundaries and limits with which the hoarders wrestle, almost every person I’ve worked with has been fixated either on the future or the past. It’s so much easier than living in the present, because the present can be awfully depressing. Since the present is clouded by strained family relationships, financial and personal challenges as well as the clutter, it’s very tempting for hoarders to avoid the realities completely and focus instead on a fantasy. Hoarders also look for an escape into what I call “easy love,” and this is particularly true with animal hoarders. Whatever they are collecting, hoarders turn to their things or pets for positive reinforcement, because that’s a lot less complicated than trying to have a rewarding relationship with another person.
▶ Fake Future
    Ben, who we introduced earlier in the book as the “pizza man,” had a house and car crammed with old pizza boxes. In addition, he had a basement full of bits and pieces of mechanical airplane parts, which Ben claimed were enough to build three complete airplanes. To hear him tell it, these would be vintage, collectible airplanes from the golden age of aviation, and he just knew that he was going to build those airplanes and sell them to a museum. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself becoming a sought-after expert on clothwing biplanes. He would write a book and appear on television, giving commentary on aircraft building and restoration. Maybe he would even get a job at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which was near where he lived.
    The dream was all Ben talked about. It was so much more appealing than the reality of living in a dangerously full, Stage 5 hoarded house that was getting worse day by day. Ben saw only the fantasy of his completed airplanes, not the thousands of unassembled parts or the putrid rotting pizza that was decaying on top of them. Ben didn’t see himself as an out-of-control hoarder—he was a man with a plan. Unfortunately, Ben wasn’t taking any steps toward implementing that plan. His brain had completely skipped over the phase of picking up the tools, clearing a work space, and starting to