That's one of the tantalizing prospects raised by Randy Frost, one of the first behavioral health researchers to treat hoarding as a serious and distinct dysfunction, and colleague Gail Steketee in their enlightening and perversely entertaining look at the condition.
Through their extensive work with hoarders, the researchers have found as a common thread an inability to anticipate the potential negative consequences of acquiring an object. Hoarders can only imagine the pleasure they'll derive from having the thing, being essentially blind to any concerns about clutter, relationship impacts or other liabilities.
In fact, hoarders are so out of touch with negative feelings that they also vastly overestimate how bad it will feel to get rid of an object once they acquire it. They go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the anticipated distress. Smash 'em together, and you have a perfect recipe for accumulating ever-growing piles of stuff.
Other insights from the book:
- Hoarders have remarkable ability to visually acclimate themselves to their chaotic environments. They only notice the mess when they see others struggling with it, which is part of the reason they seldom invite people in their homes.
- There often are profound social deficits underlying hoarding. Ask a hoarder why they're saving something, and more often than not they'll cite it's imagined use to someone else. (Even though such things seldom if ever get to that person.) Limited in their ability to communicate emotions directly, the thinking goes, hoarders rely on objects as emotional intermediaries.
- If you're running a support group for hoarders, do not have literature to hand out
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