how to handle the hoarding habit

Elaine Birchall is a psychologist who treats the ho product and takes pictures at the home of the person she currently works.
In Nicole\'s kitchen cupboard, the glasses and coffee cups are clean and neatly arranged.
The closet in her bedroom is also neat and tidy.
The clothes on the hanger are matched according to the color and style.
But the living room in her suburban townhouse looks abandoned and abandoned.
The box was piled up on the chair.
There are grocery bags full of old cash register receipts and coupons.
On every surface is a pile of earth that most people call rubbish.
\"Believe it or not, I \'ve started to throw something away,\" Nicole said . \" She told Canwest News Service about her hoarding on the condition that her full name would not be published to protect her privacy.
Nicole, 54, holds a senior position in the federal government, but admits her personal life is out of sync.
\"I want to keep everything and don\'t want to throw anything away.
\"It\'s more or less a summary of me,\" she said . \".
\"The organization is very good, but what is not organized is chaos.
Nicole has been working with social worker and hoarding intervention expert Elaine burchar since January.
\"I really don\'t like it,\" Nicole said . \".
\"My house is a mess.
In fact, it is good compared to the past.
Nicole\'s hoarding behavior is making progress, defined as \"excessive accumulation and inability to discard things or animals proportionally \".
Photos taken a few years ago show how much progress Nicole has made in trying to stop hoarding life.
The photo shows her kitchen counter filled with empty cans and soup cans from start to finish.
Even the top of the stove is covered with garbage.
Today, her living room looks like an explosion at a recycling plant.
The stakes are too high for Nicole to reach the patio door if a fire breaks out.
Nicole is not alone.
It is estimated that 2% of the population has hoarding problems.
Research shows that hoarding spans all levels of culture, income and education.
Men and women are also at risk.
\"But women are the ones who reach out to themselves and their loved ones,\" Birchall said . \".
\"They will do it for the children so they don\'t have to live in a chaotic environment.
\"One sign of hoarding is the damage to everyday life, which happens when space cannot be used for the intended purpose ---
Nicole\'s living room, for example.
The worst manifestation of hoarding ---
Third-roots syndrome-
Marked by mean self
Eat rotten food or pet food.
The other is animal hoarding.
It affects about 88 of the 100,000 average population.
\"We have about 700 animals in Ottawa, and about 450 people with Dios syndrome,\" Birchall said . \".
\"It is self-evident that there are often people in diougans who are elderly and their homes are harmful creatures.
\"I think we have about 14,000 to 16,000 co-owners of ho.
These are conservative estimates.
It would be shocking if we didn\'t know who they were and where they were and they didn\'t get help.
\"Hoarding is not just a mental health problem.
This is also a matter of public health and safety.
Hoarding can lead to unsafe living conditions, and the risk of a fire can put the occupants and neighbors at risk, not to mention firefighters, police and carers.
Recent research has shown that there may also be genetic and psychological factors in hoarding behavior.
Nicole had a painful childhood and abused her.
As an adult, she suffers from depression, which is deepened by work disputes and weight gain.
Nicole\'s depression hinders her ability to deal with what Birchall says is \"normal things in everyday life\"-
Mail, groceries.
Birchall, his website is sho.
Ca believes that hoarding has become a \"buffer against the vagaries of life\" for Nicole.
She added, \"Unexpected things won\'t hurt you if you\'re prepared.
Nicole says she needs to be prepared for one of the reasons she hoarded.
\"I always have to prepare everything.
So the best way to prepare for everything is to have everything.
\"In fact, I have a lot of things that add value to myself.
I am worth it because I have these things.
I like that they are by my side.
\"About five years ago, when Nicole was involved in an accident, her family knew how much she was hoarding.
\"No one knows what the house is like,\" she said . \".
Her siblings and friends dumped a lot of rubbish and cleaned up Nicole\'s home.
However, no matter how heroic, the cleanup does not involve the root cause of hoarding.
Simply letting outsiders throw everything away is not a solution, says Birchall.
Her role is to help the loyalty maker figure out why she refuses to throw away anything.
Birchall watches Nicole so she doesn\'t throw things away at will to please others.
\"She can\'t roll because it\'s just as out of control as it\'s accumulated.
I am working with her to make sure Nicole has something at the end of the day that will give her pleasure and comfort and that she is not persuaded to please someone, or throw something she likes happily.
As a registered social worker, Birchall worked with Nicole on the \"emotional, spiritual level\" to shed light on why she was hoarding.
At a consultation session, Birchall asked Nicole why a specific project was needed.
\"I replied, \'finish it.
I think I always feel incomplete.
So, in order to feel complete, I need all these things around me and have a sense of complete.
It fills the part that abuse takes away from me.
I have never felt that I am normal. I have never felt that I am valuable.
All these things. -
This is the way I deal with emptiness.
Nicole is the kind of child who always finishes his homework a few days or weeks before the assignment expires.
When she was in her teens, things changed.
She began to delay.
\"I can\'t finish anything.
Things stand there.
My geography project has never been completed because it is never perfect.
Now, if I didn\'t paint the walls of the kitchen, it wouldn\'t be a bad job because I didn\'t paint.
You can\'t screw up if it\'s not done.
\"It paralyzed me.
I\'m afraid I won\'t do it in the right way, and it\'s not perfect enough.
I have started a lot of things, but I have not done anything.
Nicole and berchell are steadily screening items stacked in Nicole\'s living room.
Birchall often uses her creativity to help clients overcome their tendency to hoard.
A young woman began hoarding wool and other materials after her mother\'s death, and she was an excellent seamstress.
Birchall says that in her opinion, throwing it out is like throwing her mother out.
Hidden sadness is the fundamental problem that leads to hoarding.
\"We will take every piece of material, cut a patch and save it.
The rest of the material is fine.
Finally, she made a patchwork quilt.
In her bed now.
Nicole was the first rose.
She said with a smile: \"All I have left is the stalk, but I have to stick to it.
Birchall said that the stem could be part of Nicole\'s \"particularly precious\" frame collage.
\"There are always creative ways for people to stick to a part of their lives, comfort them, give them joy and meaning, and let go of the excess that is a stumbling block for them.
What Nicole wants is what most of us take for granted.
\"Just to be able to live in a normal house.
I hope to make a difference.
Go home, browse my mail, browse my stuff, and throw away what I don\'t need.
Don\'t take stupid things like tickets to heart because I went somewhere a few years ago and this little note.
Don\'t pay so much attention to small things.
It\'s ridiculous.
She has been making progress recently.
She threw away some of the old bedroom fixtures that had been lying down for years.
Finally, an old pair of boots was thrown away with rubbish.
\"At work, my recycle bin is full.
I feel like my shoulder is taking some weight off.
I know, I still insist on doing stupid things.
But it will eventually come.
The process is everything.