Hoarding: When Did Being Buried Alive Become Good ... - Feminspire

Critically analyzing the TV you?re watching can be draining. I know that the entire point of TV is to relax, veg out, and be mindless. But with all the reality TV around these days, I don?t think that I (or anyone else, really) can afford to not analyze what they?re watching any longer.

One of my TV fascinations is ?Hoarders? and ?Hoarding: Buried Alive.? They?re on two different channels, but have the same purpose: to showcase the life of someone who is a hoarder. As is oftentimes the case, I think that ignorance is what?s truly hurting us when we watch and create shows like ?Hoarders.? When you don?t fully understand the psychology behind what is happening, it?s hard to treat the subjects as human beings as opposed to circus freaks. One of the reasons we don?t know more about hoarding is that its key characteristic is secrecy. Some statistics say there are upwards of 5 million hoarders in America, but you?d never know it.

Hoarding is defined as someone who keeps possessions compulsively. These possessions can be trash, brand new but unused items, personal possessions, thrift store finds, or even animals. The possessions take up enough room in their living space that a person can no longer use the space in the way it was intended. There are levels of hoarding, one through five, with five being the most extreme. An entire room filled with unused craft supplies but an otherwise clean house would be considered level one hoarding. A house completely filled with trash, possessions, feces, one that has no heat, water, or electricity would be considered level five hoarding.

Scientists do not completely understand what causes hoarding. Hoarding has a lot of symptoms that are similar to other mental illnesses, and it can occur alongside other illness such as depression, OCD, bipolar, and schizophrenia. Most scientists are beginning to consider hoarding as its own unique mental illness. Hoarders can display symptoms from birth or sometimes begin hoarding after a traumatic event.

Now, keeping in mind that hoarding is a mental illness, here are some things that I have witnessed while watching hoarding reality TV shows:

- ? ? ?A husband and wife whose septic system backed up and filled their hallway with 6 inches of human feces.

- ? ? ?A woman whose cat was so neglected and sick that when it was scared by the people trying to clean her house, it ran out of the house, laid down in the street and died.

- ? ? ?This same woman?s toilet was so backed up that there was a mountain of feces coming out of it.

- ? ? ?The same husband and wife duo with the sewage problem, who had a sick old cat that they had lost track of. They found the cat?s skeleton behind one of their couches.

- ? ? ?A woman who had so much stuff piled in her walk-in basement that a homeless woman was living in the basement and no one realized it until the homeless woman appeared in the kitchen.

- ? ? ?A woman whose doll collection nearly made her attic fall on top of her.

These hoarders have been victims of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Often they have lost someone very close to them ? a particularly heart-wrenching story is that of a teenage girl whose room is completely unlivable because she cannot deal with the death of her little brother. It can also begin because of divorce, or it can be a personality trait that has never gone away.

Regardless, hoarders should be treated with compassion and understanding. I don?t think that the TV shows really emphasize how powerless these people are in the face of their mental illness. People speak about the hoarder in question negatively ? emphasizing inflexibility, belligerence, and perceived stupidity. It consistently depicts hoarders? husbands, wives, children, and siblings crying, yelling, screaming, and arguing because they think hoarders are choosing possessions over love, when that is far from the case. The professional help, aside from the psychologist assigned to the hoarder, is generally not helpful either. They spend the majority of their time cajoling, harassing, and berating hoarders to get them to release their possessions more quickly.

If someone had a disfiguring and painful physical condition that required they get therapy and rehabilitation, would we watch a TV show about them? Would we allow them to be harassed and cajoled into getting better faster? I sincerely doubt it ? or at least hope not. Mental illness in our society is treated as if it were a personality quirk, as something that people can just ?snap out of,? that the person who is ill is in the same state of mind as those who are well.

Scientists have found that hoarders brains operate in a different way ? they view every object as valuable and oftentimes cannot comprehend how dysfunctional their lives must be to outside viewers. Some hoarders use objects as a way of literally protecting themselves from painful emotions, and removing those items can open up a floodgate of traumatizing memories they may not be prepared to deal with. But if they are treated with compassion by family, friends and a trained psychologist as well as getting rid of their things on their own timeline, hoarders have a chance to get well. Possessions and painful memories can stop running their lives.

Speaking as someone who has depression and family members with mental illness, I find this throwaway treatment of mentally ill people on TV to be deeply saddening and mildly terrifying. If our society can?t treat desperately ill hoarders with compassion and care, then what hope do I and other mentally ill people have? How can I live with peace of mind in a world that sees mental illness as something that people can force out of you in less than two weeks? How can I (or anyone) tell our stories and be taken seriously when reality TV is selling mental illness as entertainment?

Do you watching hoarding TV shows, or know anyone who has suffered from their hoarding of physical?possessions? What do you think of the way the media presents this and other illnesses? Share with us in the comments below.

Written by Peggy Korpela

Source: http://feminspire.com/hoarding-when-did-being-buried-alive-become-good-entertainment/

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