tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46924686841540975222023-11-15T05:32:30.094-08:00Hoarder's ChildI am the daughter of a hoarder. Hoarding is such a secretive, poorly understood, crazy-making disorder that we adult children of hoarders don't talk about it much. I am just now beginning to realize how many of us are out there and how much it helps to know we're not alone, no matter how bizarre our childhoods might have been.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-29332129601919913782013-08-10T10:14:00.002-07:002013-08-10T10:14:52.734-07:00Hate the sin, love the sinner?So you'd have to actually know me to get how ironic this post title is. I grew up in an incredibly conservative, literal-minded, Bible-believing, born-again evangelical Christian household and am now as left-leaning, eastern-philosophy-oriented, non-religious as they come. (Public service announcement: If anyone takes this opportunity to post anything about my being a lost soul and hoping I will come back to the fold of Jesus' precious sheep, I will delete your comment immediately. I will then commence to send you evil thought-vibes over the internet, which may or may not progress to my buying a voodoo doll with your name on it. Just sayin'.)<br />
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"Hate the sin, but love the sinner" was something I heard a lot growing up. I believe that translates into something like, "We are judging the hell out of you and are totally okay with it. You're going to burn, by the way." I know it was a little more nuanced than that, but still. When you're a kid, hating the person and hating their actions aren't so far removed from one another.<br />
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Turns out, as an adult it's not so easy, either. Given the amount of pain my parents have inflicted over the years and my current desire to be a healthy, happy person, it's difficult to maintain (or create, as the case may be) a healthy relationship with them. I know a lot of people in my situation have made the difficult decision to end all contact with their parents. I applaud their courage and sometimes wish I could follow suit. In many ways, it would be simpler. Not easier -- that is, in no way, an easy road -- but simpler.<br />
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After much soul-searching, I have realized that I wouldn't feel okay about myself if I simply walked away from my family. For better or worse, they're my people. But I have also realized that just because I got the short end of the familial stick doesn't mean I need to maintain relationships that are painful and damaging. So where to go from here? Is there a way to separate my parents as people (the sinners, so to speak) from their damaged, shaming, hurtful, judgmental, hateful sin?<br />
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While this struggle has different nuances from making peace with a hoarder parent, for me they feel very similar. It's difficult for me, even as an adult, to separate my mother as a person from her hoarding and her behavioral oddities. I've worked through and let go of a lot of the childhood resentment and recrimination. I have changed quite a bit, but the fact remains that she, well, hasn't.<br />
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I've realized more and more that creating a healthy relationship with my mother may not actually be an achievable goal. I realized this afresh recently after she stopped speaking to me. Over the course of the last decade, she has repeatedly requested that we talk about my childhood. I'd refused every time, because that was clearly not going to end well. She was looking for validation as a mother and a person, and I have none to give. It's not really my job, anyway. But this time I decided that maybe it would be good for me to say my piece, and so I did. There's really no gentle way to explain how being raised by a clinically depressed hoarder feels to a child. I tried. She didn't like it. And now she isn't speaking to me. Which is kind of sad. It's also kind of awesome. It definitely makes that whole hate the sin, love the sinner thing simpler. Until she starts talking to me again, but that's a whole different post.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-90439536474155652232013-07-26T20:07:00.000-07:002013-07-26T20:07:44.122-07:00Hot damn. I'm baaaaack!So I took an extended, albeit unannounced, leave of absence from the blogosphere. I needed some time and space to keep weeding through and discarding some of the emotional detritus from my past. It's been an interesting seven months. (Since blogs are tone-of-voice free and since I am Queen of the Understatement, let me just translate the word "interesting" for you. It's been fantastic, gut-wrenching, amazing, and incredibly draining. Thank god for good friends and a good therapist.)<br />
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Those of you who have been following me for awhile (thanks, by the way! I am awed and humbled and touched by all of your comments) know that I have been battling for years to extricate myself from some pretty damn destructive family-of-origin patterns. I grew up in a very repressive, very judgmental born-again Christian household. (To be clear for any evangelical Christians who may be reading this and bristling, I have nothing against Jesus. He was a pretty awesome dude. I do, however, have a lot -- a looooooot -- against being raised by a family who taught me that I would never, ever be good enough and who slapped a religious coating on that belief and called it gospel.)<br />
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My mom is a capital-H Hoarder who has, at last count, managed to fill a four-bedroom suburban home, garage, yard, and variety of sheds with absolute crap. Because you might need it someday, you know? She struggled with depression and, I suspect, hypomania the entire time I was growing up. This part is hard to jam into a nutshell, but I spent my formative years in the role of mother, taking care of her. I was home-schooled until high school, so there was, quite literally, no escaping the chaos and the dysfunction.<br />
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My parents were married, but in that "I hate you with the fire of a thousand suns" kind of marriage, where their volcanically caustic relationship poisoned everything around them. My dad lived with us, but we didn't see him much. He spent most of his waking hours (and all of mine) at work. Years later, he came to me and apologized for not taking better care of us kids "because I never knew how bad it was at home." I'm sorry, what? How? What? I have no words. But that's a post for another time.<br />
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My dad loves me, I know, but has his own issues around anxiety and shame, especially of the religious variety. Talking with him is like emotional dodgeball, as he lobs giant verbal balls filled with guilt and shame in my direction. Don't get me wrong -- he does his best. It's just that his best kind of sucks. As an adult, I can see that with reasonable clarity. As a child, his constant disappointment and disapproval of me was soul-crushing.<br />
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It's been a long road (16 years and counting) to weed out which parts of me are actually me and which parts of my inner voice come from my parents. It's an important road and I am fully aware that I'll be traveling it for the rest of my life, but sweet mother of all that is holy. It's a lot of work. Good work, necessary work, but still. These last six months or so have been pretty intense for me in terms of making peace with my need to turn my back, if not on my family, on much of what they have taught me and on the parts of who they are that diminish me.<br />
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It is wretchedly and wrenchingly difficult for me to stand tall and take care of myself, given that I was explicitly and implicitly taught for years that to do so is unacceptable. The good news, the news that brings me peace and joy and amazement that life can be so incredible, is that I actually can. I can take care of myself, and I can love myself, and I can give myself all of the nurturing and understanding that my parents weren't able to when I was growing up. I deserve to be loved, and I deserve to love myself. I wake up in the morning now and am filled with a gratitude so profound that it borders on joy. I am safe. I am happy. I am me, and it's pretty damn fantastic.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-55423555229913174852012-12-31T12:58:00.001-08:002012-12-31T12:58:48.986-08:00Cleanliness is next to what now?Hoarder's children don't learn how to keep a house clean. (I know, I know. Bow to the Queen of Stating the Obvious.) Not only do we not learn how to clean, but we also learn a complete lack of consistent routine; ironically, rampant perfectionism (of the "if you can't do it perfectly, you might as well not even start" variety); and a sense of being completely overwhelmed by life (hoarders aren't exactly known for teaching their kids how to break a task into smaller, accomplishable pieces). That, plus my mother's voice in my head ("Everybody else knows how to do it. You're just really lazy") have made figuring out this home maintenance thing an uphill climb.<br />
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Here's the thing, though. As my personal life completely imploded over the last year or so, I began to realize how much living in chaos affects my outlook and stress level. Even if I have a well-developed case of hoarder's child clutter blindness, at some level I do register the mess and feel stressed by it. And so, fifteen years after leaving my mother's home, I set about really figuring out how to address this issue once and for all. Here are some of the highlights of what I've learned.<br />
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1. <u>Cut yourself some slack.</u> As a culture, we view people who don't keep their houses clean in a truly negative light. I really struggled to let go of viewing my messiness as a deep, personal flaw. What worked for me was to take a deep breath and replace my mother's voice ("What's wrong with you?") with something I would say to a friend in the same situation (usually, "Do you realize how much you've already gotten done today? No wonder you're tired"). Repeat about a million times, and you'll be on your way.<br />
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2. <u>Have less stuff.</u> Some children of hoarders go the stark minimalist route. Some, like me, just struggle with having a bit too much clutter. I now keep a Goodwill bag in my closet. When I come across something that isn't useful, loved, or beautiful, into the bag it goes. Every month or so, I donate the bag o' crap so it can go clutter someone else's house. Less stuff to maintain = less time cleaning = more freedom.<br />
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3. <u>Learn how to clean.</u> Read blogs and books about cleaning. Learning how other people do it not only demystifies the process, but makes it seem a lot more doable. It also lends itself to learning tips that streamline some of the little annoyances in your life. (Among my favorites? Store sheet sets in one of the matching pillowcases. It keeps your sheets together and negates the fact that you couldn't care less about folding the fitted sheet neatly! Another super-handy one is to keep a dish wand (the kind that stores cleaner in the handle and has a scrubber on the end) in the shower and wash it down while you're in there. My shower has never been cleaner!).<br />
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4. <u>Ask a friend. A really good, non-judgmental friend.</u> I've discovered that pretty much everyone I've talked to would like their house to be cleaner, which makes me feel better. For the really ridiculous questions, though, it's been great to be able to go to my best friend. She knows all about my hoarder mother and never makes me feel silly for asking questions I should probably know the answer to already. (How much time per day do you spend cleaning? Wait, you clean your washer?)<br />
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5. <u>Figure out what works for you.</u> There are about a million systems out there for keeping your house clean. I've had a bear of a time figuring out which one might work for me. They all seem so overwhelming. I finally started small, with setting a timer for 15 minutes a day and cleaning whatever was bothering me the most until it went off. Did I do this perfectly every day? Nope. Did it simplify things enough that I felt less paralyzed about just diving in and getting started? Yep. Recently, I've combined this strategy with matching a particular task and/or room to a day of the week. Cleaning on a rotating basis takes away the indecision and also makes me feel like I have a deadline. Vacuum on Sundays, deep-clean the kitchen on Mondays, living room on Tuesdays... (Full disclosure: I've tried this system before and always ended up quitting and feeling like a failure. If I was too tired or lazy or sick to do the work on Monday or Tuesday, I'd tack it onto Wednesday's workload and pretty soon be so overwhelmed that I'd just throw in the towel. What makes this time different is that if I skip a day, I actually skip it. Didn't do laundry on Wednesday? No problem. The next laundry day is Saturday. I'll do it then.)<br />
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6. <u>Perspective is key.</u> I have a tendency to be an all-or-nothing thinker (again, thanks, Hoarder Mom!). "I didn't clean the house today" somehow turns into "I'll never figure out how to do this" which turns into "I'm a terrible person." Keeping things in perspective helps keep the emotionally charged topic of cleaning house from becoming, well, emotionally charged. If you can stop this train of thought in its tracks, "I didn't clean the house today" can become "Well, at least I finished the dinner dishes, and that's okay. Wait, <i>I'm</i> okay!" And that feels pretty good.<br />
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<br />Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-16904190923575798402012-12-10T10:08:00.000-08:002013-07-26T20:08:26.523-07:00Blargh. Holidays.Typically, I'm not as Scrooge-y as this post title would suggest. I love me a plate of Christmas cookies as much as the next gal, preferably consumed in a spruce-y smelling home filled with beatific loved ones.<br />
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Okay, so I've got the cookies. The beatific loved ones? Not so much. Then again, apart from Madison Avenue's Christmas ads, who actually does? Given that I'm fully aware of my family's lack of basic functionality, Hallmark holidays aren't something I've ever actually expected. What has taken me by surprise this holiday season, as I work through the emotional detritus of being raised by a hoarder mother and a absentee-ish father, is how sadness about that has bubbled to the surface.<br />
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If you haven't been following along on my internal journey, allow me to recap: I grew up with an emotionally abusive, mentally ill hoarder mother. (I almost typed "I was raised by" until I realized that, as I spent most of my childhood parenting my mother, it would be more accurate to say I raised her.) My angry father avoided the chaos of home by spending the majority of my waking hours at work. I've popped in and out of therapy over the last decade. This is largely spurred by my tendency to crash in and out of wildly unhealthy relationships that, when examined later, make me feel dumber than toast. Given that I'm not actually dumber than toast (or any other breakfast food, for that matter), after the latest unspeakably spectacular implosion of my personal life, I decided I should probably buckle down and figure my shit out.<br />
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And so, here I am. I've never been especially into blaming my parents for my mistakes. I'm sure this is largely due to growing up with a mother who blamed everyone but herself for her mistakes, but I have a larger-than-average bent toward personal responsibility. (Occasionally, this means I take responsibility for other people's lives, too, but that's another post. And more fodder for the therapist's couch.) I'm a grown-ass woman, for god's sake, and I'm the one making my choices.<br />
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Except I'm realizing more and more that, while I am making my own choices, they are profoundly impacted by (wait for it!) my mother. (That will come as no surprise to you. For me, on the other hand, it's like a most unpleasant excavation of my internal workings, fraught with repeated realizations of how much the messages she gave while growing up have affected my adult life.) Hence my current attitude toward the holidays. This season is often difficult, but this year, I have the added layer of a wash of hostility toward and complete lack of desire to spend any time with my mother. My solution thus far is to not visit for the holidays. That, plus lots of deep breathing, self-medicating chocolate consumption, therapy, and running seem like they'll get me through January 2nd and out the other side of the holiday season. Until next year, anyway.<br />
<br />Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-48409519953423534642012-11-25T21:23:00.000-08:002012-11-25T21:23:16.730-08:00Score one for therapyI've spent the last couple of months struggling with how to be a good daughter to my bipolar, wildly inept, crazy-making hoarding mother while remaining sane and healthy. After much mental anguish, several self-help books, and lots of therapy, I have come to the following conclusions:<br />
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1. Our culture has no real archetype or paradigm for bad daughters. Seriously. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden">Lizzie Borden</a>. Given that I'm planning to figure this whole thing out well before I have the urge to hack my mother up with a hatchet, that's not exactly the role model I was looking for. (On the plus side, Googling "bad daughter" led me to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/THE-BAD-DAUGHTER-Betrayal-Confession/dp/1565121856"><i>The Bad Daughter: Betrayal and Confession</i> by Julie Hilden,</a> which is quite an interesting read.)<br />
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2. Although I've known this one for awhile, recent interactions with my mother have driven this point home once again. She isn't going to change. As much as I deserved a tuned-in, consistently caring mother as a child, she wasn't that person then and she isn't now. Harsh as it sounds, she is and always will be damaged and narcissistic. She is unable to see or acknowledge how her behavior affects other people and will continue to blame others (read: me) for her failures in relationships and in life.<br />
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3. She seems incapable of sustaining long-term relationships, whether with family members, friends, or her own children. She drives people away with her neediness, anger, narcissism, and social ineptitude. She doesn't know how to make and keep friends. Does it make me sad that my mother is lonely? You bet. Does it occasionally twist my stomach into a knot or two when I think of her dying alone, as seems likely? Damn straight. But am I responsible for this state of affairs, or for making her any less lonely? Nope. That's on her, not me.<br />
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4. And for the grand finale of all conclusions, one that surprised even me -- how I can be a good daughter to my mother while still taking care of myself? I can't. I can't be a good, care-taking daughter to her and still be happy and healthy. And given that I'm not willing to spend any more of my life sacrificing myself for her well-being, at least for now it means that I have given myself permission to be a bad daughter. As a wise friend once pointed out, I can be a bad daughter without being a bad person. What that means in practice, I'm not so sure. But I do know that just having this realization is huge and life-changing and just the beginning.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-1289512017600216282012-10-22T18:59:00.003-07:002012-10-22T18:59:40.421-07:00Aargh!This will come as a shock to no one who grew up in a hoarded home, but I did not grow up in a household where people knew how to set or respect healthy boundaries. When issues arose, the options were to ignore them (doesn't that make it go away?), pretend you don't have any needs (What? No, really, that doesn't bother me at all. Really), or just bottle it up inside until you explode for no apparent reason. (That last one is even more awesome if you end up screaming at someone for an infraction completely unrelated to what you're actually mad about.)<br />
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As an adult, I'm still working on the whole setting healthy boundaries deal, at least with my mother. With other people, I'm fine, given that when you discuss an issue with most people they're willing to work things out to both people's satisfaction. (Or, in the case of compromise, to both people's mild dissatisfaction. But at least it gets worked out.)<br />
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But when you try to work things out with someone who's profoundly dysfunctional, setting boundaries doesn't go so well. If I bring something up with my mother, it gets turned around into being my problem and my fault. To preserve what relationship we have left, I've kind of thrown in the towel on calling my mom on her crap. Doing otherwise makes me too crazy.<br />
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Until recently, that is. At the moment, I've had just about up to here (picture my hand waving somewhere about six feet above my head) with dealing with my mother's passive aggression/hoarding/hypochondria/dysfunction. The thing is, she's getting older and I know that her care will, at some point, become my responsibility.<br />
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Which brings me back to the boundaries thing. At previous stages in life, I'd worked out how much distance I could keep from my mother to maintain my own sanity. As she gets older, I have to figure out anew how to set boundaries with a woman who neither understands nor respects them. How is it possible to take care of someone who's lost her mind without losing mine?Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-5791244454846192412012-10-07T13:32:00.001-07:002012-10-07T13:32:07.531-07:00And then I stuck a pen in my eye. Again.<div>
I might need to talk to my mother less. I've been trying to talk to her once a week or so, which sounds lovely except for it generally makes me feel (at best) really annoyed or (at worst) homicidal. Usually, this has something to do with my desperate struggle to filter what I'm actually thinking so that it doesn't come out of my mouth, as that typically would not be particularly constructive. Her profound lack of insight into herself and the way she relates to other people also make me have a sudden urge toward violence. So far, I have successfully avoided actually doing anything of the sort, but the following three conversations have made me come pretty close. </div>
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Conversation #1: </div>
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Mom: I've decided that I should start trying to work on some of my issues in therapy.</div>
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Me (internal monologue): Wait, you've been in therapy for FIVE YEARS! What the hell have you been talking about all that time?</div>
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Me (actually talking, and taking a deep breath while wishing desperately for a vodka and tonic): Well, that sounds like a fine idea.</div>
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Conversation #2:</div>
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Mom: My therapist wants me to tell her how I'm the same and different from other people in our family. I don't really know, so I was hoping you could help me with that.</div>
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Me (internal monologue): Well, for starters, the rest of us have enough insight to be able to complete that assignment all by ourselves. Secondly, none of us are crazy. Or hoarders.</div>
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Me (aloud): Ummm....</div>
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Conversation #3:</div>
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Mom (giant sigh): I'm trying to get rid of some things. I probably shouldn't tell you this, but I've been collecting adorable baby things for a few years now and have a couple of boxes of them. But now that you're divorced, I don't know if I'll ever even have any grandkids.... (another big sigh)</div>
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Me (internal monologue, while trying to figure out if it's possible to actually reach through the phone and slap someone): What the fuck? Did you actually just say that out loud? And when did my leaving my damaging and incredibly unhappy marriage become all about you? </div>
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Me (out loud, through gritted teeth): Yeah, you should just get rid of those.</div>
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If I had any of these conversations with someone else, I could filter what I was thinking into something reasonably socially appropriate and actually have an honest dialogue with them. With my mom, though, it somehow always gets twisted on its head so what she says becomes my problem. ("I didn't mean that at all! Why are you so sensitive?") This negates any pesky possibility of a healthy dialogue (read: mature, adult relationship) while also providing a wealth of opportunities for me to exercise my willpower by not actually sticking a pen in my eye. See? There really is a bright side to everything.</div>
Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-29082818484203429322012-09-12T19:07:00.001-07:002012-09-12T19:12:05.187-07:00Childhood memories? What childhood memories?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I was almost an adult before I realized that it was strange
that I can’t remember much of my childhood. The normal state of affairs is
not to have a large, fuzzy blank between the ages
of, say, 3 and 13. It's disconcerting not to be able to trust your own memory. It's even worse to have people recount stories that you don't remember AT ALL, even though you were there. On occasion, my father will mention something traumatic that happened when I was a teen or tween and I can't recall it in the slightest. Given that a big chunk of what I do remember is either upsetting or just plain weird, I always kind of figured I was repressing memories. It's a bit disturbing to think that all those memories might bob to the surface of my mind one day, as I have already spent enough on therapy to install an Olympic-sized swimming pool in my shrink's backyard. Or maybe just send him on a really nice vacation. But I digress.<br />
<br />
Recently, though, my therapist explained something that made me feel much better about the whole deal. Apparently, most parents interact with their children in a way that helps them make sense of the world. (What? You mean other kids don't have to figure it all out for themselves as they go along? Damn, that must be nice. Not that I'm bitter.) These repeated interactions, where your parents help you process the events of your young life, also help you to encode memories. I never really had anyone to consistently help me with, well, anything. Forget having anyone who could help me make sense of my world. I lived in a world that didn't make sense for anyone else, either. And so where a child with more support would have processed events and encoded them into memories, I just lived through events and then forgot them.<br />
<br />
For me, this explanation was kind of a relief. I was already well aware that I didn't have anyone who could really help shepherd me through my growing-up years, so that didn't exactly come as a shock. I'll definitely take that explanation over feeling like I have all of these unremembered traumas circling below the surface, just waiting to float up and bite me. Awesome it is not -- but I'll take what I can get.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-62032418791804806092012-09-09T13:34:00.001-07:002012-09-09T13:34:52.801-07:00And then I stuck a pen in my eyeI just had one of those crazy-making conversations with my mother. You know, the kind where she pushes all of your buttons the way that only your mother can, making you so crazy that you would stick a pen in your eye if it would only help you get off the phone faster?<br />
<br />
I did manage to narrowly avoid stabbing myself with any blunt instruments (or sharp ones, for that matter), solely by virtue of the fact that I managed to actually hang up the phone a mere 15 minutes into the discussion. This was shortly after working our way through her recurring conversational themes:<br />
<br />
1. When I get my life together, I will... (choose any random ongoing desire and insert here).<br />
2. Because God says that I am right about... (insert conservative political position/religious belief here)<br />
3. Your father... (insert overly dramatic sigh and explanation of how he has so wretchedly and evilly wronged her in the past)<br />
4. The last people I hired to help me... (insert story about how personal organizer/roofer/contractor/dog walker has wronged her as well)<br />
5. I'm organizing the house and I don't know why I can't just get it finished this time.<br />
<br />
These five topics, in one permutation or another, sprinkle every. single. conversation. Seriously. Every single conversation that I have with my mother. She is the only person I know who returns repeatedly and frequently to the same themes in her conversations, very often even using the exact same verbiage over and over (when I get my life together...).<br />
<br />
This verbal stuckness very much reflects the stuckness that she has in life. She has such chronic good intentions about getting the house cleaned and organized, but is utterly unable to do so. She also has the classic hoarder lack of insight as to why this might be. She also has a markedly inflexible belief system, which ranges from life-dominating religious dogma to consistently viewing herself as a victim.<br />
<br />
I understand that, as a hoarder, her brain works differently from the way that mine does. She is so mired in her belongings in part because of this lack of insight and inability to process information in a way that leads to making good decisions. The rest of the script, though, continues to baffle me. Every time we talk on the phone, no matter what we're talking about, most of her five themes play a prominent role in the conversation. I have no idea if this is an issue common to hoarders, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Does anyone else have a similar, I-can't-let-go-of-my-script experience when conversing with a hoarder? Because seriously, if I have to sit through one more of these conversations, I might actually stick a pen in my eye.<br />
<br />
<br />Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-55164015812227804472012-07-18T19:49:00.001-07:002012-07-18T19:49:15.128-07:00Hoarding and guns don't mixThe thing about growing up in a completely crazy family is that, no matter how nuts everything is, it's still your reality. As a child, you don't really have the perspective to know how much your family is different from others, even if you know that it is. And even as an adult, although I am completely aware that my family was waaaaaay far along the dysfunctional spectrum, I forget how weird my stories are until I see the facial expression of the person I'm telling them to.<br />
<br />
That is, I forget how weird some of the stories are. The rest of them are completely, gobsmackingly insane. I was reminded of one of the strangest recently, when I ran across <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/anthony-glen-gorospe-long-beach-hoarder_n_1655426.html">this</a> article about a hoarder who got into a standoff with the police. The city inspectors and police escort came out to inspect the home for blight. As they were trying to figure out how to navigate through the front yard to get to the door, the hoarder opened fire.<br />
<br />
That story was very nearly mine. My mother's father was a hoarder. He owned a house that was so filled with junk that you could only wind your way through the rooms by sliding sideways through the stacks of his belongings. Magazines, newspapers, broken musical instruments, dead rats, moldy food -- you name it, it was piled in the house. The front yard was mostly occupied by a collection of automobiles in various states of disrepair. I don't remember what all was in the backyard, although I'm fairly certain that it was the barrels of gasoline from the 70's oil shortage that caught the attention of the local authorities. Oh, and did I mention that he also had a propensity for collecting unregistered guns?<br />
<br />
You can see where this is going. Eventually, the city seized his house as a health hazard. The night before it was scheduled to be demolished, my mother told me that Grandpa had called her, raving about government crooks and persecutors. He told her that he wasn't going to stand for it. His plan was to lie in wait for the bulldozer driver, who was coming in the morning, and shoot him on sight.<br />
<br />
My reaction to this piece of information was to insist that my mother call the police. My mother's reaction was to insist that he'd never really do it. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I've been accused more than once of being a pessimist. I'm just saying that when a man beats his wife and kids, assaults police officers, and has been in and out of jail on weapons charges, you should take him seriously when he threatens to off someone. After some serious pressure from me, Mom finally agreed to call the police. They went out to talk to him that evening, and no one ended up getting shot. The house got bulldozed, my mom continued to live in a constant state of denial, and I got one more crazy story to add to my collection.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-88923628695035478212012-07-05T21:18:00.001-07:002012-07-05T21:25:21.312-07:00It's not me, it's youI've worked long and hard to gain emotional distance from enmeshment with my mother and her hoarding. (Geographical distance helps too. I now live 700 miles away from her and my childhood home, which I can only imagine is filled to the rafters by now.) I don't visit much, as the visits are unpleasantly laced with dysfunction and weird interactions between my mother and me. There's a lot of verbal tap-dancing going on with my attempts to derail her before she gets going on topics that set her off and make me crazy. <span style="background-color: white;">Religious discussions go something like this. Mom: "I wish you went to a Bible-believing church more often." Me: "I believe there are many paths to God." Mom: "I'm so sad that you're going straight to hell!" </span><span style="background-color: white;">She's a very conservative Evangelical Christian. I'm about as liberal as you can get without being Noam Chomsky, so politics are also off-limits. </span><span style="background-color: white;">Discussions about other members of the family aren't so great either. Me: "No, I think my younger brother is doing pretty well. He likes his new job a lot." Mom: "I just don't understand why he would want to work for a morally corrupt institution like a bank. Do you think he's morally corrupt too?" Oh, and the holidays. Mom: "I'm setting a boundary and have decided that I'm not going to allow you in my house. Why don't we meet on Christmas Eve at Carl's Junior?" Me: "WTF?" (Note: The first few were just examples. The last one actually happened, minus the swearing at my mother part. And let me tell you, there is nothing more depressing than eating greasy hamburgers in a fast food joint on Christmas Eve.) </span><br />
<br />
Still, once in awhile, the guilt kind of gets me. When I was younger, I tried and tried to help her get the house clean. But her hoarding brain takes over and gets in the way. I might need this someday/it's still perfectly good/I'm keeping it to read later/my mother gave it to me/I don't know what to do with it, so I'll just move it into this pile over here -- her inability to make decisions about letting things go gets in the way of making any progress. Add to that her anger and recrimination over my attempts to help (how could you do this to me/you're just like your father/you love everyone else more than you love me/I never should have had kids) and I ended up in a situation that was very damaging to me. To both of us, really. So I got really pissed off and quit trying to parent her, which also pissed her off.<br />
<br />
Over the years, I've gotten less angry and more sad about the way she's choosing to live. (In case you were wondering, she's still on the angry wagon, albeit in a passive aggressive kind of way.) I wish I could help her, and sometimes that wistful, wishful thinking starts to steer me down the wrong path. I understand that she has a mental illness (well, at least two of them, by last count) and that it's not her own doing. That's where the guilt gets to me, a bit. <span style="background-color: white;">I know that she's sick and that I would never wish her illness on my worst enemy.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">Maybe I should be a better daughter, I think. And then I remember. It's not her fault that she's mentally ill, but it is her fault that she refuses to seek help for her illness. It is her fault that she uses it as an excuse to be nasty and verbally abusive. It has nothing to do with me. The guilt here isn't even a little bit mine. It's all hers.</span>Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-63578204268921310522012-06-19T19:56:00.001-07:002012-07-18T19:50:52.575-07:00Lies my mother told me, part 3Sometimes I feel like my life is a continuous process of weeding through the pile of hoarder's child messages mounded in my brain, discarding the ones that no longer fit, are flat-out wrong, or simply make my life untenable. That would be, ahem, most of them.<br />
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One of my mother's recurring refrains is "As soon as I get my ducks in a row..." or its near cousin, "As soon as I get my life in order..." This is delivered in a wistful, wry tone of voice and always followed by something she would love to do, but refuses to allow herself the pleasure of actually doing it. <span style="background-color: white;">Growing up with this constant refrain (especially in a family of sturdy, German-descended farming folk with a mighty Protestant work ethic), I learned that you must complete all of your "shoulds" before there's any room for enjoying yourself. I must clean the house/finish grading papers/call Grandma before I can take a bubble bath/read that book on my nightstand/go hiking/and on and on. You need to tick off all the items on your to-do list before you deserve to take care of yourself.</span></div>
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I recently had an epiphany about this. Life is pretty damn daily, you know? And there's a reason it seems like every time I cross an item off my list, I have to add another one. It's because every time I cross an item off my list, I actually do have to add another one. Life is ongoing. I'll always have more to do tomorrow. So screw it -- I've decided that now I'm going to take care of myself first. Do I want to go to Starbucks before I do the grocery shopping? Why not? Read another chapter before I finish the laundry? Certainly. Do something fun before I've checked off every last item on the list? You bet. Because, at the end of the day, there's always going to be a duck or two that isn't in a row. I say, smile and wave at them as you head out the door to do something that will make you happy.</div>Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-10955247364665369512012-05-12T21:57:00.002-07:002012-05-12T21:57:40.876-07:00I hate Mother's DayReally. I hate Mother's Day with a fiery passion. Most of the time, I feel like I've made my peace with having a mother who just couldn't care for us kids the way that most mothers do. But then sometimes I run across something (like <a href="http://www.myyellowsandboxblog.com/2012/05/happy-early-mothers-day.html">this</a> truly lovely blog post) that makes me realize that I still mourn not having a functional relationship with my mother. I still have an internal sense of that lost little girl who grew up in a hoarded house with no room for her, physically or emotionally.<br />
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I know I can't possibly be the only one out there who hates Mother's Day. Granted, it really isn't the type of thing that tends to come up in conversation. I might as well announce a hatred of puppies and unicorns. But then again, maybe not. Truthfully, I don't see how children of a hoarding mother -- or a mother with any kind of mental illness -- could avoid having at least somewhat mixed feelings about the day. Hoarding tends to be comorbid with other mental illnesses, which means that many of us children of hoarders had additional parental issues to deal with. Female hoarders have a higher incidence of panic disorder, binge eating, OCD, substance abuse, and bipolar I disorder (the kind with the really high highs and the really low lows). Male hoarders have a higher incidence of social phobia than male non-hoarders. (See <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2577614/">this</a> NIH-published study for more information.)<br />
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My extremely anxious mother hoarded, binge ate, and suffered from what seems to be undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Growing up with her was less than delightful. Don't get me wrong -- she loved us and tried to do the best that she could (although her best was a total nightmare). So every year, as Mother's Day rolls around, I once again try to make my peace with celebrating a mother who couldn't cope with her own life, much less the lives of her three children; a mother who prioritized her relationship with things over her relationship with people; a mother with whom I, more often than not, had to assume the role of care-taking adult. That's all still true, come to think of it.<br />
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So here's to all of those people out there who have mixed feelings about the holiday (and the people who outright loathe it, like me. I know you're out there.) Happy freaking Mother's Day.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-57566453400832643232012-05-01T20:55:00.000-07:002012-05-01T20:55:21.733-07:00Yup, you sure showed meThe spring weather today made me have a flashback to a Spring Break in high school that I spent organizing my mother's garage. Ha, you say. What teenage hubris inspired you to attempt to de-hoard a suburban, two-car garage filled solidly with junk stacked higher than you are tall? By yourself? In a week?<br />
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Well, I wouldn't say it was hubris so much as desperation. Also, that my mother kept hounding me about never helping my own family. ("Never helping" from her perspective translated, from mine, into being a sixteen-year-old girl trying to raise my younger brother, do the grocery shopping and the cooking, and generally keep my mother from making our lives more disastrous than they already were.) So for some reason, and ostensibly with my mother's blessing, I decided that I would spend my Spring Break week really helping. (Looking back, I suspect there was a good bit of "I'll show you!" teenager-ness about the decision. Little did I know how badly I was outclassed.)<br />
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My mother is mostly a hoarder of books and paper. I spent the better part of the week going through boxes upon boxes upon boxes. The garage was filled with stacks of worthless papers, junk mail, magazines, newspapers, and thousands and thousands of discarded books. I sorted. I organized. I sneezed through the dust as I clambered over giant piles of garbage. I got the garage ready so that we could finally get rid of everything, so that we could finally be free.<br />
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And at the end of the week, when I proudly showed my mother my accomplishment -- Look! It's ready for us to go get that Dumpster we talked about! -- she did let me throw some of her things away.<br />
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She let me throw away one box. One. The rest of it she went through, piece by piece. She might need it someday, or was sentimental for her, or she hadn't had the chance to read it, or she was saving it for someone who needed it -- for every single item in the garage. All but that one lone box that went into the trash.<br />
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Looking back, it's kind of amazing that she let me get rid of anything at all. That was the day, though, that I realized that I cannot help her. I'm pretty sure that her garage is fuller now that it was then. I'm pretty sure that the house is filled as well. I'm not totally certain, though. She won't let me inside, Dumpster or not. So in the end, really, she showed me.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-53513525688131884272012-04-28T14:48:00.000-07:002012-04-28T14:48:50.521-07:00Surprising sympathy. Sort of.I'm the first to admit that I normally have precisely zero sympathy for my mother, the hoarder. This is a trait that I share with many children of hoarders. There's something about growing up in a household where your parent bonds with things more than you that doesn't inspire a ton of warm, sympathetic feelings. Recently, though, I had probably my first flash of sympathy ever. After moving last month into a much smaller place, I still have one bedroom stacked with boxes to go through. It's like death by a thousand tiny decisions. Open a box, take out an item. Does it go to Goodwill? The garbage? Do I keep it? If so, where do I put it? Then multiply that by all of the items in the box, and then by all of the boxes I have left to go through. Overwhelming. And this is coming from someone whose default mode is "If I don't love it, it needs to go away." And then I thought of my mother, who has filled a four-bedroom house, two-car garage, and two storage sheds to the brim with utter crap. It's an incredibly overwhelming amount of possessions.<br />
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Researchers are discovering that hoarders' brain function seems to differ from that of a healthy person. (This will come as no great shock to those of you who are related to a hoarder.) Part of the issue seems to be that they cannot accurately judge the value of an item, leading to keeping a huge excess of things that to them (and them only) seem valuable. They also have great difficulty making decisions (this likely isn't shocking to you either). But if I am this worn out by clearing out one bedroom's worth of stuff, I can't imagine what facing down an entire hoarded house would feel like for my mother. Therein lies possibly the first glimmer of sympathy I've ever had for her.<br />
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Granted, the sympathy is limited. Her refusal to seek help for hoarding or her concomitant manic depression kind of puts the brakes on the warm fuzzies. It's certainly not her fault that, like many hoarders, she grew up traumatized by living in an abusive family. It isn't her fault that her brain chemistry doesn't work like most people's. But forcing three children to grow up in the midst of her very substantial baggage? I don't have enough sympathy to let her off the hook for that.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-55639465227591679582012-04-08T18:43:00.000-07:002012-07-18T19:50:44.672-07:00Lies my mother told me, part 2Growing up in a hoarded home, you internalize a lot of messages about how to exist and how to make your way in the world. As my therapist has pointed out, this means you learn patterns of behavior that help you survive your childhood. Unfortunately, the flip side of this means that if you're looking to create a healthy adulthood, there are a lot (a LOT!) of messages that you need to rethink and revise. <br />
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One of the biggest messages I received growing up was never actually verbalized. It had more to do with watching my mother's reactions to problems. For the most part, whenever an issue arose, her reaction fell into one of three camps. Option 1: Make no attempt to solve the problem. Stick head in sand. Repeat as necessary. Option 2: Attempt to solve problem via incredibly complex, complicated solution that is doomed to fail. Flagellate self ceaselessly when completely unrealistic solution doesn't work out. Option 3: Blame someone else for the problem. (This last one is very handy, as it totally preempts the necessity of examining your own contributions to the issue. Unfortunately, it also means you have a snowball's chance in Arizona of actually resolving anything.)<br />
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As an adult, these three choices seem to have melded into one giant, crippling shorthand. No matter what the problem is (and in my life lately, there have been some doozies), my unconscious reaction screams that "There is no possible solution to this problem!" I'm pretty sure this comes from the complex of issues that stem from growing up in a crazy, hoarded home, not least of which is the specter of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness">learned helplessness</a> that raises its ugly head all. the. damn. time. As I'm facing my own, new apartment that is still in chaos from a move, plus a variety of implosions in my personal life, it can be hard to remember everything I've learned over the past decade. Sometimes, no matter how far you've come, it's still hard to be a hoarder's child.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-77206767621302583382012-03-31T18:57:00.000-07:002012-03-31T18:57:33.016-07:00A funny GodI was talking with my therapist recently about how life seems to keep circling back around to my unresolved issues. He mentioned the phrase "a funny God," which at first confused me. And then I realized he was talking about what I was talking about -- that, until you have really, truly worked through something, life/God/the universe/whatever you want to call it will keep bringing you the same situation until you work your way through it. <br />
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I moved this weekend, downsizing from an 1800 square foot house to an 850 square foot apartment. Not surprisingly, this means I now have WAY too much stuff. Stuff stacked in boxes around the apartment, stuff stacked in piles that I have to work around. Stuff that has made my home chaos. <br />
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I was staring at all of this stuff today, feeling overwhelmed and triggered by memories of growing up in a house where you couldn't actually walk straight through most of the rooms. You had to pick a path over, through, and around the piles of stuff. I felt very much like I was back with my mother, surrounded by an unmanageable chaos. And then, all of a sudden, I realize that wasn't true at all. Too much stuff, yes. Chaos, yes. But, this time around, I have the ability to simplify, discard, and organize. I have the power to make my life what I want it to be. My mother's issue no longer needs to be my issue.<br />
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A funny God, indeed.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-66210473693516676542012-02-07T17:46:00.000-08:002012-02-07T17:46:13.502-08:00I heart routines<a href="http://noroomforme-coh.com/2011/09/children-of-hoarders-routines-are-our-friends/">This</a> post made me realize afresh how much I really, really like routines. Apparently, it's not just me. Granted, as an elementary school teacher, I probably have more routines than most people. Math at 8:30, read a story at 10:00, lunch at 11:00.... The more time I spend with tiny people, the more I realize that kids really do thrive on that routine.<br />
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And that makes me think about the complete and total lack of routine that I had growing up. Waking up in the morning, I never had any idea what that day might be like. Will I have any clean socks? Can I even find my socks? Which side of Mom will I see today -- the fun-loving, childlike mom, or the angry, moody one who's obsessed with her stuff? Looking back, a complete lack of schedule, routine, and predictability meant that I drifted through most days feeling completely unmoored.<br />
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As an adult, that may help explain why I have such a deep-seated need to be able to predict, with reasonable certainty, what today will hold. Life has definitely underscored the lesson that there are many, many things that are not under my control. The struggle for me now is to create a routine that takes into account what I actually can control, while letting go of the things that are simply uncontrollable. It's still a work in progress, but the fact that I can articulate the struggle at all makes me realize that I've come a long way from that kid searching for clean socks amid the hoard.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-75774310799786966972012-01-14T18:57:00.000-08:002012-01-14T18:57:19.910-08:00If wishes were fishesWhen I was younger and just starting to come to terms with my family's dysfunction, I wished a lot for things to be different.<br />
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I just re-read that sentence and realized that, while true, it isn't entirely accurate to phrase it only in the past tense. I am still coming to terms with my family's dysfunction. On occasion, I still wish for things to be different. The wishing usually happens during a phone conversation with my mother. We live one state apart and don't talk all that often, but our conversations still have a way of making my want to hurl my phone out of a window. So far, I've resisted the urge, but that's still no guarantee for the future safety of the phone. The most frustrating, button-pushing conversations are those that deal with her chronic good intentions. Either her long-term memory is extremely selective, or she is the most blindly optimistic human I've ever met. Either way, the umpteenth conversation about "As soon as I get my life in order" tends to send me over the edge. What she means by that is "as soon as I clean out and discard roughly 3000 square feet of trash, I will start living my life." And what she means by <i>that</i> is "I wish my life were different, but I just can't seem to figure out how to make that happen." If wishes were fishes, as my grandpa would say.<br />
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The problem with growing up with the "I wish" mentality is that you don't ever really learn what to do to change a situation when you're unhappy. Wishing, unfortunately, doesn't make it so. Over the past few months, I've embarked on a quest to fill in some of the skills I never learned growing up. I'm figuring out the housework thing (don't walk away from the dishes after dinner -- you'll get distracted and forget about them until the next morning), making friends (give yourself some credit for being someone other people would actually like to befriend -- a little self-esteem goes a long way), and generally just trying to be aware of changes I can make that will make me happier. So far, actually making changes works a lot better than wishing. Huh.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-87441470665511254042012-01-12T17:36:00.000-08:002012-01-12T17:36:22.349-08:00If Barbie were a hoarder...no, seriously.I'm not sure whether to file this under "This is hilarious!" or "Someone has too much time on their hands," but Barbie can add now add hoarder to her extensive resume. She's been an astronaut/race car driver/trophy girlfriend/dentist/lifeguard, so what's one more occupation, I suppose?<br />
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Photographer/artist Carrie M. Becker has created a series of photographs titled "Barbie Trashes her Dreamhouse." She created ten different, insanely detailed dollhouse dioramas, filled them with doll-sized detritus, and photographed the series. It's kind of awesome and kind of horrifying. If you'd like to check it out, go <a href="http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/hoarder-barbie-not-even-skipper-can-save-her-now">here</a>.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-72746604586095595192011-12-31T18:34:00.000-08:002011-12-31T18:34:27.015-08:00Eureka!I've spent the last, well, forever making covert observations of other people's housekeeping habits. Whenever I go into someone's home, I scope out the cleanliness level (or lack thereof) and compare it to my own house. Granted, comparison is typically a losing game, but growing up in a hoarded home gives you no point of reference for how to function in daily life. I've spent most of my life observing other people to get some idea of what "normal" is. Housekeeping skills are no exception.<br />
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I tend to basically ignore typical levels of dirt and disorganization in other people's houses. What really stands out to me is when a house is impressively clean and organized. If it wouldn't make me into some kind of weirdo social pariah, I would sit the oh-so-together hosts down and beg to know their secrets. How do they do it? How do they keep their houses so clean in the midst of everything going on in their super-busy lives?<br />
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I find that keeping the house clean has been a losing battle for me. We children of hoarders tend to fall into two camps -- obsessively, compulsively, spartanly neat or hoarders ourselves. I fall somewhere in the middle. I'm definitely not a hoarder, but neither am I particularly clean or tidy. This didn't really bother me as much when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, I find my inability to keep a clean house increasingly irksome. I've tried all kinds of strategies to solve the problem (<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Meyers-Clean-Home-No-Nonsense/dp/0446544590/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325383959&sr=1-2">Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Organizing-Inside-Out-Second-Foolproof/dp/0805075895/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325384014&sr=1-1">Organizing from the Inside Out</a>,</i> scheduling tasks for specific days, apps designed to create a customized system), but nothing's really solved the problem. The house is still dirty and cluttered most of the time. And no matter how much I remind myself that this failure doesn't make <i>me</i> a failure, it still feels pretty darn bad.<br />
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Or it did, until I unexpectedly found my eureka moment in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-ACOA-Sourcebook-Children-Alcoholics/dp/1558749608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325382790&sr=8-1">this</a> book written for adult children of alcoholics and other dysfunctional parents. Housework isn't mentioned once in the book. It did say that children who grow up in dysfunctional families are never taught how to complete large tasks, so we feel overwhelmed when facing big jobs and often won't even start. And with that, my friends, something clicked. Maintaining my house completely freaks me out because I feel so overwhelmed by the size of the task. And no matter how many times I've tried to break it into smaller chunks or come up with a workable system, I eventually just throw up my hands and quit. The feeling of relief here is profound. I'm not lazy! I'm not irreparably damaged! I'm just overwhelmed! And so I have decided to scrap all of the systems I've tried in favor of an egg timer. I set it for 15 minutes a day and clean for as long as the timer is ticking. No assigned rooms, no particular task, other than whatever seems most important at the moment. If I still feel like cleaning when the timer goes off, I can. If not, I can stop. Somehow, this seems completely doable and lessens the pressure that I've been putting on myself. While my house may never be as neat and tidy as some of the homes I've seen through the years, right now it's totally livable and getting better all the time. And while it's far from perfect, it's finally good enough for me.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-70169213270554505972011-12-10T09:37:00.000-08:002011-12-10T09:37:45.642-08:00Only a hoarder's childSo I just read <a href="http://maintenancefreemom.blogspot.com/2011/01/long-time-no-see-or-even-think-about.html">this</a> post about a kitchen fire in a hoarded kitchen and I had to laugh out of sheer recognition. I've posted several times about daydreaming that my mother's house would catch fire, thereby eliminating the eventual need for my brother and me to clean it up. Apparently, I'm not the only one out there who would appreciate a little divine intervention in the form of a house fire. But I'm pretty sure that only another hoarder's child would file a kitchen fire in the hoarded home under the category of "a Christmas miracle." Under the circumstances, it seems totally understandable.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-64517594465914768372011-11-26T22:09:00.000-08:002011-11-26T22:09:29.219-08:00People clean their dishwashers?One of the issues with being the adult child of a hoarder is that you're playing catch-up on a lot of life skills that other people take for granted. Housework, for example, is something that I'm still figuring out. How often do people clean their baseboards? Wash their walls? How much time are you supposed to spend cleaning your house every day?<br />
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There are a surprising number of websites out there dedicated to cleaning and organizing. This fact makes me feel much better, as I am obviously not the only person out there who's still figuring this stuff out. And, as an added bonus, once in awhile I run across a cleaning-related factoid that makes me laugh. For example, it never in my entire life occurred to me that a person might need to clean their <a href="http://www.askannamoseley.com/2011/03/reader-question-cleaning-your.html">dishwasher</a>, but apparently you can. If I ever get to the point where the rest of my house is so clean that I'm concerned about the inside of my dishwasher, I'll be doing pretty well.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-2183912373551715052011-11-24T18:59:00.000-08:002011-11-24T18:59:13.451-08:00Sometimes you win just by showing upIn my last post, I bemoaned the learned helplessness that can come with being the child of a hoarder (or an alcoholic, or any dysfunctional parent). Through a thousand small interactions, you learn that nothing you do will make a lasting difference. I suspect that this tendency to hunker down and take cover amongst the piles of crap (and rage and dysfunction) served me in childhood. It may not have served me well, necessarily, but it definitely helped minimize the amount of flack that I got. I learned not to make waves, which protected me from a lot of the emotional hurricanes coming from my mother.<br />
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The problem is that, as an adult, sometimes you need to make waves to live a fulfilling life. No one wants to live hunkered down in a corner. Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, or challenge someone else, or set healthy boundaries, or just simply show up so that you can create your own best life. This <a href="http://www.smaggle.com/2011/11/21/showing-up-everyday/">showing up, every day</a> takes guts. Sometimes it's incredibly difficult just to show up and make today the best day that it can be. It requires making dozens of choices not to coast through, not to go through the day on auto-pilot and simply react to what happens to you. It takes guts to be an agent of change in your own life.<br />
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Regardless of what is going on around me, regardless of what others around me are doing, I'm learning more and more that I can win the battle just by showing up. Even when it's a struggle, it means that I'm present in this moment and that I remain centered within myself. It means that I grant myself the power to act, not react. I have the ability to choose what I want and need to make my life a happy one. For someone who grew up in a family that implicitly discouraged action, this realization is life-changing indeed.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4692468684154097522.post-929454685790370972011-11-05T14:26:00.000-07:002011-11-05T14:26:05.665-07:00Star light, star brightI don't remember large chunks of my childhood (hooray for repression!), but I do remember wishing on the first star I saw every night. Star light, star bright -- it was always the same wish. I wished for things to be different -- for the house to be cleaner, for my mom to be happier, for my life to change.<br />
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Wishing on a star didn't get me all that far, although it did provide a tiny beacon of hope during some pretty bleak times. Unfortunately, the wishing stemmed from my having learned that when something is making you unhappy, you're powerless to change the situation. Psychologists call this learned helplessness. Rats in captivity, when repeatedly exposed to a painful stimulus, will eventually learn that there is nothing they can do about it. Later, when an escape route is presented to them, they won't leave. They just hunker down and wait for the pain.<br />
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As a child I learned that, no matter what I tried, nothing I did would make any difference. As an adult, this learned helplessness manifests itself in a tendency to hunker down and wait for things to pass. I wait for difficult situations to change on their own, instead of taking action. I know now that this isn't a logical or true belief. I try not to let it too deeply affect my actions. Yet I still find it difficult to truly believe that any attempts to change my life will have any more lasting effect than those long-ago wishes on a star.Elizabeth Suttonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13711012142902318176noreply@blogger.com1