Challenging stories our brains tell us: Hoarding

As a hoarding therapist, I help individuals, couples, and families confront the beliefs, emotions, and triggers that reinforce their connection to items in their homes, enabling them to create safe, open spaces for what matters most. What matters most to each person is unique, yet there are often common themes.

Clients frequently express a desire to part with some of their belongings, yet they feel they simply can’t. My clients are intelligent, resilient, and capable individuals. So, what underlies the belief that they can’t let go of their possessions?

The stories their brains tell them.

Most share stories about an item, “I remember when I got this…” Ah, the memory cue! “…I was going to…I spent so much time finding that…I could let that go if I could just…” Numerous beliefs are embedded in these narratives: intention, investment (both financial and temporal), perfectionism, and memory.

These are just a few of the “stories” our brains concoct to protect us until, well…they no longer do. Sometimes they end up safeguarding our possessions more than they safeguard us.

But just like historical fiction, the stories our brains tell us aren’t always accurate retellings. The issue is that it can be challenging to distinguish between historical fiction and actual history. We need to seek more evidence to determine what is probable and plausible and what is grounded in facts and truth.

Here’s a personal example. Until I was four years old, I lived with my grandparents, who had three cats: Calico, Velvet, and Ruffles. All three were female. They also had a neighbor with a small dog that was male. Until I reached the second or third grade, I was convinced that dogs and cats were essentially one species. I wasn’t sure what that species was exactly, but I believed that a cat could easily give birth to a puppy as well as a kitten because dogs were simply the male version of female cats, right?

I held that belief until I met Bruno. Bruno was a golden retriever in the neighborhood during my elementary school years. But Bruno was not male! Bruno was…a girl! And a dog!

I can’t recall exactly how I felt when my “truth” was corrected, except to say that I was an adult before I shared this story with anyone aside from Bruno’s very kind owner. I must have felt embarrassed to discover that my beliefs were incorrect.

The reality is that facts were influencing my beliefs. Until I met Bruno, all the cats I knew were female, all the dogs were male, and the only time I’d heard the name Bruno, it was associated with a male animal or person. Those facts had been true for my entire life!

The ability to incorporate new evidence and adjust our beliefs is known as psychological flexibility. I’m happy to report that I have shared that story enough times to realize it’s a common experience for many children. Despite the embarrassment I felt back then, I have evolved my beliefs about cats and dogs as well as gender-appropriate names.

Many of those I work with struggle to question the narratives that their brains have created about their possessions. They are resistant to the idea that the evidence their brain once gathered may no longer be true or factual.

I understand that. Although I can’t remember the specifics, my body recalls the sensation of realizing that something I believed to be true wasn’t. I experience a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, followed by a gnawing sensation, and often, my face feels flushed. These are not exactly the physiological sensations I enjoy the most. Without the skills to manage those sensations, my emotions could overwhelm me, likely leading to harsh self-appraisals.

Before initiating these conversations, it’s beneficial to introduce emotional self-regulation skills, such as acute relaxation. With a relaxed body, we can start retraining our thoughts about those sensations, recognizing that at some point, we associated those sensory experiences with threat, even when there was no imminent danger. That’s past painful learning. Many of us perceive threat when we’re safe, thanks to that previous learning, so recognizing safety and learning to relax is our first step.

Next, we work together to explore whether there might be alternative endings to the stories our minds have been telling us. It’s about creating an experiment based on a hypothesis with the curiosity to see if our educated guess still holds true.

Sure, Grandma always asked about what she’d given us for our last birthday, inquiring how often we wore that sweater, right? But Grandma passed away ten years ago. Who else has inquired about gifts they’ve given us? Who do we later ask about gifts we’ve given them? So, what might happen if we donated something we received as a gift but never found a use for?

These are the questions we explore and the kinds of experiments we design together in hoarding therapy. It’s never forced. Naturally, there are gifts we hold onto long past their usefulness due to the significance attached to them—whether it’s the event or person who gave them to us or how frequently we see them and smile. The goal of overcoming hoarding isn’t to get rid of all belongings. It’s about creating safe spaces to engage with the things that bring us the most joy, potentially allowing us to welcome people we care about back into our lives.

We confront the stories that make it challenging to live authentically. Together. Compassionately. Because hoarding isn’t truly about the stuff, is it? It’s about the way it makes us feel. 

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