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Friday, July 29, 2011

Hoarders

I have to admit I'm addicted to watching shows about hoarding.  There are two that I try to catch regularly.
One is titled Hoarders on the A & E channel, and the other is titled Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC.  I also try to catch Confessions: Animal Hoarding on the Animal Planet channel.

The reason why I like watching these mentally ill people?  Well, for one thing I have a strong passion for psychology (I really should've majored in it in college) and it's interesting to see how the mind works, or doesn't in these cases.  How it adapts to accept that things that are terribly unhealthy and unsafe become comforting and normal for these people.

There is a typical pattern for these hoarders.  They are fine and nice, normal and healthy, but then something traumatic happens.  A death, a divorce, robbery, etc. to start them hoarding and avoiding dealing directly and openly with their feelings over the incident.  Some people can admit they are hoarders, a lot of them can't even do that, they say they merely collect things.

Oh, I should mention what hoarding is too.....A mental illness where people amass items, trash, animals, anything and everything over the course of time where it completely takes over their home or property.  They can't throw things away and they can't see that trash has no value.  It usually makes the home unlivable and unsafe in a lot of instances.  They push people away to keep their items and often they are reported to adult protective services or threatened with losing their house before they decide to start cleaning up.

I like the fact that I get to see things that I wouldn't otherwise if it wasn't for these shows exposing people's homes and properties, but often the show is just sensationalizing the problem and exploiting people's feelings and problems.  I'm not sure why the hoarders even agree to be on the show, since it's pretty embarrassing to tackle any mental illness in front of America, but I know they get free help and free counseling to some degree. 

I've seen hoarders that I can genuinely feel bad for.  There was a man who lost his wife suddenly when they were young.  He began collecting dogs to fill the void in his heart over the loss of her, but he never properly grieved the loss.  He was a true lost soul that I felt terrible for.  He was willing to get help and never lied to himself about the process and really made strong positive steps to getting better and healing himself.  That was someone I could root for, and I was glad to see his story had a very good outcome.

Other people I want to punch in the face.  There were quite a few older people (a few young ones too) that were so stubborn and reluctant to admit there were any problems.  They refused to do little things, they dug their heels in and went kicking and screaming along the way to help.  A lot of them never gave themselves over to the process and ended up going nowhere in the show.  They ended the way they started and faced losing their home or going to jail for ignoring warnings from the state.  The worst of these was an animal hoarder that kept a ton of animals on her property that she barely fed and neglected horrifically.  I felt terrible for chickens that were kept by the dozen in tiny wire cages where they could barely move and couldn't lift their heads.  Lots of birds died and she said she was taking care of them.  She was a horrible, mean, old ignorant woman who suffered from great medical problems.  The world will be a better place once she dies and her animals can be freed.  Unfortunately at the end of the show, the humane society could not get all the animals out of there because our justice system is a joke and animal cruelty is not more severely punished as it should be.

The item hoarders I hope, get help, but if they don't and they suffocate under a pile of their stuff falling on their heads in the middle of the night, oh well, but animal hoarding.  There's where I get really pissed off.  Collect crap all you want, but animals need to be loved and protected.  People shouldn't be allowed to get away with having 100's of animals that are often sick, neglected, and mistreated due to mental illness of people.  The government, the country, and we as a people, need to put our foot down and demand that animals be treated humanely and that cruelty has a stiff punishment.  People in a society that mistreat animals can easily transfer those acts to human beings, and the courts need to recognize if a person doesn't have respect for animal life, they will not stop there, but move into hurting people as well.

3 comments:

  1. I've watched this show too and have to admit it can be addicting to see. I agree that I want to cheer on some and others just drive me crazy in there obviousness. There was an older woman on one I saw that when confronted with an old, stained with urine blanket she said she would keep it and just wash it with bleach. When it was opened and shown how disgusting it was she got angry and said fine just throw it all away. She wouldn't listen to the help of the others there. I just wanted to say "Hey, this is for you. Listen."

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  2. I agree with you 100% on the animal hoarders. We as a people need to stand up for these animals who do not deserve to be neglected, treated inhumanely, and subjected to a horrible environment. Our government can definitely do a better job of cracking down on these people and providing stiffer punishment and not let them get away with having hundreds of animals at one time. It is so sad that the animal agencies have limited funding and receive no help from the government. The Arizona Humane Society alone takes in an average of 121 animals a day! They say that number will probably continue to grow. If anyone wants to learn more about what the Arizona Humane Society is working to do to make improvements in this area, you can visit the project web site at www.project121.org.

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  3. Yeah. I saw that one. It's unbelievable to me what disease-laden things hoarders want to keep with a good possibility they could get sick from it. The worst things are the food items they still want to keep. ughhh!

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