Relating Stress to Clutter and Pack Rat Situations
Psychological breakthroughs regarding the mental condition known as compulsive hoarding have helped the general public at large to better understand how clutter and the pack rat mentality can cause stress. For decades, the need for hoarding and clutter cleaning were considered a byproduct of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD). However, recent developments have concluded that the compulsive hoarding disorder is its own unique condition worthy of attention and research needed to find successful methods for recovery.
Leading Psychologist Sherrie Bourg of Psychology Today recently reported on eight reasons why clutter and mess cause stress. People deal with clutter in many different ways. According to Bourg, clutter can have a major impact not just on a person’s home, but a person’s workplace as well. While clutter and mess are often overlooked as triggers to stress and anxiety, it is important to recognize how clutter and mess can cause stress in a person’s life.
One of the most common hoarding faqs is, “Why are hoarders so embarrassed by the state of their homes?” No matter what level of hoarding a person is suffering with, clutter creates feelings of guilt and remorse about the cluttered living space. These feelings of guilt translate into stress and anxiety, causing hoarders to believe they will be judged for the state they allowed their home to deteriorate to. The truth is that close family and friends want to help hoarders conquer their condition and relieve the stress.
Another way hoarding cleaning can also help relieve stress and anxiety is to remove the excessive amounts of clutter that forces a hoarder’s senses to overwork themselves, or to “work overtime” according to Dr. Bourg. With all of the extra visual, olfactory, and tactile stimuli in a hoarded home, clutter creates tension and stress via an all-out assault on the senses. With mounds of clutter and mess distracting a hoarder from more important factors in their lives, physical and mental relaxation is nearly impossible.
Dr. Bourg helps those dealing with hoarding in Florida understand that tackling clutter will help signal to the brain that work is done and relaxation is in order. Deep cleaning experts like Address Our Mess also help those in other hoarding locations across the United States benefit from similar recovery methods. By creating a successful plan to battle clutter and mess that cause stress, hoarders will free up parts of the brain preoccupied with clutter that are usually used for brainstorming, problem solving, and general thinking.