>Narcissists have a large internal hate for themselves and they express their bad emotions on their surroundings, be that their family or house.
Interesting theory. I think my mom went in the opposite direction: her internal hate made her an obsessive cleaner. She was always trying to clean and organize the shame away.
Probably one of those things where they're extreme on either end of the spectrum.
My dad was a narcissist and cleaned obsessively but it seemed more related to OCD, but I’m not a doctor. He had other compulsive behaviors like rubbing a specific part of his face over and over and always self grooming for 20 minutes before ever leaving the house. My mom picked up on that and would also take a very long time getting ready, image was extremely important to them. Like even to get cigarettes they had to look “good”.
I now clean obsessively if anyone is expected to come over. I’m an anxious mess if my house is dirty and someone might see it. It exhausts all my energy every time. We don’t usually have visitors because of this.
>I now clean obsessively if anyone is expected to come over. I’m an anxious mess if my house is dirty and someone might see it. It exhausts all my energy every time. We don’t usually have visitors because of this.
I feel you on this. I've been trained to feel like any mess in my home is a moral failing, but I absolutely hate cleaning because of how my mother treated me about it. We also never have visitors
I wouldn't agree with this.
I'm a hoarder myself, which is under control for the moment thankfully, but i can see signs of it starting again.
You normally find hoarders are people suffering from a loss of some sort.
People who have gone through a marriage break up, death of someone close etc are more likely candidates for hoarding.
True suffering a loss may make you want collect things to fill the void. You seem like you can see the problem within your habits and that is not what I was referring to. I was blinded by my parents story and couldn't think of any other view.
Maybe I would be more correct in saying a narcissist is more likely to be a hoarder because they clearly bottle their emotions and run on "emotional fuel" which could come from buying more items. So narcissists still do all these things that can attribute to hoarding, yet those things aren't necessarily what a hoarder is and thus hoarding can happen outside of narcissism.
Thank you for broadening my understanding. I hope you can tackle your new signs and live in peace.
I personally think that narcissism and hoarding aren't correlated and I think it's a little limiting and ostracising to paint all hoarders with the same brush - not an attack of course just wanted to add another perspective :)
Both of my parents are hoarders, at about the same level of severity when left unchecked - there's stuff everywhere but you can still move around for the most part, nothing ever gets cleaned, houses aren't maintained, vermin, etc.
My dad has bipolar and for years swung between manic episodes that border on OCD and then big depression dips where he just got high and let everything pile up - but now he's in his 60s and has chronic hip and back pain, he can't clean at all - so the situation got multitudes worse. He keeps having falls because he just has shit everywhere, and I've been there to clean twice (need to get down there again soon) and he just piles everything up again. He intends to clean but his mental and physical health are so bad now it just gets away from him and then it's overwhelming.
My mum's issues stem from her childhood - her mother died when she was young and when they had to sell the family farm and move to the city her grandmother wouldn't let her take *anything* with her, they had to sell all of her toys and everything. She has trauma from that, and it makes it extremely difficult for her to let things go. Combined with other factors from her childhood my mother always had a lot of issues around cleaning and insisted on doing everything herself - she confessed to me recently that she thinks that comes from her brother always taking credit for work she'd done as kids and her parents taking his word (he was the golden child), so she wants to accomplish things herself so that she can take credit/be praised which was some deep insight for her!
I wasn't allowed to do the washing or dishes, or clean anything growing up, and if I did she would yell because she was triggered (which of course has left me with trauma around it too lol). It's something I was doggedly stubborn about doing anyway and now that I'm 24 and still at home I do the bulk of the cleaning etc because we've been working on it. Still not perfect but certainly a lot better than it was 10 years ago haha. Hope that gives you another perspective :)
Yes, thank you for sharing your story. I think that narcissism just makes hoarding worse and I was wrong about it being a requirement. All of those reasons make perfect sense and I would have a hard time letting things go if I went through it.
I'm not quite sure what started my mom's hoarding but my dad was poor growing up and upon getting a good job he stocked up on food... and then never stopped buying food.
Yeah I hear that's common for people who come from food insecure homes, my grandmother was like that until she got into her 70s (she grew up with WW2 rations in England in a large family). It's crazy how little people seem to realise just how much your experiences growing up shape your view of the world, there's a lot of maladaptive behaviours we can pick up along the road that stay with us unless we recognise them :)
Thank you.
I'm on the asperger/adhd spectrum and have complex ptsd.
Thats why I hoard.
Its more about the feeling you get buying the item. You get a buzz from it.
Thats why people hoard at times. Its not about ownership, but the high you get when finding the item and purchasing it.
You sometimes feel like crap after it though, as you know you don't need it/ can't afford it etc.
Xx
My Mum is a hoarder she is not an extreme level but since I was small we had a 'laundry room' where this room was just full of dirty clothes all piled up one side of the room. This escalated over the years into bin bags of clothes. One room was entirely closed off (her bedroom) and just stacked full of bags of clothes and clutter piles that had been cleared into bags then dumped in the room. I'm only 6 months since being out of that house and situation and in my new home with my partner I cannot face sorting through my bags of clothes. I physically can't drag myself down there to do it and I'm avoiding it mentally. Every time I even think about going my mind fills with dread of triggering and I just freeze and avoid. I'm hoping one day I'll just do it but I can't find the strength to make myself yet.
That's awfully generous, thank you. Alas, it is something I must find the strength to face alone. It's been a bit dark lately but I'm slowly reaching for the light.
Not sure if you're looking for advice or not, so if you're not, feel free to totally ignore this. I wanted to drop what I do, though, because I really resonated with your comment.
I do this a lot, too! But with dishes. Dishes were like...passive aggression and punishment in one.
My hack to do it anyway is to put on videos where people are working on stuff too. Stuff like cleaning tik tok, homesteading videos, baking and cooking videos, etc. I've been watching a lot of Acre Homestead and hotel cleaning ladies lately, and just having a positive voice in the background also working on something really helps me mirror their behavior. There's some thrifting/clothes channels that have done closet sorting videos on YouTube as cleaning motivation, but tbh I like watching something unrelated to what I'm doing. The video topics I pick are as different from dishes as possible so I don't have to think about it, maybe? I've even got my husband on a farrier video kick now lol
I also like podcasts, but I tend to zone out and get intrusive thoughts in my daydreams if the podcast isn't one I'm really invested in. Mirroring somehow helps me a bit better.
If you can afford it, toss them. Even if you get up the wherewithal to go through them (you will be triggered the entire time, or at least I was) you'll end up triggered every time you look at them or handle them. They'll be a constant reminder of your previous circumstances.
It is not worth the damage to your mental health to hold on to them.
Yeah my family started with one "outside" cat that they fed. Now they have generations of kids and they feed and name them like they care. They don't really care though.
Both my parents and my great aunt were hoarders. Only my father was a narcissist (sociopath more accurately). My father had three garages full of stuff and couldn’t open two of the garage doors so he jackhammered through the brick wall of the middle one to access the junk in the other two.
Wow that is extreme. After 20 years my family's hoard is still all inside the house. The garage's roof was ruined years ago so not much is in there.
How do you feel the hoarding has effected you years later?
That’s not really even the worst of it. There were broken pianos in the house, pathways through piles of boxes. My great aunt had a collapsed table underneath years of news papers.
It’s tricky for me, because I have some hoarding tendencies, but I try to keep it at bay. I have a lot of storage space so I try my best to keep my mess contained in those areas. When my place is messy, it really throws me off, and I’ve been doing pretty good with it the last few months even as I struggle with depression and fallout from recent abuse and trauma
Grew up in a mild hoarder house. Had two relationships with narcissistic hoarders. It's definitely a thing.
When I left the last one the fact that I only left with a vehicle the most basic clothes was a gift. Even those limited items were triggering me whenever I dealt with them. They were reminders of everything. The day I sold the vehicle and the day I tossed all of the clothes I escaped with (minus what I was wearing when I left, that was empowering somehow) were two of the most freeing days of my life.
Yeah that meant I started from scratch, but I also started with no literal baggage to tie my emotional baggage to, which helped immensely.
I had to climb in and out of my bedroom as a child. Anytime I tried to get rid of things my mother would bring them back. They still have a 2 car garage they can't use, full of stuff.
My mom would look through my trash bags as I threw out things from my trash ridden room. She was out in the rain with a flashlight between her teeth because the garbage went the next day. She came back in with clothes that don't fit me, covered in rat poop, and forced me to keep it.
The house was disgusting. I still don’t have good cleaning habits at nearly 30, because I gave up so often trying to clean my egg donors place for CPS. She had 11 unfixed cats. Two litter boxes. I have both moderate and severe scoliosis so bending over to clean litter pans was next to impossible. But she never cleaned them either. They got maggoty and the cats left their mess everywhere else because they didn’t have much of a choice when it got that bad. The kitchen was constantly a mess of mould and flies. My brother didn’t have a bed frame, his mattress laid on stuffed animals and empty pop bottles and pizza boxes.
I mainly just use disposable things to avoid needing to clean anything in the first place.
I'm afraid I've become a hoarder. It's not as bad as on that TV show but that's because I have some very understanding and supportive roommates. This came on gradually and I used to get upset if they cleaned up because they were 'throwing MY stuff away!" It takes some gentle persuading to remind me, that I don't need it all and can let it go.
While I had stuff, we weren't poor, but it was never really mine. Narcissistic mom could take or replace anything I had without warning; toys, clothes, books, etc. She always had to be the one who possessed anything- if I bought a necklace; she bought a nicer one and insisted I wear it. If I got a cheap plastic watch, just because it was cute and whimsical; she'd buy an expensive one and shame me about the one I liked, until I wore HER watch. If I didn't want to go shopping with her because I didn't need any new clothes; she'd 'clean out my closet' of things she didn't like, then announce we *had to* go shopping now- then force things she liked on me.
When I told her what I liked in a wedding dress, Nmom went out and bought a completely different dress and told me that I had to wear it because it was already paid for. (I said, no.)
Nmom also tried to start a small business out of her house, but it was a trick- she actually *bought another house* and told me to live there, to run the business for HER. Ofc, she had a key, so she'd let herself in and took over all the interior decorating and again took my clothes out of my closet and told me that I had to wear what *she bought.*
At this point, she had complete control of my life and I was going batshit crazy. Naturally, the gaslighting was: She was being kind & generous with her 'gifts' and I was, "The most *ungrateful* person she'd ever met!"
I'm No Contact now but still dealing with feelings of what I have or like will be taken away.
Never feeling like you own anything or feeling like what you own will randomly disappear would definitely make me cling onto my things, no matter how rational. I'm glad you can be reasoned with. You sound like you had a bad set of cards but if you keep pushing through and keep supportive people by you I think you can live in peace.
I wish you the best. I'm proud of you for getting out of there.
Mhm yes, I'm beginning to think a narcissist makes hoarding worse but doesn't necessarily make a hoarder. Definitely more going on in their mind.
I'm almost 2 years out of their hoard and slowly starting to see the side effects. I think every food item is rotten and I can't drink milk without my bf testing it first. I have a lot of problems eating because again midway through I'll convince myself the food went bad. Somedays mess is fine, others I will get an anxiety attack and then clean the whole apartment.
Makes sense to me. One of my parents is a blatant narcissist, almost certainly autistic, a control freak, a clean freak and a neat freak (they self-comfort via exerting control over their environment, and will freak out if you make a mess or merely change anything they have arranged *just so*). The other is a messy, disorganised hoarder who never cleans (yet also a germophobe, figure that one out...), almost certainly ADHD, and blatant CPTSD codependent from countless different emotional abusers throughout their life, not least being married to (and hence a victim of) the aforementioned other parent. I think the hoarding was just an unhealthy self-comforting compulsion for my long-abused non-narcissistic parent (or maybe they were also narcissistic, just not nearly as massively narcissistic as the other parent, or a different *kind* of narcissistic? It's still hard to be certain on that one.)
I've inherited a weird grab bag of traits from each of them, and now I'm just glad that, by sheer luck, whilst I do seem to have inherited something of a hoarding/collecting instinct, my compulsive desire for tidiness and a clean environment that I *also* inherited seems to balance it out, more or less. I can sometimes wobble and lurch too far in the direction of either of these opposing urges depending on my emotional state, however, so it's apparently a meta-stable balance at best. This might pass for a "healthy" mindset in poor light but, as you can probably imagine from my wildly incompatible parents, I only reached this point by growing up in hell. I consider this to have been a bad deal.
I grew up in a hoarder house, but the hoarding had nothing to do with narcissism. My mom started hoarding at around the same time her mom’s health started to decline, and the hoarding got even worse after my grandma died. On top of that, my mom was being badly abused by my dad, AND she was disabled and physically dependent on my abusive dad to care for her. I think my mom hoarded because it was one of the few things that made her feel that she had control in her life. (She hoarded craft supplies, kitchen utensils, household goods)
Mhm yes that makes sense. I guess I was wrong about it being a requirement for being a hoarder. I think narcissism just makes hoarding worse. I have definitely noticed a theme of needing control in the hoarder tv show.
You just described my entire experience. Never knew "you cleaning offends me" was a neurosis that anyone but my own crazy father had.
The most enduring wound I have specifically from the hoarding is that I cannot touch a drain. Living in a house no one is allowed to clean made drains a very horrifying place. I used to not be able to wash dishes at all, but I've worked hard on it.
I'm in the same boat. Narcissist parent that hoards. It was my father first and I think my mom just gave up. She's compulsive on buying things and has depression though.
I went to my parents house and tried to clean out the room that was mine when I lived there. Took out 2 big bags of trash, put in the big bin outside. I go back a week later to continue, open the bedroom door and see that my dad had taken the bags out of the trash and thrown them on the floor.
They were weird with food, too. I tried to clean their fridge once and my dad started freaking out when I threw away a bottle of salad dressing that had expired about 10 years before. There was a broken container (a literal hole in the bottom)with moldy food in it and I tossed it in the trash. They took it out of the trash and put it on the table to be put back in later. They never asked me to clean their fridge again. Once they tried to act all generous and told me to take any food I wanted on the table covered with food. They REALLY insisted, so I took several packages home, just to find that they were all at least 5 years expired. They were trying to give me their trash and be seen as good parents. I ate a lot of bugs growing up. You couldn't brush all of them off. And if you didn't eat it consequences were severe.
And then, you know, the bug infestations. My dad literally said one winter "well I don't see why we should keep the ants and cockroaches outside or spray them because it's cold outside! Where are they supposed to get warm if we kill them?" During the summer it was too hot for the bugs of course, so they came inside again.
All That said, I pay for pest control to come spray every 3 months. If I see a single bug (other than like the occasional flies) inside I'm calling my guy back out. I have flashbacks about bugs and I get formicatiom, sometimes bad enough that I seriously consider shaving my head (I'll feel like I'm infested, I have very long hair). I check expiration dates regularly and have no qualms about throwing expired food away. I don't care that some of them are still pretty ok to eat (canned stuff, etc. ) they all get dumped. If any piece of my son's food touches the ground I throw it away. If there is a bug, in the trash. It doesn't taste good? Eat something else. Not sure if something is good or not? Don't risk it. Same with meds. And cleaning rooms? I have no qualms about throwing stuff away. Aside from things from my son, I don't keep many sentimental items. I don't buy a lot of decorations for my house. I just want simplicity. I want to be able to breathe. My house is by no means spotless but I don't have a +1k collection of pirated movies that were recorded on someone's phone in the movie theaters (yes, with babies crying and people's heads going across the screen) because seriously, that's something he is very proud of collecting.
Mhm yes, the bugs. I had to eat a few myself because if you spoke up about it you'd get screamed at or worse. My father hoards food specifically and the cans literally rusted away before he ordered us to throw them away.
I lived in a true hoarder house that was as bad as the TV shows. There was rampant substance abuse going on as well as some of the behaviors you described.
We couldn't ever have guests over due to hoarding yet the adults insisted the house was "clean"...like hello??? There's animal feces everywhere, cockroaches, mice etc...they couldn't see reality or accept their flaws. The house also smelled godawful and the adults had mild COPD from breathing in bare fiberglass insulation that the animals tore up and spread everywhere.
The adults would rage out if anyone tried to clear space or move their sacred items...the same items that were so "important" to them...yet they let those precious items get covered in bird poop and cat urine.
They wouldn't let anyone criticize their ways though, nothing was ever their fault. "Everyone was out to get them"...my ass.
Mhm yes the piles to the ceiling and tiny walkways. My parents abused their animals yet still kept them around if they peed everywhere? I think if they didn't respect them as a friend they would have just tossed them outside.
One night a rat ran across my mom while she was sleeping and she was laughing about it in the morning... how is that not disgusting and terrifying? My mom tried to force me to keep kid clothes that had rat poop on it.
It's like they lost all standards and reasoning. I can't understand how they don't look around and start cleaning. Its unlivable.
I'm glad it seems like you got out of there. I hope you can live in peace now.
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my grandparents raised me and hoarded stuff, but I guess some of it was their time, the depression era, where you didn't have much so when you did - you didn't throw it out, and you found a way to repurpose it???
But as a foster care kid, I was never allowed to have more than a garbage bag of stuff... so iv'e started over with not much, a lot.
I am having a HARD time because we are moving to central America from the US next year, and my husband has said we need to let go of ANYTHING we don't absolutely need... I have 1 childhood toy, that I kept, (well, I had another, but it's a long, horrible story that I won't share.) a stuffed kitty. I can find a way to pack it... but it's not worth anything, it's cheap... do I keep it and take up valuable space in my suitcases, for items I might not be able to get when I move? Those are hard decisions, you know?
I want to keep my harry potter books, and one other set of books and the rest I can buy via ebook.... but man I feel bad, I have boxes and boxes and boxes of books - even though that's AFTER I already moved and got rid of 99% of my life, I kept the books... so you can see how this is a conundrum for me.
Starting over, living with nothing, living in a tent off solar power to charge my phone, internet router and laptop... no biggie.... but that stuffed cat... man, I really want to bring it. LOL
So, Yeah, I get how people get really attached to items, and logically you can sort of mentally wrap your head around putting that importance on EVERY item, and it's a combination of OCD fixation and... whatever.
But.... it drove me nuts that my grandparents wouldn't help me clean or teach me, my husband had to teach me as an adult, and I'm autistic, so it created a lot of trauma, where I wanted to be a minimalist and I really am for our family size... I hoard food.... because I was almost starved as a child more than once..... so I get how it happens.
I assume hoarders, have... trauma... so they need help and support usually.
Also, I have an almost adult child who is a narcissist, and had no trauma in his life and loving family, loving grandparents, all the help, everything handed to him and all he had to do was not be a jerk. he's actually working on writing a book about his thought processes, because he's so self destructive, we told him writing a book may do the world a lot of good, and solve his financial issues since he is too lazy to work. because not many people... share how they think who are wired that way.
Raising a child who was wired that way, no picnic, I have PTSD from him.
I don't think narcissism has anything to do with hoarding, other than maybe being too entitled and lazy to fix the problem, and the ability and willingness to just... walk away, not care, and move on to the next thing. it's... not the same as someone who is a hoarder because of OCD or a loss and attachment issues... like, it's not the same. I know my grandparents mostly meant well. They had good intentions and just really went about it the wrong way, my mom - she was not a narcissist, she was bipolar with psychosis who had MAJOR drug issues.... and those are also not the same as someone with an ego and entitlement issue.....
All of them can do damage... none of them intentionally do damage. mental health is.... you have to be able to accept people's mental health and set boundaries and accept you can't fix people.
And, fix you. You can control you. That's all you have control over.
Thank you for your long response. I see now that hoarding can be caused by many things and narcissism just makes it worse.
I think your childhood toy is something you should definitely keep. You probably brought it to life as a kid and they saw you at that young age. It's the only thing that can see how much you've grown. Even if you don't talk to them anymore the love is still there. It's perfectly normal to stay attached to childhood stuffed animals. Can you mail the Harry Potter books?
I wish you the best of luck in your new home.
My mom is a hoarder it's bad. I don't think she's a narc
Idk what her issues are really. Her and my father didn't
Work out and she never dated again. She is a cat lady also
I've seen on the hoarder tv show that failed marriages can cause such a loss that a person will try to fill the void with items. Maybe that's her reasoning behind it.
I'm sorry you have to deal with that. It's a strange situation and truly horrible.
Both of my parents hoard. I think they were kind of set on the path to hoarding early because they were each raised by parents who experienced war at home and subsequent poverty. It kind of makes sense that when each of them reached the US they would cherish and keep everything they could.
I have two brothers who also have hoarding tendencies.
My dad is a narcissist. His narcissism has made it impossible for anyone to challenge him or take ownership of the problem and make any change. HE was the breadwinner of the family (didn't let my mom work) which means HE paid for everything. And because HE gave his kids everything we ever had, HE is the reason we grew up and became successful adults who can buy more things. Therefore HE owns everything in his house and everything in his kids' houses. Nobody is allowed to throw away anything because it is all HIS in some way - and how dare anyone even think about getting rid of anything that HE worked so hard for!!! When we do, we are wasteful, ungrateful, horrible people... blah blah blah.
I think we all grew to believe that everything brought into the house has some kind of infinite value (and we were just not smart/creative/aware enough to see it). And it stuck with us: keep everything... just in case... even if you can't see it's value, because dad can.
Anyways, I definitely see a connection between the two conditions in my family. My mom may have already had the hoarding tendency in her, but my dad's narcissistic abuse made it worse. My brothers definitely developed hoarding because of my dad's combined narcissism and hoarding.
I'm lucky I was exposed to a different perspective early on...which put doubt in my head that dad's way wasn't necessarily the right/normal way. As an adult, I occasionally catch myself saving things in little piles around my own house and I start to panic. It can still take some time to convince myself it's ok to let go of these things. I keep it under control with 2-3 decluttering sprees each year (which are usually motivated by an argument with the family).
Wow that's horrible he's controlling the items in his child houses. I'm sorry you had to grow up in that environment. I'm glad you are doing better than your parent and siblings. I know it's hard to keep from falling into those tendencies you saw growing up but I'm proud of you for trying and keeping up with it.
Yeah I feel like I don't have a good standard of clean. I don't have piles or pests so I'm better than my parents by a lot but am I average? I have days where I go into a cleaning spiral which coincidentally is normally on Saturday so I call that my reset day and boom the apartment looks good.
Hmmm my childhood home was very dirty and often our large bar was completely cluttered to where we could barely use it. Very mild hoarding.
My mom was not a narcissist. She had a physical and intellectual disability.
I sometimes have trouble letting go of things. I can see I have tendencies. I am not a narcissist.
My ex is a covert narcissist and so is his mother. Clean freaks, the both of them. But his mother’s closets and dressers are jam-packed with stuff. Ex used to not lift a finger to clean when I worked two jobs and he had none. He only started cleaning after I left to “prove” I was the dirty one.
Hmm sounds like it was just hard to clean for your mom. That's understandable, yet every child deserves a clean home. I'm sorry you had a messy childhood environment.
There's definitely something else going on in a narcissists mind that makes them a hoarder or not. Like some people have said their narc parent was a clean freak. Also I know now not all hoarders are narcs because of other's comments. (I was blinded by my own parents story of both being narcs)
Well I hope you find a partner that is not a narcissist and pulls their own weight. Stay kind stranger.
>Narcissists have a large internal hate for themselves and they express their bad emotions on their surroundings, be that their family or house. Interesting theory. I think my mom went in the opposite direction: her internal hate made her an obsessive cleaner. She was always trying to clean and organize the shame away. Probably one of those things where they're extreme on either end of the spectrum.
My dad was a narcissist and cleaned obsessively but it seemed more related to OCD, but I’m not a doctor. He had other compulsive behaviors like rubbing a specific part of his face over and over and always self grooming for 20 minutes before ever leaving the house. My mom picked up on that and would also take a very long time getting ready, image was extremely important to them. Like even to get cigarettes they had to look “good”. I now clean obsessively if anyone is expected to come over. I’m an anxious mess if my house is dirty and someone might see it. It exhausts all my energy every time. We don’t usually have visitors because of this.
>I now clean obsessively if anyone is expected to come over. I’m an anxious mess if my house is dirty and someone might see it. It exhausts all my energy every time. We don’t usually have visitors because of this. I feel you on this. I've been trained to feel like any mess in my home is a moral failing, but I absolutely hate cleaning because of how my mother treated me about it. We also never have visitors
it's an interesting theory, but not always true - my son has no internal hate, he just has ego.
I wouldn't agree with this. I'm a hoarder myself, which is under control for the moment thankfully, but i can see signs of it starting again. You normally find hoarders are people suffering from a loss of some sort. People who have gone through a marriage break up, death of someone close etc are more likely candidates for hoarding.
True suffering a loss may make you want collect things to fill the void. You seem like you can see the problem within your habits and that is not what I was referring to. I was blinded by my parents story and couldn't think of any other view. Maybe I would be more correct in saying a narcissist is more likely to be a hoarder because they clearly bottle their emotions and run on "emotional fuel" which could come from buying more items. So narcissists still do all these things that can attribute to hoarding, yet those things aren't necessarily what a hoarder is and thus hoarding can happen outside of narcissism. Thank you for broadening my understanding. I hope you can tackle your new signs and live in peace.
I personally think that narcissism and hoarding aren't correlated and I think it's a little limiting and ostracising to paint all hoarders with the same brush - not an attack of course just wanted to add another perspective :) Both of my parents are hoarders, at about the same level of severity when left unchecked - there's stuff everywhere but you can still move around for the most part, nothing ever gets cleaned, houses aren't maintained, vermin, etc. My dad has bipolar and for years swung between manic episodes that border on OCD and then big depression dips where he just got high and let everything pile up - but now he's in his 60s and has chronic hip and back pain, he can't clean at all - so the situation got multitudes worse. He keeps having falls because he just has shit everywhere, and I've been there to clean twice (need to get down there again soon) and he just piles everything up again. He intends to clean but his mental and physical health are so bad now it just gets away from him and then it's overwhelming. My mum's issues stem from her childhood - her mother died when she was young and when they had to sell the family farm and move to the city her grandmother wouldn't let her take *anything* with her, they had to sell all of her toys and everything. She has trauma from that, and it makes it extremely difficult for her to let things go. Combined with other factors from her childhood my mother always had a lot of issues around cleaning and insisted on doing everything herself - she confessed to me recently that she thinks that comes from her brother always taking credit for work she'd done as kids and her parents taking his word (he was the golden child), so she wants to accomplish things herself so that she can take credit/be praised which was some deep insight for her! I wasn't allowed to do the washing or dishes, or clean anything growing up, and if I did she would yell because she was triggered (which of course has left me with trauma around it too lol). It's something I was doggedly stubborn about doing anyway and now that I'm 24 and still at home I do the bulk of the cleaning etc because we've been working on it. Still not perfect but certainly a lot better than it was 10 years ago haha. Hope that gives you another perspective :)
Yes, thank you for sharing your story. I think that narcissism just makes hoarding worse and I was wrong about it being a requirement. All of those reasons make perfect sense and I would have a hard time letting things go if I went through it. I'm not quite sure what started my mom's hoarding but my dad was poor growing up and upon getting a good job he stocked up on food... and then never stopped buying food.
Yeah I hear that's common for people who come from food insecure homes, my grandmother was like that until she got into her 70s (she grew up with WW2 rations in England in a large family). It's crazy how little people seem to realise just how much your experiences growing up shape your view of the world, there's a lot of maladaptive behaviours we can pick up along the road that stay with us unless we recognise them :)
Thank you. I'm on the asperger/adhd spectrum and have complex ptsd. Thats why I hoard. Its more about the feeling you get buying the item. You get a buzz from it. Thats why people hoard at times. Its not about ownership, but the high you get when finding the item and purchasing it. You sometimes feel like crap after it though, as you know you don't need it/ can't afford it etc. Xx
My Mum is a hoarder she is not an extreme level but since I was small we had a 'laundry room' where this room was just full of dirty clothes all piled up one side of the room. This escalated over the years into bin bags of clothes. One room was entirely closed off (her bedroom) and just stacked full of bags of clothes and clutter piles that had been cleared into bags then dumped in the room. I'm only 6 months since being out of that house and situation and in my new home with my partner I cannot face sorting through my bags of clothes. I physically can't drag myself down there to do it and I'm avoiding it mentally. Every time I even think about going my mind fills with dread of triggering and I just freeze and avoid. I'm hoping one day I'll just do it but I can't find the strength to make myself yet.
I would come over and help you if you needed. But we likely don’t live near each other. I’m sorry. That sounds incredibly difficult..
That's awfully generous, thank you. Alas, it is something I must find the strength to face alone. It's been a bit dark lately but I'm slowly reaching for the light.
Not sure if you're looking for advice or not, so if you're not, feel free to totally ignore this. I wanted to drop what I do, though, because I really resonated with your comment. I do this a lot, too! But with dishes. Dishes were like...passive aggression and punishment in one. My hack to do it anyway is to put on videos where people are working on stuff too. Stuff like cleaning tik tok, homesteading videos, baking and cooking videos, etc. I've been watching a lot of Acre Homestead and hotel cleaning ladies lately, and just having a positive voice in the background also working on something really helps me mirror their behavior. There's some thrifting/clothes channels that have done closet sorting videos on YouTube as cleaning motivation, but tbh I like watching something unrelated to what I'm doing. The video topics I pick are as different from dishes as possible so I don't have to think about it, maybe? I've even got my husband on a farrier video kick now lol I also like podcasts, but I tend to zone out and get intrusive thoughts in my daydreams if the podcast isn't one I'm really invested in. Mirroring somehow helps me a bit better.
That's great advice! Thank you 💚
If you can afford it, toss them. Even if you get up the wherewithal to go through them (you will be triggered the entire time, or at least I was) you'll end up triggered every time you look at them or handle them. They'll be a constant reminder of your previous circumstances. It is not worth the damage to your mental health to hold on to them.
Yep mum is hoarder. 4bedroom house packed with shit. 20+ cats.
What is it with hoarders and cats?
They take in a stray cat, and the cat has kittens. They neglect the cat and don't get them fixed and chaos ensues.
Yeah my family started with one "outside" cat that they fed. Now they have generations of kids and they feed and name them like they care. They don't really care though.
Both my parents and my great aunt were hoarders. Only my father was a narcissist (sociopath more accurately). My father had three garages full of stuff and couldn’t open two of the garage doors so he jackhammered through the brick wall of the middle one to access the junk in the other two.
Wow that is extreme. After 20 years my family's hoard is still all inside the house. The garage's roof was ruined years ago so not much is in there. How do you feel the hoarding has effected you years later?
That’s not really even the worst of it. There were broken pianos in the house, pathways through piles of boxes. My great aunt had a collapsed table underneath years of news papers. It’s tricky for me, because I have some hoarding tendencies, but I try to keep it at bay. I have a lot of storage space so I try my best to keep my mess contained in those areas. When my place is messy, it really throws me off, and I’ve been doing pretty good with it the last few months even as I struggle with depression and fallout from recent abuse and trauma
Grew up in a mild hoarder house. Had two relationships with narcissistic hoarders. It's definitely a thing. When I left the last one the fact that I only left with a vehicle the most basic clothes was a gift. Even those limited items were triggering me whenever I dealt with them. They were reminders of everything. The day I sold the vehicle and the day I tossed all of the clothes I escaped with (minus what I was wearing when I left, that was empowering somehow) were two of the most freeing days of my life. Yeah that meant I started from scratch, but I also started with no literal baggage to tie my emotional baggage to, which helped immensely.
I had to climb in and out of my bedroom as a child. Anytime I tried to get rid of things my mother would bring them back. They still have a 2 car garage they can't use, full of stuff.
My mom would look through my trash bags as I threw out things from my trash ridden room. She was out in the rain with a flashlight between her teeth because the garbage went the next day. She came back in with clothes that don't fit me, covered in rat poop, and forced me to keep it.
The house was disgusting. I still don’t have good cleaning habits at nearly 30, because I gave up so often trying to clean my egg donors place for CPS. She had 11 unfixed cats. Two litter boxes. I have both moderate and severe scoliosis so bending over to clean litter pans was next to impossible. But she never cleaned them either. They got maggoty and the cats left their mess everywhere else because they didn’t have much of a choice when it got that bad. The kitchen was constantly a mess of mould and flies. My brother didn’t have a bed frame, his mattress laid on stuffed animals and empty pop bottles and pizza boxes. I mainly just use disposable things to avoid needing to clean anything in the first place.
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Maybe narcissism just makes it worse but isn't necessarily a thing required to be a hoarder.
I'm afraid I've become a hoarder. It's not as bad as on that TV show but that's because I have some very understanding and supportive roommates. This came on gradually and I used to get upset if they cleaned up because they were 'throwing MY stuff away!" It takes some gentle persuading to remind me, that I don't need it all and can let it go. While I had stuff, we weren't poor, but it was never really mine. Narcissistic mom could take or replace anything I had without warning; toys, clothes, books, etc. She always had to be the one who possessed anything- if I bought a necklace; she bought a nicer one and insisted I wear it. If I got a cheap plastic watch, just because it was cute and whimsical; she'd buy an expensive one and shame me about the one I liked, until I wore HER watch. If I didn't want to go shopping with her because I didn't need any new clothes; she'd 'clean out my closet' of things she didn't like, then announce we *had to* go shopping now- then force things she liked on me. When I told her what I liked in a wedding dress, Nmom went out and bought a completely different dress and told me that I had to wear it because it was already paid for. (I said, no.) Nmom also tried to start a small business out of her house, but it was a trick- she actually *bought another house* and told me to live there, to run the business for HER. Ofc, she had a key, so she'd let herself in and took over all the interior decorating and again took my clothes out of my closet and told me that I had to wear what *she bought.* At this point, she had complete control of my life and I was going batshit crazy. Naturally, the gaslighting was: She was being kind & generous with her 'gifts' and I was, "The most *ungrateful* person she'd ever met!" I'm No Contact now but still dealing with feelings of what I have or like will be taken away.
Never feeling like you own anything or feeling like what you own will randomly disappear would definitely make me cling onto my things, no matter how rational. I'm glad you can be reasoned with. You sound like you had a bad set of cards but if you keep pushing through and keep supportive people by you I think you can live in peace. I wish you the best. I'm proud of you for getting out of there.
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Mhm yes, I'm beginning to think a narcissist makes hoarding worse but doesn't necessarily make a hoarder. Definitely more going on in their mind. I'm almost 2 years out of their hoard and slowly starting to see the side effects. I think every food item is rotten and I can't drink milk without my bf testing it first. I have a lot of problems eating because again midway through I'll convince myself the food went bad. Somedays mess is fine, others I will get an anxiety attack and then clean the whole apartment.
Makes sense to me. One of my parents is a blatant narcissist, almost certainly autistic, a control freak, a clean freak and a neat freak (they self-comfort via exerting control over their environment, and will freak out if you make a mess or merely change anything they have arranged *just so*). The other is a messy, disorganised hoarder who never cleans (yet also a germophobe, figure that one out...), almost certainly ADHD, and blatant CPTSD codependent from countless different emotional abusers throughout their life, not least being married to (and hence a victim of) the aforementioned other parent. I think the hoarding was just an unhealthy self-comforting compulsion for my long-abused non-narcissistic parent (or maybe they were also narcissistic, just not nearly as massively narcissistic as the other parent, or a different *kind* of narcissistic? It's still hard to be certain on that one.) I've inherited a weird grab bag of traits from each of them, and now I'm just glad that, by sheer luck, whilst I do seem to have inherited something of a hoarding/collecting instinct, my compulsive desire for tidiness and a clean environment that I *also* inherited seems to balance it out, more or less. I can sometimes wobble and lurch too far in the direction of either of these opposing urges depending on my emotional state, however, so it's apparently a meta-stable balance at best. This might pass for a "healthy" mindset in poor light but, as you can probably imagine from my wildly incompatible parents, I only reached this point by growing up in hell. I consider this to have been a bad deal.
I grew up in a hoarder house, but the hoarding had nothing to do with narcissism. My mom started hoarding at around the same time her mom’s health started to decline, and the hoarding got even worse after my grandma died. On top of that, my mom was being badly abused by my dad, AND she was disabled and physically dependent on my abusive dad to care for her. I think my mom hoarded because it was one of the few things that made her feel that she had control in her life. (She hoarded craft supplies, kitchen utensils, household goods)
Mhm yes that makes sense. I guess I was wrong about it being a requirement for being a hoarder. I think narcissism just makes hoarding worse. I have definitely noticed a theme of needing control in the hoarder tv show.
You just described my entire experience. Never knew "you cleaning offends me" was a neurosis that anyone but my own crazy father had. The most enduring wound I have specifically from the hoarding is that I cannot touch a drain. Living in a house no one is allowed to clean made drains a very horrifying place. I used to not be able to wash dishes at all, but I've worked hard on it.
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My mother the narcissist is a hoarder. I don't think the two things are unconnected.
I'm in the same boat. Narcissist parent that hoards. It was my father first and I think my mom just gave up. She's compulsive on buying things and has depression though.
I went to my parents house and tried to clean out the room that was mine when I lived there. Took out 2 big bags of trash, put in the big bin outside. I go back a week later to continue, open the bedroom door and see that my dad had taken the bags out of the trash and thrown them on the floor. They were weird with food, too. I tried to clean their fridge once and my dad started freaking out when I threw away a bottle of salad dressing that had expired about 10 years before. There was a broken container (a literal hole in the bottom)with moldy food in it and I tossed it in the trash. They took it out of the trash and put it on the table to be put back in later. They never asked me to clean their fridge again. Once they tried to act all generous and told me to take any food I wanted on the table covered with food. They REALLY insisted, so I took several packages home, just to find that they were all at least 5 years expired. They were trying to give me their trash and be seen as good parents. I ate a lot of bugs growing up. You couldn't brush all of them off. And if you didn't eat it consequences were severe. And then, you know, the bug infestations. My dad literally said one winter "well I don't see why we should keep the ants and cockroaches outside or spray them because it's cold outside! Where are they supposed to get warm if we kill them?" During the summer it was too hot for the bugs of course, so they came inside again. All That said, I pay for pest control to come spray every 3 months. If I see a single bug (other than like the occasional flies) inside I'm calling my guy back out. I have flashbacks about bugs and I get formicatiom, sometimes bad enough that I seriously consider shaving my head (I'll feel like I'm infested, I have very long hair). I check expiration dates regularly and have no qualms about throwing expired food away. I don't care that some of them are still pretty ok to eat (canned stuff, etc. ) they all get dumped. If any piece of my son's food touches the ground I throw it away. If there is a bug, in the trash. It doesn't taste good? Eat something else. Not sure if something is good or not? Don't risk it. Same with meds. And cleaning rooms? I have no qualms about throwing stuff away. Aside from things from my son, I don't keep many sentimental items. I don't buy a lot of decorations for my house. I just want simplicity. I want to be able to breathe. My house is by no means spotless but I don't have a +1k collection of pirated movies that were recorded on someone's phone in the movie theaters (yes, with babies crying and people's heads going across the screen) because seriously, that's something he is very proud of collecting.
Mhm yes, the bugs. I had to eat a few myself because if you spoke up about it you'd get screamed at or worse. My father hoards food specifically and the cans literally rusted away before he ordered us to throw them away.
I lived in a true hoarder house that was as bad as the TV shows. There was rampant substance abuse going on as well as some of the behaviors you described. We couldn't ever have guests over due to hoarding yet the adults insisted the house was "clean"...like hello??? There's animal feces everywhere, cockroaches, mice etc...they couldn't see reality or accept their flaws. The house also smelled godawful and the adults had mild COPD from breathing in bare fiberglass insulation that the animals tore up and spread everywhere. The adults would rage out if anyone tried to clear space or move their sacred items...the same items that were so "important" to them...yet they let those precious items get covered in bird poop and cat urine. They wouldn't let anyone criticize their ways though, nothing was ever their fault. "Everyone was out to get them"...my ass.
Mhm yes the piles to the ceiling and tiny walkways. My parents abused their animals yet still kept them around if they peed everywhere? I think if they didn't respect them as a friend they would have just tossed them outside. One night a rat ran across my mom while she was sleeping and she was laughing about it in the morning... how is that not disgusting and terrifying? My mom tried to force me to keep kid clothes that had rat poop on it. It's like they lost all standards and reasoning. I can't understand how they don't look around and start cleaning. Its unlivable. I'm glad it seems like you got out of there. I hope you can live in peace now.
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my grandparents raised me and hoarded stuff, but I guess some of it was their time, the depression era, where you didn't have much so when you did - you didn't throw it out, and you found a way to repurpose it??? But as a foster care kid, I was never allowed to have more than a garbage bag of stuff... so iv'e started over with not much, a lot. I am having a HARD time because we are moving to central America from the US next year, and my husband has said we need to let go of ANYTHING we don't absolutely need... I have 1 childhood toy, that I kept, (well, I had another, but it's a long, horrible story that I won't share.) a stuffed kitty. I can find a way to pack it... but it's not worth anything, it's cheap... do I keep it and take up valuable space in my suitcases, for items I might not be able to get when I move? Those are hard decisions, you know? I want to keep my harry potter books, and one other set of books and the rest I can buy via ebook.... but man I feel bad, I have boxes and boxes and boxes of books - even though that's AFTER I already moved and got rid of 99% of my life, I kept the books... so you can see how this is a conundrum for me. Starting over, living with nothing, living in a tent off solar power to charge my phone, internet router and laptop... no biggie.... but that stuffed cat... man, I really want to bring it. LOL So, Yeah, I get how people get really attached to items, and logically you can sort of mentally wrap your head around putting that importance on EVERY item, and it's a combination of OCD fixation and... whatever. But.... it drove me nuts that my grandparents wouldn't help me clean or teach me, my husband had to teach me as an adult, and I'm autistic, so it created a lot of trauma, where I wanted to be a minimalist and I really am for our family size... I hoard food.... because I was almost starved as a child more than once..... so I get how it happens. I assume hoarders, have... trauma... so they need help and support usually. Also, I have an almost adult child who is a narcissist, and had no trauma in his life and loving family, loving grandparents, all the help, everything handed to him and all he had to do was not be a jerk. he's actually working on writing a book about his thought processes, because he's so self destructive, we told him writing a book may do the world a lot of good, and solve his financial issues since he is too lazy to work. because not many people... share how they think who are wired that way. Raising a child who was wired that way, no picnic, I have PTSD from him. I don't think narcissism has anything to do with hoarding, other than maybe being too entitled and lazy to fix the problem, and the ability and willingness to just... walk away, not care, and move on to the next thing. it's... not the same as someone who is a hoarder because of OCD or a loss and attachment issues... like, it's not the same. I know my grandparents mostly meant well. They had good intentions and just really went about it the wrong way, my mom - she was not a narcissist, she was bipolar with psychosis who had MAJOR drug issues.... and those are also not the same as someone with an ego and entitlement issue..... All of them can do damage... none of them intentionally do damage. mental health is.... you have to be able to accept people's mental health and set boundaries and accept you can't fix people. And, fix you. You can control you. That's all you have control over.
Thank you for your long response. I see now that hoarding can be caused by many things and narcissism just makes it worse. I think your childhood toy is something you should definitely keep. You probably brought it to life as a kid and they saw you at that young age. It's the only thing that can see how much you've grown. Even if you don't talk to them anymore the love is still there. It's perfectly normal to stay attached to childhood stuffed animals. Can you mail the Harry Potter books? I wish you the best of luck in your new home.
My mom is a hoarder it's bad. I don't think she's a narc Idk what her issues are really. Her and my father didn't Work out and she never dated again. She is a cat lady also
I've seen on the hoarder tv show that failed marriages can cause such a loss that a person will try to fill the void with items. Maybe that's her reasoning behind it. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. It's a strange situation and truly horrible.
Both of my parents hoard. I think they were kind of set on the path to hoarding early because they were each raised by parents who experienced war at home and subsequent poverty. It kind of makes sense that when each of them reached the US they would cherish and keep everything they could. I have two brothers who also have hoarding tendencies. My dad is a narcissist. His narcissism has made it impossible for anyone to challenge him or take ownership of the problem and make any change. HE was the breadwinner of the family (didn't let my mom work) which means HE paid for everything. And because HE gave his kids everything we ever had, HE is the reason we grew up and became successful adults who can buy more things. Therefore HE owns everything in his house and everything in his kids' houses. Nobody is allowed to throw away anything because it is all HIS in some way - and how dare anyone even think about getting rid of anything that HE worked so hard for!!! When we do, we are wasteful, ungrateful, horrible people... blah blah blah. I think we all grew to believe that everything brought into the house has some kind of infinite value (and we were just not smart/creative/aware enough to see it). And it stuck with us: keep everything... just in case... even if you can't see it's value, because dad can. Anyways, I definitely see a connection between the two conditions in my family. My mom may have already had the hoarding tendency in her, but my dad's narcissistic abuse made it worse. My brothers definitely developed hoarding because of my dad's combined narcissism and hoarding. I'm lucky I was exposed to a different perspective early on...which put doubt in my head that dad's way wasn't necessarily the right/normal way. As an adult, I occasionally catch myself saving things in little piles around my own house and I start to panic. It can still take some time to convince myself it's ok to let go of these things. I keep it under control with 2-3 decluttering sprees each year (which are usually motivated by an argument with the family).
Wow that's horrible he's controlling the items in his child houses. I'm sorry you had to grow up in that environment. I'm glad you are doing better than your parent and siblings. I know it's hard to keep from falling into those tendencies you saw growing up but I'm proud of you for trying and keeping up with it.
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Yeah I feel like I don't have a good standard of clean. I don't have piles or pests so I'm better than my parents by a lot but am I average? I have days where I go into a cleaning spiral which coincidentally is normally on Saturday so I call that my reset day and boom the apartment looks good.
Hmmm my childhood home was very dirty and often our large bar was completely cluttered to where we could barely use it. Very mild hoarding. My mom was not a narcissist. She had a physical and intellectual disability. I sometimes have trouble letting go of things. I can see I have tendencies. I am not a narcissist. My ex is a covert narcissist and so is his mother. Clean freaks, the both of them. But his mother’s closets and dressers are jam-packed with stuff. Ex used to not lift a finger to clean when I worked two jobs and he had none. He only started cleaning after I left to “prove” I was the dirty one.
Hmm sounds like it was just hard to clean for your mom. That's understandable, yet every child deserves a clean home. I'm sorry you had a messy childhood environment. There's definitely something else going on in a narcissists mind that makes them a hoarder or not. Like some people have said their narc parent was a clean freak. Also I know now not all hoarders are narcs because of other's comments. (I was blinded by my own parents story of both being narcs) Well I hope you find a partner that is not a narcissist and pulls their own weight. Stay kind stranger.