Re: complusive hoarding

him steve,
thanks for your response. I am travelling and don't have time to go into it right now; i will on monday. but she does not perceive that there is a problem. you are right, there are traumatic events from childhood. the problem isn't even so much the denial but i really believe that she has become comfortable with this minefield of obsessions and other neurotic behavior. she has used it to control everyone and everything and it is also comfortable. like anyone, change is scary and i do not believe there is sufficient motiviation to change because once this house is sold she will no longer hold any control over me and my child. everything is disappearing and all of this is also triggering those feelings which make her behave like this even more. it has worked for so many years, or at least she thinks it has. i have predictably become the bad guy and all of the people who hurt her now reside in me and the identity and the motives she has assigned to me. imagine every time you have the slightest discussion that touches on these subjects, and your mother tells you what a horrible person you are? for example, the piles in her room are so high there are only paths to the bed, the cats are fed on the furniture in her room, which is now ruined, everything is stinking and dirty from cat food etc. it is dickensian. she really needs this, and doesn't think it is wrong. the last place she lived, you had to go in the door sideways, there was so much stuff, but since moving into the house the volume has increased considerably, and so have the filthy habits. the only thing i can see is that there is going to be a major meltdown of some kind but even after that i really don't expect that there is a brighter day on the other side. i think of it as some kind of disease that lives inside my mother, it takes control of her and then withdraws to let her take the consequences. it is like the disease is a person but that person has the greater portion of the control. time is limited and i at least want to get her out of that place before i go on with my life because it is only a matter of time before she has some kind of accident among all that stuff and with all those many stairs. how could i begin to even suggest this or any other kind of therapy if there is such total denial in the face of such clearly destructive behavior? sometimes i think the brain must really get some kind of boost or charge from these behavoirs. i feel like i am living with a monster that has my mother hostage and me too, it doesn't want either one of us to escape. i am desperate to have my own life before it is too late because i have given enough of my life to these circumstances. i believe on one level i was born to serve as a wall or shield between my mother and reality and having to live a real life.
thanks, Tweet