r/hoarding • u/Tall_Part4020 • 5d ago

RANT - NO ADVICE WANTED Stop blaming OCD

I grew up in a home in the late 50's and early 60s with a stay at home mom. She waited on us hand and foot. I never made a bed, never vacuumed, mopped, did a load of laundry, washed a dish, cooked, ironed -- absolutely NOTHING. Didn't even know how. Moved out when I was 18. My various places stayed very clean for about 40 years. Then as I got older, those things were less important.

So you go to a shrink and their almost IMMEDIATE go to is "well, it's OCD." NO. PERIOD. It is NOT. But shrinks are often lazy and frequently incompetent and OCD is the lazy diagnosis.

I have NO emotional attachment to the 40 empty Amazon boxes in my living room. I simply don't have the ENERGY to deal with them. They're mainly from cases or bags of pet food, NOT just junk purchases.

So unless you actually KNOW what you're talking about -- and most shrinks DO NOT -- don't say that's your OCD. No, OCD is when you go to your car to leave then have to go back inside 10 or 15 times to make sure the stove is off. OCD is when you refuse to have blinds with cords on them because one of your animals might strangle. OCD is when you worry if a pet will fall in the toilet and drown. OCD is getting up 10 times to make sure the front door is locked. Finally solved that one by taking a pic of it on my phone.

So QUIT saying "it's OCD" unless you HAVE it and know what the hell you're talking about.

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11

u/averagecryptid Recovering Hoarder 5d ago

I have diagnosed OCD and know what I'm talking about. I think you're probably used to seeing it in very specific symptom expressions and maybe don't fully understand other ways it can present. OCD can definitely manifest as hoarderism and far too often does. If I didn't recognize my own OCD, it would be a lot harder for me to criticize certain compulsions I have as irrational. I also recognize these thoughts and compulsions in my upbringing and how they impacted me, and it's been helpful to realize that stuff isn't rational.

11

u/little_red-7282 5d ago

I like how you projected your laziness on to your shrink.

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u/Steefanon 5d ago

While "Hoarding Disorder" may be classified as a subtype of OCD, not all messy, overly-cluttered homes are a result of HD. Ask your lazy therapist to review the diagnostic criteria with you, and then explain to you how you fit this diagnosis when you don't fit the 2nd necessary criteria for this diagnosis:

(1) Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.

(2) This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to the distress associated with discarding them.

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u/byekenny 5d ago

You sound incredibly overwhelmed and depleted and then frustrated with the additional insult to injury of feeling your situation is misunderstood. Which if that is the case, I can see how frustrating that would be cause if they don't see what the true problem is, how can you trust that they can support you properly towards the solution? I am sorry you are going through that.

I do not find it helpful to label what you're going through as lazy personally. You are depleted. It makes no sense to call a car that has an empty tank of gas lazy, and I see little benefit to doing the same to another human with an empty tank.

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u/Ok_Environment5293 5d ago

So you DO have OCD, since you have to take a picture of your locked door to stop from checking it repeatedly? But you refuse to acknowledge your hoarding behavior as part of that? Ok, cool.

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u/byekenny 5d ago

Even if OP has OCD or OCD tendencies, this specific inability to maintain their living space may not be attributed to OCD.

I for one can relate to experiencing professionals who create a very simplistic, narrow and rigid conceptualization of your situation and then just by default attribute all your issues to it.

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u/989j 1d ago

Did I write this? Lol

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