Hoarding Emotions in Analytical Essays

One of the most powerful episodes, thus far, of True Tori is the recently aired second episode.

If you watched Tori’s reality show, Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood or read any of Tori Spelling’s memoirs, you know that Tori Spelling likes to acquire a lot of objects.

However, if you are a hoarder, then, you will understand a lot of second episode and where I am coming from in this entry.

For, I, myself…I am a recovering hoarder.

Fuck you, Sophia! You are not a hoarder.

Yes, I am. And I was completely in denial while I was attending college.

First off, it is very difficult for us hoarders to admit that we are actually hoarders. It’s like calling someone an enabler. The words “hoarder” and “enabler” have negative connotations. People, who are hoarders and enablers, don’t want to be called out on those terms because it hurts them.

But in order to change, one must admit that they are what they are. And for a very long time, I was in denial until I start the process to admitting I had a problem.

I believe a person only has a problem when that problem affects the quality of his or her life. You can collect items or become a collector, but if collecting items gives you a high, if it gives you satisfaction, if it makes you avoid feeling painful emotions, if it replaces any type of true freedom of happiness, then…

I think you may have a problem.

First and foremost, you see that on this second episode of season 2 of True Tori. If you already watched season 1, you realized that Tori has issues that are addressed in her therapy situations. Basically, she has buried her access to feel emotional pain. And when you buried something, you have to use something to bury it with.

We find Season 2: Episode 2 just that…what she has been burying her emotions with.

For me, it is shopping and collecting items myself. It is one thing for me to be a book collector. It is another thing to collect other items that I have no reason for and aren’t using.

I would hoard all kinds of shit just because, thinking at the time, I am going to use it. I am going to use it for crafts or doing a creative project with it. It is fine to have an idea to save items to where you are going to use them. But for hoarders, it is a different matter. When we collect and save, we do it usually 1000 times more than the average person without a serious hoarding problem does.
And that’s one thing Tori and I have in this hoarding commonality.

Tori shares that she has 127 vaults (huge crate boxes) of belonging in a storage facility. These are a variety items she has kept over a twenty year period: clothes, mementos, childhood stuff animals, furniture, etc. Half of her adult life has been storing her belonging in a huge storage facility. At the beginning of the episode, there is a room where I call…”the forbidden room.” Most folks across America has one. It is the one where you store shit. It is the room where everything is disorganized and in a hot mess. It is the room you do not want others seeing. If they creep around the corner towards that room, you stopped them dead I their tracks, spew out your short explanation and guide them back to other safe room in the house. All in all, it is your safe room, but it is also your shame room.

And Tori’s forbidden room…she actually fills it up from top to bottom with stuff, and then, she ships to her rent storage facility.

She has been doing this for years.

Anyway, her friend, Jess, and best friend, Mehran, attempt to help her sell what she has in storage.

In this is the part I definitely related to.

While they were in storage, there were six vaults open (You can only have six open at a time). They begin pulling out stuff. Jess, mentions again (she mentioned previously to Tori, while reviewing the over 200 page catalogue of inventory of stuff that Tori owns, that Tori has held on to items from her first marriage with Charlie Shenian), about Tori keeping items from her first marriage. As all three go through it, Tori gets very agitated. She wants to look at all the stuff (and spends at least an hour looking at it and telling a story about it), and if Mehran or Jess goes through it, she gets irritated and snappy for them touching it first without her looking at it first.

I know all those behaviors too well because I have exhibited them. And so has my mom. My aunt, HM, relayed a story for me via text about how my mom did not want her to touch her stuff, either. A part of a hoarder’s behaviors are: not wanting people to see or touch your “collection.” Not wanting people to know that you have a lot of stuff. Not wanting to experience people’s reactions towards it.

What I also related concerning Tori is that…when she explained to Dean how it made her feel to give up her things.

One part of keeping all your items that you hoard is because you have an emotional attachment to them. The reason why you hard is to escape from dealing with issues you have. Part of hoarding is covering up your feelings. If you have OCD like I do, a part of it is pleasurable. Or you find momentarily relief from it. But what tends to happen is that, you acquire so much stuff that you don’t even know you are feeling up spaces wherever you are doing. When you think about it, you are going about the wrong way in filling up a space—the spaces of your life that you feel empty.

Basically, many hoarders are trying to fill up what they didn’t get a children. For me, I felt like I did not get a lot of love or a lot of support. I was alone all the time. When you start filing in your family history like I’ve done and start looking back on it, you realize that why you are hoarding.

I hoarded because it made me feel safe. It made me feel confident and self-assured. Why is that? Well, a part of it had to do with finances/money. Growing up in a poor family…in a welfare family where my mom would get a monthly paycheck…and hardly buy me anything…but splurge on what she wanted, it made me angry a lot of times. She also would buy more things for my sister because she was the baby. Basically, my mom had a tight reign on the minimal money that was coming in the household. All I wanted was books because I love to read. Henceforth….

The spending a lot on my book collection. It is tied to my mom not wanting me to buy books. So, when I started college and started having a work study job, I was able to buy books. At that time, my buying of books was consistently normal. However, as I grew older, I started increasing my collection because I would expose to more places in larger towns or cities where book shops were prevalent.

However, this caught up with me. I had to basically throw away half of my book collection because we had to move within two days of coming back from our South Dakota vacation. That was a horrible experience and a very traumatic one. I had a lot of pop fiction books that went into the dumpster. I also had a lot of books which are rare now that went into the dumpster. I try not to think about that experience, but when I do, it haunts me. I should have kept those books in storage during all that time…I would have still had them.

BUT I realized that I had a problem. I was buying books to make up for the lost feelings I had from childhood. I no longer enjoyed reading them for the sake of reading them…or being proud of a collection that I was still working on reading. The very thing I love…I didn’t even realize it…I turned into problematic behavior. However, I also was buying a lot of shoes, a lot of clothes, etc.

Looking back at my college days, it wasn’t as bad…but it started to become very bad when I was very lost and didn’t have work to fulfill me.

My hoarding is tied to emotions of feeling neglected, feeling insecure, and feeling low self-esteem. Every time I don’t feel good about myself or things don’t go well…or I am under a huge amount of stress, I have the impulse to buy for gratification, but it is gratification.

It also happens when I don’t have a very structured lifestyle. I have to have structure and purpose….if I don’t, that impulse to buy and reward myself for feeling bad happens.

Once I got a full time job at the university, all that changed. My priorities started to realign, and I started to taper off excessive buying. When we moved, I was even able to give away and throw away items where I once could not do it before. If you asked me to do what I did before the move five or six years ago, I would not have been able to do it.

As for my book collection, I am trying to reclaim the reason why I have it. It is not just for show, but it is for reading. I cannot let my illness destroy the one thing I love to do. I started collecting books in the first place so I could read them. The words inside of them and the knowledge and wisdom that I obtain from them has shaped me who I am today. Yes, it is nice to have it to show, but the knowledge and wisdom in the books are more important than actually collecting them.

Yes, I’ve always wanted a library, and I have one. However, I need to use my own personal library.

The lesson of this story is that relating to the True Tori episode…hoarding just doesn’t come out of the blue one day. And for me, it is a genetic trait. It runs in my family. OCD and hoarding can be traced back in my family tree. I had to decide one day…the quality of my life is more valuable than quantifying my life.

I won’t stop collecting books…but I am learning how to collect ones that are valuable…and not ones that hardly mean anything to me. I know. I know. If I ever want to make some money, I can always sell the ones I have on Ebay.

Hoarders have to take one day at a time. Essentially, we are addicts…hurting ourselves and those around us. In order to recover, you have to admit you have a problem, accept past responsibility, and start accounting for your actions. I am trying really hard. It just takes time.

I think Tori Spelling is starting to see that as well. Yes, she may have had a glamorous life growing up and a wealthy father…but we all have problems no matter what kind of family we come from. What counts is how we deal with them now as an adult.
You can’t blame the very people who may influenced you start down on the path you are on. All you can do is have the power and the courage enough to want to change it.

That is by doing it one step at a time.

Best,
S