The Heilkunst Treatment of a Hoarder

I was once helping a friend clean out his closet of old clothes.  We had gone shopping that day and he needed room to insert his new wardrobe.  As we went through old sweaters and other dated articles, it was clear to me that every garment that he cherished actually was attached to a story from the past.  I recall one particular red cable knit sweater with leather elbow patches that he teared up at the prospect of giving away.  When I asked him the significance, he stated that he’d been in London, England, away from his controlling parents enjoying the freedom of visiting with his brother and purchasing this sweater out of his own volition as a young adult.  The red sweater represented to him autonomy and a rite of passage.  The sad part was that when he returned home, his parents had told him that when he wore it, it made the redness of his acne stand out and he never wore the sweater again.  In fact, he swore off the colour red as a wardrobe choice forever!  The red sweater had remained in his closet for over 12 years, never worn, but an icon to the un-lived life nonetheless.

Inanimate things have sadly become endowed with our unresolved human emotions.  Just as the woman in the Youtube clip above from The Learning Channel’s show, “Hoarding: Buried Alive” indicates, she was not wholly cherished as a child and therefore cares for objects in ways that she was never cared for.  She is projecting onto the wee doll, what she desperately craves herself; love, regard, inner value, and nurturing.  Her resistance to the removal of the object when the fellow does not assure her of the commitment to its care prevents her from allowing for the release of the doll, or of her feelings of grief.  Her life seemingly depends on her ability to “hang on” to the article to ensure its proper care.  This is indicative in all cases of hoarders.  If you watch any of the hour-long episodes, you will generally find some theme of loss in the sufferer’s past that spawns an inability to let go in the present.  They are grief stricken and the items they hoard give them the illusion that they are validated, safe and ok.  The problem with crude nature is that they are attempting to give the feeling of abundance to themselves constantly, in mega doses, until they have little freedom of movement.  They become trapped by their own illusions. You can start with regimen and attempt to clean out the hoarder’s dwelling of excess items, however if the law of cure, “Like Cures Like” is not employed, the poor person will generally just re-infect again in due time like a returning cancer.  The root cause has not been excavated.  Also, Orgonomic Heilkunst enables us to apply psycho-therapeutics that enable the person to release the pain, grief and fear at the moment it was engendered, even if the shock or trauma was embedded at the pre-verbal stage between birth and 3 years of age.  When the individual sources the moment of their trauma in a loving environment with the clinician safely holding them, the patient will naturally seek to let go of their unresolved grief and fear, allowing more space within themselves and their psyche.  The following Youtube video illustrates how an individual’s subconscious still holds childhood ills where she did not receive the whole, healthy nurturing so intrinsic to the healthy evolution of her being.  It is especially evident when she derives the nurturing still so craved from her Mentor:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvlHdx7-M6g]

Florence Scovel Shinn realized this phenomenon when she intuited that, “People little dream of how their affairs react on the body.  There is a mental correspondence for every disease. A person might receive instantaneous healing through the realization of his body being a perfect idea in Divine Mind, and therefore whole and perfect, but if he continues his destructive thinking, hoarding, hating, fearing, condemning, the disease will return.” Many people are in ignorance of the fact that gifts and things are investments, and that hoarding and saving invariably leads to loss in the end.  This is a tough lesson to learn for most hoarders. Medically speaking, the homeopathic remedy Natrum Muriaticum will weigh in heavily as the homeopathic similimum, “Like Cures Like”, in cases of hoarders.  Here is an extracted piece from P. R. Allen’s Materia Medica on Natrum Muriaticum and the “Mind:”

Melancholy, depressed, sad, and weeping; consolation aggravates.

Very irritable, and ill-humored ; easily provoked to anger.

Difficult thinking ; absence of mind ; weakness of memory.

Folks suffering this state will have difficulty crying or expressing grief.  If they get laughing too hard, tears will leak from their eyes.  There is much polarity with this state of mind including diarrhea versus constipation, craves support and love, however, she despises being touched or consoled, melancholy versus irritation and anger.  She seems to bid for sympathy, but she seems to ward it off upon receipt.  Many incorrect diagnosis of “manic depression” have been levied on a simple Natrum Muriaticum state.

An individual suffering a Natrum Muriaticum disease state will hang on to everything — stuff that has no use, unrequited love, and old disappointments.  She seems to live in the past, she collects everything that seemingly gives her comfort until she is just buried in it.  She just can’t let go.  She may very often be over-weight, constipated and have a lot of trouble urinating (letting go) in public washrooms.  She will lie awake at night, unable to let go to sleep, thinking about old loves, married men she can’t have, men who live in other cities.  It is all unrequited love.  She knows she needs to sleep, but she can’t help romanticizing the past.  This individual resists changes, and suffers much nervousness when her things are moved.  You will witness fretting, anxiety and nervousness if anyone touches her stuff.  Her irritability is marked, especially from a fear of her fortress being breached, from loud noise like the slamming of a door, the ringing of a bell, the firing of a pistol or loud music. I recall a hoarder who I treated who kept absolutely everything; magazines, recipes, books, anything that was printed matter.  She was one of a dozen children from a small farm that barely had enough to eat.  In fact, if you did not arrive to the table in time at her home, you might have gone without.  My patient struggled with the capacity to let go of her feelings of grief and lack.  After about a year of treatment where we’d excavated enough content from her childhood, she spontaneously began pitching stuff out and giving it away to folks she felt might value it more than she did.  It was a very joyous time for both of us as it meant that she was also able to rest more easily in an empty chair to read.  The space she created in her environment also enabled her to create enough space for her to take a lover into her life, her domain and into her nether self where she’d kept it cluttered for over 30 years. Here is a last excerpt from hoarders where you can see more clearly the Natrum Muriaticum state.  You will see the woman become more hysterical and postured in defense, entreating her husband to be patient with her as it drives her anxiety up to a “10.”  Watch the facial armoring indicative of a lack of authenticate emotional expression.  She doesn’t weep or even clench her mouth to express her anxiety.  Her face remains “stony” with the same non-expression in the eyes and around the mouth.  There is no squeezing, squinting or true tantrum qualities indicative of an embodied discharge.  This poor woman is so shut down that her body doesn’t even produce the appropriate response to the stimulus in this case.  Imagine taking an item away from a two year old child, and you can start to tease out where this woman’s armoring began.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI6Q9fRruVw]

This is one of the areas of treatment that we specialize in.  We know that a hoarder really abhors a vacuum.  Their belief is that if all the spaces are already filled in, then there is no room to receive slights, criticisms, or emotional or physical abuse.  Hoarding gives the impression that there is no more room at the inn.  The problem is that divine births in the way of inspired creativity, spontaneity or romantic interludes can not take root either.  It is piteously sad for a human being to have to suffer alone like this when we have the tools to help.  Please let us know if you have a hoarder in your life who who benefit from root cause prescribing, whose resistances to being told to “just let go” aren’t working.  We can provide a safe loving place for them to transition their grief and fears into joy, trust and faith and coaching from resonant partners who wholly understand their pain. On occasion, I will also call on a colleague of mine to help to move the treatment forward.  While we use the Law of Similars to cure the underlying cause, folks who hoard will often need a coach for the practical clean-up.  Elaine Shannon (506-647-2041 or empressofinspiration@gmail.com), Empress of Organizing Inspiration, touts, “A coach is someone who runs beside you, encouraging you to do it yourself. A consultant gives their best tips based on their skills and knowledge. A Muse (n) is someone who inspires others and brings the creative process front and center.” Elaine works virtually with clients, throughout the world, helping them to create space in their environment, enabling them to start trusting the space in themselves for Divine inspiration.