Happy Birthday to Us!

[sunnycamehome2u]

I am a bad Mod, and totally forgot that it was the Meme's birthday. I never thought it would last a week. And the lasting is all due to the efforts of all the Nonnies who have participated on the meme.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GENTLE FAILERS! HAPPY BIRTHDAY FAIL FANDOM ANON!

Thank you Nonnies!

Rules:

• No pictures, real names, no detailed locations.
• Religion

Comments

Hoarders

[anonymous]

http://heydontjudgeme.com/2011/07/12/hoarders-4-03-roy-loretta/

The Loretta part of the review.

Something about this review is bugging me. That there's several mentions of hoarding being a disease, a form of mental illness....and then flipping her shit over the woman being irrational.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

I watched that, and have seen MANY episodes of Hoarders. MANY of the people featured on the show are difficult to deal with and irrational.

Loretta was infuriating and a drama queen, for sure, but troubled also. She needs counseling.

Most of the relationships shown on Hoarders show codependency. What bothers me is when grown children are living in the house and living with the filth. What, you can't wash the fucking dishes, at least? You could get your parent to go along with being on TV on Hoarders but you couldn't help them clean, at least a little (barring the really tough cases).

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

Have you ever met a RL hoarder? They scream at you if you touch any of 'their stuff' and if you dare to straighten, you've 'messed up their system', if you clean you did it wrong and stupidly (dishes must be done in a certain order, with a specfic amount of soap and stacked just so) and if you dare to toss a single old paper bag, they will dig through the garbage (and I mean stinky, filthy food garbage) until they find it, put it back and scream at you some more.

Now they can't find anything! They needed that thing you moved! And they will stay angry at you for years, because if anything, their memories are just that good. Yeah, they are sick cookies all right.

It's actually the trauma of severe abuse you're seeing, not codependency. I know all about it, unfortunately.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

NA: Sorry for what you went through. I have often wondered if the hoarders could really keep track of everything, if there was a chance you could fight a holding action by throwing a few things away from back bedrooms/bottom of the heap while they were out of the house or asleep.

But yeah, we've seen this reaction to people cleaning up on the show, so....not that easy.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

if there was a chance you could fight a holding action by throwing a few things away from back bedrooms/bottom of the heap while they were out of the house or asleep

Just from having watched it (so, no, not armchair psychologist just interested listener), it sounds like throwing things away - without them having made the decision themselves - is just going to cause problems. If/when they find something was thrown out, it feels like massive betrayal. And because they weren't ready to throw it away on their own, they just try to fill the space back up with other things. It's a control issue. And when someone's feeling of control is taken away, it only goes downhill.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

Yeah, from what I've seen on the show living with a parent who's a hoarder can be a form of slow torture. Not only are the kids allowed no control over their environment (many have stories of trying to throw away their own trash only to have the hoarder bring it back into the house) but they're often not allowed to speak the truth about the situation either because the hoarder wants control there too.

It's a mental disease that unfortunately often goes along with some amazing passive aggression or just plain abuse.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

Oh, nonnie, my sympathies. I once got beaten up by my sister, a hoarder, who is living in my mom's house, for trying to clean the kitchen so that my sick mom wouldn't get any sicker. My sister could not cope with my attempts to clean up the kitchen, even a little, and punched me out.

The only way I have ever got garbage out of that house is to bag it up when she's not there and put it in the neighbor's bin - if I put it in my mom's bin, my sister will dig it out and bring it back in.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

What bothers me is when grown children are living in the house and living with the filth. What, you can't wash the fucking dishes, at least? You could get your parent to go along with being on TV on Hoarders but you couldn't help them clean, at least a little (barring the really tough cases).

Almost all the cases on the show are 'really tough cases'. As much as the people featured need therapy and professional help, their behaviour towards their children often tows the line between 'shitty' and 'outright neglectful and abusive'. I don't see why responsibility should fall to the adult children (who've probably lived with it their entire lives) to maintain their parents abusive and damaging behaviour.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

Help them clean, how? When there's miles and miles of stuff stacked everywhere, and the only surface area visible is a tiny track through the mess? So... you think they should clean that tiny track? Or you think they should toss stuff out? The problem with hoarders is that they can't because the hoarders simply won't let them.

My mother was (is) the classic "ur doing it wrong" type of parent, standing behind me as I did anything at all and just itching to FIX IT because I wasn't doing it the way she deemed acceptable. It made me into a teen and young adult who didn't dare do anything because I was convinced I wouldn't do it wrong. As the other anons have said, hoarding is about control issues.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

NA: it's like she's mentioning the mental issues for SJ brownie points and actually thinking that hoarders are...just lazy? That's the vibe I'm getting.

And the whole thing with comparing the mugging with living in a warzone. Policing other people's trauma is so

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

This.

And not to play all 'armchair psychologist', eyeroll, but....for that woman to have that reaction to being mugged, to being threatened....there's a good chance there's something buried deeper there.

But +1 on there's something weird about the reviewer not getting it.

Re: Hoarders

[anonymous]

That writer is talented, amusing, and basically the biggest egomaniac shitheal on LJ, nicely disguised in a good-ol-girl wrapper.