Question: How do you talk someone with OCD (hoarding) into getting some help? How do you help the family that wont talk about the problem? Should it be allowed to go on or should they just ignore the problem that has been going on for 16 years? Answer 1: Hoarding is a difficult problem to …
Question: Do you have any particular advice for compulsive hoarders? The organizing books I have read don’t seem to understand the underlying anxiety that accompanies trying to discard of things. How do we deal with that aspect of it? Answer 1: There has been a little research on treatment of this type of OCD. Hoarding …
Question: I have come to recognize myself as a hoarder, but I don’t seem to have any of the other symptoms of either OCD or OC Personality Disorder, at least not to any clinical degree. What implications does that have for treatment (given that the consensus seems to be that hoarding in OCD is extremely …
Question: My grandmother has OCD with poor insight, hoarding newspapers and garbage. The flat is covered in mounds of garbage, dust and fungus. My grandmother is asthmatic and the situation is seriously hurting her health. We have been trying to convince her to let us clean her place, but she reacts to our attempts as …
Question: Symptoms of OCD, saving, collecting, and hoarding; also shopping pushed by anxiety, relieved by raising my Zoloft to 250mg a day. What is the relationship between “magical thinking” and OCD. My Doctor gave me an excellent tape of a lecture on “the illusion of absolute safety” we get from our parents and carry into …
Question: My dad (77) has been hoarding junk for 30 years. He lives alone and refuses treatment. I have just been to his apartment the 1st time in 10 years (without his knowing). It is so filled with junk; there is no place to walk. He must crawl over 4 feet of piles to get …
Question: I come from a family that has exhibited hoarding behavior for 3 generations. My mother, brother and uncle all have houses that are impossible to enter. My siblings and I are at our wits end as to how to intervene and things are becoming monetarily complicated with so many properties in total disarray. Any …
Question: My mom, first cousin and another cousin have the hoarding OCD that I know of. How possible is it that I too will acquire this in later life. They all did it mainly in their later years of life to the point of having no home left. Pauline Answer 1: At this point we …
Question: Having just discovered that my hoarding/saving is an OCD, I’m immersing myself in the literature & want to start treatment with an experienced BT. I’m not depressed, but have spent years in/out of therapy with non-BT’s. Can you advise (without an actual assessment) if BT alone might be effective (with aggressive goals and compliance)? …
Question: My 46 year old brother collects junk to the point where he has lost his wife and job, and the city has fined him and made him go to court. Nothing wakes him up. Is this a symptom of OCD? Is it treatable by medication or psychiatrist? Answer 1: Yes, it’s a symptom of …