you know, have you seen oh, my god. jessica s mother says her hoarding tendencies can be traced back to her college years, but it isn t until the sudden death of her husband in 2001 that a tendency becomes a compulsion. went way over the edge. you do the grief counseling, you do all the things you think you should. sometimes it doesn t happen. what i found was i would go to work and come home and just want to cocoon myself. i just didn t want to deal with anything. in the cases of somebody, a spouse passing away, you have kind of two complicated issues because now you re more alone, you re more isolated and you fill things up with stuff. a lot of times people with compulsive hoarding don t trust their memory. they re afraid they re going to lose whatever association or connectedness to the individual that they lost. early efforts to seek help from psychiatrists are unsuccessful. i never had the feeling that they really grasped what i was
unsanitary conditions so untolerable she seeks refuge in an isolated bedroom in the home. it s at the far end of the house. i ve separated myself off from the house with a heavy duty shower curtain and baby gate to keep the barrier between myself and the rest of the house. i keep everything in my room now, all my personal belongings because if i leave them out they ll get destroyed and destroyed very quickly. either stuff will get put on top of it and it will get crushed. her pets might get hold of it or destroy it. things will get dirty. the pets also contribute to something that isn t caught on camera. a smothering, noxious odor permeates most of the home. the overwhelming smell of ammonia from cat urine combined with pet hair makes breathing difficult. unlike other areas, the air in jessica s room is much cleaner. it doesn t hurt to breathe in this room. your eyes don t burn. your nostrils don t burn, your throat doesn t suddenly hurt. you don t feel like someone s sitting on
here s the latest. problem is, we haven t figured out how to reverse it. for now, just log on to compare.com. plug in some simple info and get up to 50 free quotes. choose the lowest and hit purchase. now.if you ll excuse me, i m late for an important function. compare.com. saving humanity from high insurance rates. 27-year-old jessica lives with her mother who is struggling with a hoarding disorder. over the years, stacks and piles of clutter have taken over almost every part of their home. it started with newspapers. then it just kind of grew from there. from newspapers it went to books, then maybe from books it went to baskets or from baskets it went to candles or just suddenly started having collections of things. it was like the flavor of the month. what are we collecting this year?
looking at all the seemingly unmovable piles, jessica wories about the future. just walking through the house and seeing everything that s here and wondering is she going to be able to conquer this? is she going to get through this or am i going to be stuck with this one day? is this going to be her legacy. coming up, gels ka s mother in her words. it s daunting. and you think i need to go through this, it will take forever. thousands of people came out today to run the race for retirement. so we asked them. are you completely prepared for retirement? okay, mostly prepared? could you save 1% more of your income? it doesn t sound like much, but saving an additional 1% now, could make a big difference over time. i m going to be even better about saving. you can do it, it helps in the long run. prudential bring your challenges count on being slammed this hwith orders. we re getting slammed with orders. and my customers knowing right when their packages arrive.
to an outsider, the solution seems easy, clean it up. but with a hoarder, it s just not that simple. you don t move stuff. she would be very hurt, first of all, she d be angry, she d be hurt at the disrespect to her and her things. she d be ashamed. it would be kind of like her worst fears coming true right then and there. it would just make the problem worse because it would make her more defensive of everything else. and would make her fight harder to keep it. dr. morrison has not treated jessica s mother but has dealt with many similar cases. if you were to go into the home of someone who hoards and you were to clean out everything, not only would that make the person incredibly vulnerable and distressed but it would not solve the problem. and, in fact, the person would just rehoard and reclutter the home right away. so, the first step is to get them to have the motivation to want to beat this.