Messie syndrome signs and therapy

When collecting stifles life - The Messie syndrome
Messies are having big problems cleaning up their home, and their everyday lives are getting out of hand. Behind the supposed disorder often hide mental disorders. The British speak of compulsive hoarding: Whether animals, jubilees of magazines, tea caddies, empty flowerpots or children's toys, a Messie can not throw away anything - on the contrary, he worries more and more objects.

contents

• The museum potential
• Value and worthlessness
• causes
• Trauma and attachment
• Messie types
• Messies versus collectors
• Messies in relationships
• therapy

As an anorexic loses the differentiated view of her body, the horters lose the priorities of which items are important and which ones are unimportant. Some sufferers collect a certain kind of things, others randomly collect everything that falls into their hands. Lots of flats we call colloquially as "Messie stalls". But that's not quite right: neglect can be part of the disorder, but it does not have to. Some sufferers are meticulous and orderly; stringently lined up, telephone directories of the last 20 years are close to each other in their two-room apartment.

Messies themselves suffer from the syndrome. They often quarrel with Scharm. Image: DoraZett - fotolia

Disorder usually goes hand in hand with the syndrome, but the main characteristic is not to distinguish between usefulness and uselessness of the hoarded objects. They compulsively collect because they think they might need "that" at some point. This gathering can also be transmitted to people, some sufferers have thousands of "friends" on Facebook, with whom they have not changed a single e-mail.

Patients often feel paralyzed in everyday life, they barely manage to arrive punctually on time and to structure their time; Everyday social work usually causes them to grind, whether they open letters, do not transfer bills, or cancel subscriptions while newspapers are stacked in the cellar; important documents disappear in a Postberg between advertising and television programs.

In the face of the mountains of their collected items, they feel fainted when they have to act: The landlord's account number is, they suspect at least, under a pile of folders with exercise books from the elementary school, or with the grandmother's jam jars. They do not like marmalade, but throwing it away would be a waste.

Often sufferers categorize their piles after ever new criteria: In this corner, the bags with the self-carved figures of the third last ex-girlfriend, in the red plastic box, an ensemble of dried superglue, Spanish felt dolls and Edding pens.

The Christmas angels are missing the wings, but they could be stuck at some point, the flea market vase is broken off the handle, but you could, for example, use it as a pencil box, the empty packs of dry cat food could serve as fuel for the fireplace, because maybe creates the Messie one at some point.

Thus, the impaired person blocks his energy, which he binds to useless things. Although he is crushed by his smorgasbord, and it would hardly be possible for non-Messies to bring a meaningful order to these mountains, he is afraid to throw something away. It feels like he's throwing away a part of himself.

The museum potential

Many sufferers suffer from loss anxiety. They are afraid to leave their childhood, their youth or their parents. In this way they hoard their children's toys as well as the legacies of past relationships in order to maintain imaginarily real phases of life that have disappeared. By understanding the objects, they brace themselves in their imagination against the flow of life, which means everlasting change.

Often, you have trouble deciding because every decision is to choose against a variety of alternatives. The collected things represent a potential of supposed possibilities that can be exploited.

Value and worthlessness

Messies can barely assess the real value of things, they often realize how pointless they are hoarding, but fail to make that point.

In extreme cases, those affected can hardly move through their apartment; a single trail leads past newspaper stacks, cable reels and clothes piles. The windows are delivered, so they can not ventilate, in the hundred niches dust and dirt collects. The apartment neglected, and at the end is sometimes the termination by the landlord.

Many sufferers enthusiastically embark on new projects without ending them. Fragments of novels, travel guides or blank tax returns bear witness to these ideas, and the chaos grows ever larger.

Often they are aware of the disorder, and they are ashamed. They do not invite anyone into their apartment, and when old friends ring the bell, they make excuses. They isolate themselves and therefore find it difficult to contact other victims.

In the outside world, those affected appear inconspicuous, ambitious and creative. Often they get involved in different clubs, are always "on the run" and even seem perfectionist.
Clutter, meanwhile, is not the core feature of the syndrome. Some people live in extremely disorderly homes without suffering from the disorder, either because they are too lazy to clean up, either because they love the dirt.

On the other hand, some sufferers collect very neatly: cardboard is stacked on cardboard, canning boxes from twenty years are neatly labeled and every blanket from the great-grandmother has its place. However, they too are unable to throw anything away and suffer from it.
Messies are almost merging with things in their personal environment, and things are replacing relationships with people. In an almost magical thinking, they emotionally charge objects.

causes

The causes of the syndrome are as individual as they are different. However, some core conflicts often occur:

1) The fear of being abandoned: All people associate with things they bought, received or found, memories. A person who feels unloved, be it in his current situation or in his entire life, clings to such objects that trigger positive emotions in him. If he throws something away now, he fears losing the pleasant feelings associated with the memory.

2) Failed mourning: People who do not handle a death or separation can develop the disorder. As in a museum, they hoard the things of the ex-girlfriend or the personal belongings of the father. They are blocking themselves for their own lives. They freeze life as it was at the time of the loss, as if they could magically preserve it. Psychology calls this an adjustment disorder.

It does not have to be the loss of a person. Even a move to a strange city, in which those affected carry along the contents of their children's room, is an attempt to preserve these memories.

3) Some sufferers are stingy. They think they can use everything they have again. The bucket with the hole could still serve as a flower pot, the broken tape recorder could be repaired, and the socks with the holes can still serve as a wiper. So they hoard everything as "treasures" and watch over it jealously, although no one else wants the trash. If someone makes a clear ship in their absence, they hate him like a thief plundering their account. Such people are also very possessive in relationships.

Trauma and attachment

Messies often suffer from their parents not turning to them, now they are building emotional relationships with objects to compensate for this lack of basic trust, and things have the advantage that they can not run away.

But sometimes the opposite is also the case: some victims have a very strong and loving bond with their parents and do not realize that they want to start their own lives. When they live as young adults in their own homes, they surround themselves with objects that promise them stability in an insecure world.

Those affected feel blocked for a long time. They persist in once learned behaviors and thoughts, even though they know that this is wrong, that the current situation requires different behavior, and they have no beginning and no end in what they do.

Therefore, there is no energy left for everyday activities. Affected persons always feel that they have too little time - for everything. Therefore, they generally avoid situations that require their own actions.

It is extremely difficult for them to translate thoughts into action, but they do not lack ideas. On the contrary, they often overflow with ideas and pursue them energetically, then there are more and more, and they do not know how to realize them. You move it to later, and that means not at all.

One in ten knows feelings like: I forget important things, I neglect to transfer the rent or to tackle the long overdue examination with the dentist. The difference to the affected sufferers is the permanent condition, which makes everyday life almost impossible. That affects about 2% of Germans. They notice that they forget what they just said. Although otherwise known as good-natured, they want to dominate conversations and repeat what they've said a hundred times, as if nobody's listening.

They suffer from the fear of having forgotten something and therefore often decide spontaneously, that is to say prematurely, or they remain passive and do not decide.

Affected persons are very sensitive when their everyday life, which they laboriously put together, is disturbed. When others expect them to do something at a certain time, they feel paralyzed.

Messies can not demarcate, so their subconscious is flooded, and they feel they never come to rest.

They postpone important work, even on subjects that matter to them. This is not because of laziness, but because of helplessness, reacting flexibly to challenges. For example, a person affected by homework at a university is typical, and then his computer hangs up. Instead of calling someone with whom he may have had nothing to do for longer, but who knows his way around, he lets it go, and the work remains unfinished.

They start with renewed zeal new work and then leave it - the "garbage" not only testifies to the commitment, patients can not bear it even if someone touches him. For example, a woman who suffered from Messie syndrome left her allotment garden to a friend. He laboriously searched for planks, plastic sheets and old pails and piled the trash on a large pile to bring it to the dump. When he came to the garden the next day, the previous owner, who could not part with the garden, had done a great job. The things were scattered across the lawn, in six smaller piles.

Sufferers have problems to say what they want and how they feel. Often unconscious fears play a role and growing up in a family where unspoken secrets were just as influential as blurred boundaries between the realms of individuals.

Affected block their memories under stress and "mentally go out." You can then concentrate on the simplest tasks of everyday life no longer, go to the car, refuel the wrong gasoline or billed to the baker. The more you think, the more your thoughts wander off. If they are relaxed, they have no problems with the same situations.

Patients even forget events of the immediate past, they forget names, and they forget appointments. That goes all the way to disorientation; they do not find their way home, they forget why they went to the supermarket, and they forget promises.

Affected persons often refuse responsibility. As children, they did not learn to self-determine and take responsibility for their actions - they remained passive. As adults, they maintain this behavior, and deciding to throw something away means responsibility. Others are afraid of failing socially. Therefore, they do not even try and avoid situations in which they could fail.

Still others lack self-confidence, and they collect objects of a phase of life from which they have long since physically outgrown.

Even a disturbed self-image can inspire the syndrome. Some sufferers collect outfits in quantities and put on different masks, because they have not found their own way. Messies generally have problems in organizing information and organizing things under stress. The hectic world outside unconsciously scares them, and that is why they are blocking themselves, the immovable things creating a fictional fortress before the world in the river.

They are perfectionists who want everything to be harmonious. Often they have the image of an ideal world in their heads and try to behave in an exemplary way in the outside world. In doing so, they hide unpleasant thoughts that disturb this imaginary, perfect world.

Messie types

The victims are individuals. But a few examples illustrate how this disorder can develop.

The garbage chute
Even as a child Frauke took care of the worries of her classmates, and after junior high school she became a geriatric nurse, because that seemed like her "golden touch". In relationships, she repeatedly landed in men with mental health problems. Her first friend was an alcoholic; she listened to his monologues when he was lolling to himself, she bought him brandy at the kiosk, she denied him to friends, when he once again drunk no deadlines.

Again and again she wanted to part with him, but was afraid that he would do something to herself when she was no longer there. Then he left her.

Her closest friends could have come from the consultation of a therapist. Borderline syndrome, paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, everything was there. And the partners dragged their friends into the apartment, which Frauke paid for, from the money she earned on her nightshifts. When she came home grueling, there were heroin addicts who cried at her, or young men who had flown out of their flat and were now looking for a place to stay.

Frauke never said no. Their partners disappeared sometime. One ended up in jail for drug trafficking, another attempted suicide and then had to change his social environment by official order.

Frauke was considered a good soul in the neighborhood, and anyone who thought he had problems (and wanted to save on therapy fees) came to her. A poly-toxic acquaintance put his bicycles with her, which he "wanted to pick up" immediately if he found an apartment, a "friend" unloaded her PC at Frauke. Frauke never said no.

The stragglers left their mark on Frauke's unconscious as well as in her apartment. The self-painted pictures of her ex-boyfriend with the alcohol problem were stored on her wardrobe, and next to this suitcase with winter coats of the Borderliner. He had left her overnight, but who knows, maybe one day he came back, and she knew how he reacted when someone went to his things.

Thus, most of her home became a museum for the legacies of her mentally problematic partners, and Frauke no longer knew whether the hate, fears, and nightmares that were rampant in her came from her own, or as transmissions from all of them who had dumped her mental and material garbage with her.

But she also had a mental health problem. She did not manage to set boundaries because she was afraid that she would not be loved anymore. Deep inside, she hoped that one of her "saved" ones would be grateful. This never happened.

If Frauke had thrown away the legacies of all those who had built up with her and, strengthened so, then she would have acknowledged that her help was not recognized, that she had given more than she got back.

So she suffocated in the illusions she had made herself. Moreover, the more she was abandoned, the more she attracted people who had problems - because she could take care of others' problems, she could.

She became aware of her own problem only when she met a completely different man. He did not carry any of his own mental baggage, but was shocked when he saw her apartment and told her, "You're a messie."

The blocked gifted
Achim diagnosed the doctors in the third grade a giftedness. That did not mean that his testimony consisted of ones. The teachers bored him, and he spent the hours reading his favorite books or drawing caricatures under the table.

He found no relation to his classmates. They considered him arrogant, he mentally restricted them. While playing football, he read Shakespeare - at 13 and 16 in English. He concentrated on his niches, and he wanted to know everything. The others heard Hip Hop, he heard Tchaikovsky, at 15 he built machines of Leonardo da Vinci and tried the painting techniques of the Renaissance. He was particularly fond of eighteenth-century English, and at the age of 16 he wrote notebooks full of sonnets, which, however, never read anyone but himself.
He despised the vile world around him and saw the school merely as a foil to make up stories. At college he thought he was in his element, but he could not decide. He started with classical archeology but thought he neglected his musical ambitions and studied music sociology. He discontinued both to indulge his medical interests, but he also did not spend much time studying medicine because literature was even closer to him. Even as a child, he had kept away from his classmates and was considered a nerd, and that did not change.

Even at the university, he found no connection. He hooked up in his two-room apartment, developed his own language based on Old French, wrote essays on misinterpretations of Goethe's Faust, and considered most of what he heard in lectures on his subjects so superficial that he did someday not going anymore.

Everyday life had always been a useless agony for him, and the things of this everyday life jammed between the collections of his intellectual activity: Old video recorders dusted over heaps of copies over parks of early modernism, the collected works of Goethe, which were no longer readable after he had left her lying on the windowsill in the rain, and banana peels withered away from manuscripts.

Achim developed a tremendous amount of creativity, always finding new corners where he could stow more books, first on the windowsills, then under the toilet bowl, and finally over the shower cubicle.

His parents did not come to his apartment anymore. "Not until you've cleaned up," said his mother.
But where would he start, he wondered as he gazed into his dirty mirror, which was nothing more than a large shard hanging from a plastic cable over the splash-painted sink?

Now Achim was 34, and to "demystify" would have meant admitting to himself that he had not become a professor, but had officially started four courses of study, but had no training or job. Admitting this would have freed him from his fantasies about his grandiosity, but the road to reality would be difficult.

The princess
Miriam was the only child in the family, and her mother coddled her. Miriam had most Barbie dolls in her class, always the latest bike and the latest smartphone - before she made a wish, her mother had already met him. In her room, plastic horses, toy kitchens, and talking dolls jammed so that there was no room on the shelves.

Her mother had received little attention herself, the daughter should not be so.

Miriam became increasingly aggressive when she did not get something, and she was not popular in her class. Other girls came to play with her, but they were primarily interested in Miriam's toys - not her.

On a mountain of everything girls see in advertising, Miriam sat there alone, her parents serving her, but she did not have real friends the same age.

Her parents later also doted on her when she had her own apartment, and Miriam had learned to buy "her luck". When she felt lonely, and that was common, she went shopping. In her corridor she tripped over dozens of shoes, some of which were still in the boxes because the woman had never taken them off, in her wardrobe hung costume on costume, and in the bathroom piled the perfume bottles on the floor.

Miriam's apartment looked like the store of a clothing store, but if she'd given away one of the dresses she'd never worn, she'd have felt smaller-more normal. Miriam was in her late thirties, but every weekend her mother came by, as ever, and cleared the apartment for her daughter.

Nobody ever invited Miriam anymore. She was afraid someone would discover how lonely she was.

Messies versus collectors

Messies collect items, but collectors are not automatically messies, even if they are acting on their fellow human beings, like someone who has a whimsy.

The key difference between eccentric collectors and messies is that collectors know the value of their collected objects, regardless of whether others consider them valuable.
For example, anyone who has elephant sculptures in every possible or impossible place, looks for them at flea markets and long-distance travel, and gives them absolute priority over "unimportant things" such as coffee machines or indoor plants, divides value and worthlessness - whether others share the benchmark irrelevant.

Messies in relationships

Affected individuals find it difficult to enter into relationships; they do not necessarily live like in a monastery. A young woman suffering from the syndrome acted promiscuously for several years prior to her marriage; sometimes she had intercourse with two different men in one night - her sexual partners collected them as indiscriminately as objects.

However, she never left any of her bedfellows in her apartment; her parents did not see the mess until she had to move, and her mother said, "What am I supposed to do? Her nursery looked just like that. "

In a serious relationship, the hidden problem becomes clear. The Messie has done everything before to conceal his disturbance: He closed the curtains, received no visit, and he made excuses when a new acquaintance wanted to come by him. He met in the cafe or in the pub.

Whether and how a relationship develops with a person depends on the partner and the degree of the disorder. If the problem is weak, the patient is insightful and the partner is ready to help, then both can work together to make a plan. The partner supports the Messie in what he can not do: arrange things and throw them away.

At best, trust in the relationship overshadows emotional attachment to things, and it is easier for those affected to throw them away. The partner could also exist on separate spheres and limit the littering by clearing the conglomeration of kitchen, bathroom and common bedroom - the Messie's space is thus limited to its most private area.

There are problems with children. Often without wanting to set the Messiemutter / Messievater the nursery so full that the children have no room to unfold, yes, often lacks the space for elementary tasks: The children's desk is full of grandfather's photo albums, in the closet old towels. The children can not get their toys and they can not invite playmates because the parents are ashamed. Such experiences have a traumatic effect; Therapy is urgently needed and the youth welfare office must help.

Diseased behave very differently to their relatives when it comes to the garbage in the apartment: that's enough of the father who takes most of the apartment, and threatens his son, if this makes him aware of it to the daughter who gently but successfully displaces the elderly parents into the bedroom and the mother, who breaks out into howling cramps every time her father and children tell her that things can not go on like this.

therapy

A behavioral therapy helps to get the disorder under control. While the inner chaos does not dissipate the inner, the causes of compulsive gathering emerge more clearly. In behavioral therapy, for example, the person concerned learns to create and adhere to daily plans. More important, however, is to go to his apartment with the Messie, allow the fear, then throw things away with him and then talk to him about how he feels now.

Behavioral therapy can help sufferers. Image: Hetizia - fotolia

However, if the Messie manages to sort things, to sort them out and throw them away, he is still far from being cured.

In no case should the therapist morally admonish patients. Those affected are ashamed of their behavior and are often very grateful when a witness recognizes them for doing away with things. Even the smallest successes deserve to be appreciated. As with any behavioral therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is all about recognizing and enduring the compulsion, for example, by changing perspectives, allowing the individual to see himself from a distance.

To put it bluntly, the therapist and patient walk past a bullock pile, and the Messie recognizes his urge to take things that are "still needed" with him. Or a friend of the sufferer makes flea market with him, without coming back with more stuff than they have sold. The fears are not repressed, but allowed.

Trust and respect are important to these patients, as well as a touch of humor. They are often good-natured people, do not use violence against others, and rarely hate the therapist. But they are ashamed. That's why it's important to show them that they have a weakness but are valuable people at the same time.

For most people, it is also essential to promote their self-confidence and self-esteem. Even naked in the desert, without any possessions, they are still themselves and have the right to a beautiful life - that's the motto.

With the necessary confidence in the therapist, both can try to leave the comfort zone, for example, by camping in the wilderness for a weekend, without the collections being within reach, so the Messie learns to find support in himself.

Far more important than throwing away things is sorting; Sorting material items is not possible without mental classification. The affected person thus develops a feeling for why things are important to him.

It is elementary, however, not to discriminate the person concerned. He is neither lazy nor antisocial, as the images of lousy dwellings suggest, but has problems distinguishing himself. It's about integrating it, not about excluding it. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)