Health and Psychology

A friend of mine confessed that he had difficulty deleting text messages.  I have a 90% full voice mail that I deleted down to 25% full, while I was texting him.  Yes, it's possible to hoard technology snippets.

Hoarding is the excessive collection of items and the inability to discard them.  Information hoarders hoard technology and paper.  In some cases it may be a symptom of obcessive compulsive disorder.  But in some cases, people that hoard don't have other symptoms of OCD.

People hoard things they think will be important in the future, or have value either financially or emotionally.  It's difficult for them to sort things and their lives become cluttered and hard to manage.  There's a strong genetic component to hoarding.  Hoarding isn't the same as collecting.  Collectors keep specific items in a category and it doesn't take over their lives.  Hoarding spreads from the table, to the counter, to the rooms, to the garage, to the yard, and pushes out relationships with other people.  It's hard for hoarders to let others touch their items or share their items.  They may feel embarassed or ashamed about the clutter and disorganization involved in hoarding.

The main diagnostic tools to assess hoarding are a full psychological evaluation.  There is no formal diagnosis of hoarding but it's considered a problem when these characteristics are present:

• Acquisition of a large number of possessions that others would consider useless, along with an inability to discard them
• Having an overly cluttered home or living spaces — so cluttered that living spaces can't be used as intended, such as not being able to sleep in your bed, walk safely through your house, use your furniture, take a bath in your tub, or prepare food in your kitchen
• Having significant distress over your hoarding or difficulty accomplishing your daily activities, or feeling embarassed or ashamed about the hoarding behavior