Main point: Hoarding is a trauma response. Letting go of your physical baggage helps you heal emotionally.
“A messy room equals a messy mind.” Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
The reverse of that is also true: a messy mind creates a messy space.
Hoarding is a trauma response. Every human hoards to some degree, because every human is traumatized to some degree. Clutter so common that there are many popular TV shows and books that teach you how to be organized. But the issue goes beyond organization and cleanliness. Physical baggage is a symptom of deeper, subconscious baggage.
The purpose of this article is to bring to your awareness what drives hoarding behavior, to help you recognize it as a symptom of historical trauma, and to offer affirmations to help you release unwanted baggage.
Change begins with awareness. If you work on healing your trauma psychologically, you’ll start to get rid of old stuff that you no longer need. The reverse is also true: if you start cleaning out stuff you don’t need, the clean space allows mental clarity and compels you to let go of baggage in other aspects of your life.
What does it mean to “hoard”?
There are different degrees of hoarding, so it’s helpful to have a shared definition. Hoarding is collecting stuff you don’t currently use that sit in your living space of which you have difficulty letting go. Over time, you accumulate more stuff without getting rid of existing stuff.
The difference between “collecting” and “hoarding” is not the act, but the result. Hoarding is when you continue to collect past the point of feeling joy being with said stuff, past the point where that stuff contributes positive value to your life. If there’s empty space, you feel the need to fill it with stuff, and it’s hard to stop.
For our grandparents, hoarding looked like collecting plastic bags, old newspaper and magazine, glass jars, miscellaneous broken household items that they’ll fix someday. They hoard the remains of things that have passed their primary usefulness, like empty aluminum cookie containers. To them, it’s wasteful to throw away something if you can reuse it in some way in the undefined future.
Our parents stash plastic bags, old newspapers, magazines, textbooks, blankets and sheets, clothing and accessories from thrift stores and garage sales. They save sample cosmetics and hotel toiletries. They collect as if to rebuild a home in case they lose everything, which actually happened to their generation. They bulk mail everyday items (like SPAM) back to relatives in Vietnam in big cardboard boxes. Each flight back home carries the maximum number of boxes at its weight limit, secured with duct tape, complete with sturdy handles made from said tape. Because they collect for their nuclear family and extended family, finding a good deal is important. A $5 coat from the thrift store, a slightly crooked office chair in front of someone’s lawn with a “free” sign, pens from a career fair. Their house becomes a warehouse of everyday goods in case somebody in their wide network needs it.
For our generation, we shop clearance sales and buy household goods in bulk. We stash up on things we think are cute or cool, mostly things that we think will raise our social standing and help us gain approval and admiration from others: beauty products of all kinds, brand name clothing and shoes, trendy tech toys, home and kitchen gadgets. Sometimes we let our possessions define our worth and evaluate others’ worth by their possessions.
Hoarding is necessary
There’s logic and necessity to hoarding. Since prehistoric times, the act of collecting and storing supplies is necessary in order to survive and thrive. All species do it. Think pickling and salting food for preservation, the invention of the refrigerator and closets and treasure chests.
Collecting things give us a sense of safety. There’s security in stocking things away for a rainy day. Even if you don’t need a specific item right now, you might need it in a future scenario. It’s better to have it in case you need it than to be left helpless when you’re in trouble. That was true for cavemen who saved beaver fur when the season turned cold. It was true for our parents when they fled war. Having what you need in crisis literally meant life or death.
Most people, including our generation, don’t think they have a hoarding problem. They see all the stuff they collect in their house as normal and justified.
This justification is exaggerated for traumatized people. Being destitute, powerless, in crisis mode has been all too familiar for the human race, and especially in recent history for our Viet people. We lived through foreign invasion, colonization, war, displacement, poverty, resettlement, and structural racism. We hoard as a form of insurance against social and political disaster.
When hoarding becomes a problem
Hoarding becomes a problem when you can’t stop, when you have so much stuff it buries your well-being.
Because the items collected aren’t used, you forget that you have them. There’s so much that it’s hard to organize, so it just slowly piles up in random places, slowly sliding from order to chaos. Once the closets are filled, then it’s in the basement, on the dining table, under the table, on the chairs, under the bed, behind doors, next to a piece of furniture, or just stacked against the wall. This means you can’t find things when you actually need them. It’s easier and cheaper just to order something instead of digging through your collection, which means your collection grows.
Eventually space and furniture can’t be used for their primary purpose. The dining table and chairs become a makeshift shelf. An extra bedroom becomes a giant storage cage. The part of your bed that you don’t lie on becomes a busy table top. Over the years, there’s only enough room to walk and sit in a designated spot. Every other cubic inch is used for storage.
Unused things lose value and utility over time. They collect dust. Chemical products expire, sometimes for years before they’re rediscovered. Some items deteriorate, like the once-elastic waistband on a pair of joggers. In my grandma’s house in Viet Nam, old cooking pots and pans stored under a bed rusted over the course of many monsoon seasons. Chickens, spiders, dogs, cats, sometimes mice made their homes under there.
Eventually, you’re living with junk. You feel suffocated in the space, like your stuff is taking over clean air, sunshine, beauty, style, your freedom of expression and movement. You walk into a cluttered living space and your energy level plummets. You can’t think with clarity and creativity. You don’t feel proud of your space. You feel burdened physically, mentally, emotionally by your baggage.
Here’s a quick way to gauge if your stuff affects you negatively. Ask yourself:
- Do I feel more energetic walking into my space?
- Am I able to think clearly and creatively in my space?
- Do I feel good, light spirited, and at peace in my space?
- Is my space the place I go to for inspiration and problem solving?
- Am I proud of my space? Proud enough to invite over someone who I want to impress? Proud enough to take a picture of my space as-is and post it online?
If you answer “no” to one of these questions, then the energy in your space can improve in terms of making you feel good. A sign that the current energy drags you down is that you feel bogged down walking into it. Your thoughts get “stuck”, you can’t focus and be productive in your space. Your space makes you irritable, or ashamed, lethargic and lazy, or zaps the motivation out of you.
The mental health aspect of hoarding
Hoarding is subconsciously driven by a desire for safety and abundance. Like a bird gathering branches to build a nest for her family, we feel justified collecting stuff to stash away. It seems like a constructive behavior – the more, the better. This drive is natural and necessary for survival and thriving.
It crosses the line between normal and unhealthy when hoarding behavior acts as if there is always scarcity and danger, so you over-collect. Your brain is always freaking out as if you’ll die without your stuff. You collect with diligence and you fervently guard your stuff against family members who want to declutter.
Shopping, how it begins, is a fun distraction to cope with inner turmoil or emptiness. If we sit with our thoughts and feelings, old trauma come up. So we look for something fun to distract us when we’re not ready to face our difficult feelings. Shopping to your house is like overeating to your body. It works to compensate for feelings of not being good enough, looking to materialistic possessions and status symbols to make up for low self-worth. It gives us something to do, a sense of busy-ness, to compensate for inner emptiness. Sales are easy victories, you feel like you found a deal, even if that thing adds little value for your life quality.
For our people, over-collecting is an intergenerational trauma response that not only has been learned from the previous generation, but has been reinforced by new crises that happen to every generation, from foreign invasion to colonialism to war and displacement. This pattern has been reinforced for thousands of years. It takes time to re-program our neuro pathways. Be kind to yourself and your family.
Holding onto your stuff is holding onto your wounds.
Angelina Tram Nguyen
There’s also an element of seeking external validation. That can look like hoarding a big quantity, believing that stuff boost your worth and that more is better. It can look like spending an unreasonable percentage of your income on a social status badge, buying something just for its brand name. It could be spending on beauty and weight loss products that promise to make you look more attractive according to an unrealistic and/or racist definition of beauty. It can look like buying anything that’s marketed to make you feel like you get a boost in social popularity, admiration, status, and respect when you possess it. We know the marketing bs, but we still crave the initial high of owning more things and more expensive things.
Having a hard time letting go of unused stuff, or accumulating at a faster pace than letting go, is indicative of not being able to let go of inner turmoil that drive us to accumulate in the first place: self-hate, anxiety, doubt, fear, insecurity, envy, hate, anger, guilt, hurt, trauma, you name it. Over-collecting stuff is a common way we put a band-aid on our inner wounds. It’s a short-term solution that doesn’t fix the problem. Over time, you end up with a lot of stuff and the same unhealed wounds that drive you to collect more.
Just as your emotional wound is a barrier to forging and maintaining healthy connection with others, so is your stuff. It’s an easy mistake to overvalue stuff over people and relationships. This can look like judging others’ worth based on what stuff they have and don’t have. It also means judging your own worth by the same metric, and forming relationships based on stuff rather than soul. This can also look like losing your shit if your stuff is threatened. I’ve seen family members who will readily attack their spouse and children in order to protect their junk. They get defensive, and offensive, if you question the necessity of their collection, if you touch it, move it, or take it.
Holding onto your stuff is holding onto your wounds. Your stuff serves as your pacifier, your crutch, your band-aid, but you’re still hurting. Your stuff impedes your healing progress. It keeps you stuck in place emotionally. It distracts you from the real problems in your life. A cluttered room blocks your ability to think clearly. It drags down your mood. It’s harder to feel better when you come home. It weighs you down, literally and metaphorically, physically and emotionally.
Healing is letting go of your baggage
When you unload emotional baggage, you feel the need to get rid of physical baggage associated with that emotional experience. Breaking free from a dysfunctional relationship prompts you to get rid of clothes, letters, photos, items associated with that relationship. You are relieved emotionally, and your room feels airier and cleaner. It works the same way with any type of trauma, including historical trauma that your conscious mind doesn’t remember.
Healing also works in the opposite order. Sometimes you feel compelled to clean your room or closet first, and as you get rid of items that no longer serve you, you feel better, like there’s closure to an old chapter, and it frees you to transform emotionally. A bout of cleaning compels another bout soon after, which in turn gives your emotional cleaning acceleration and clarity.
Being able to let go of physical baggage requires believing some fundamental affirmations, consciously or unconsciously. These affirmations are the truth, even if sometimes you can’t see or feel that they are. When you feel lost or not sure how to begin to let go, remember the following:
You are inherently good enough. You don’t need external things to give you worth. Things on the outside can’t fill you on the inside. Holding onto them, especially if you come to associate feelings of insufficiency with them, only bog you down. You already have inherent value and nothing can change that truth.
The world is a safe and abundant place. It can hard to believe this when our parents and ancestors experienced the opposite, and they passed their belief of insecurity to us subconsciously. Our generation is blessed to grow up in a time of peace. We are blessed to have much more than our parents did. For us, the world is safe and abundant. We don’t have to hoard as if disaster is around the corner.
Don’t look for things to get rid of, because it triggers a sense of loss. Instead look for things to keep, based on one criterion: does it bring you joy right now in your life? Not that it used to be useful in the past or that it holds a fond memory. Not that it may be useful in the future. Does it bring you joy right now? (Credit to Marie Kondo for this one)
Among the billions of people on this planet, someone else can make use of the items you don’t need right now. By holding it in your possession without using it, someone else is losing the opportunity to enjoy its usefulness.
Clutter interferes with your ability to focus, to be creative, to problem-solve, to get in a happier mood. Allow room in your space for free flow, literally and metaphorically. Your happiness and growth is worth way more than physical stuff.
Letting go of physical baggage naturally leads to letting go of emotional baggage: resentment, bitterness, anger, hate, hurt, guilt, blame. It allows you to grieve. Hanging on to physical baggage requires your mind and emotional state to be in fear in order to justify hoarding. Letting go of physical baggage requires you to release your fear, slowly and gently, and come to trust that you’ll be okay. No need to brace yourself for hurt. No need to prepare for and anticipate crisis. You will be able to get what you need easily when you need it.
Discard first, then organize. Don’t hold on to the bulk of your stuff and store it away neatly. That’s holding on to your baggage. Your space will still feel bogged down even if your junk is organized. Let it go. Only keep what you need and like.
Remember that letting it go doesn’t mean “waste”. The thing you’re letting go has served its usefulness to you, even if its usefulness was to bring you joy for a second when you bought it. Even if you’ve never touched it since you brought it home, with its tag still attached, it has served its use in your life. Donate it so someone else can find usefulness and joy.
Each time you let go of one thing, tell yourself that you’re clearing space to welcome new opportunities into your life. Clearing out physical junk is making space for orderliness, beauty, freshness, and style in your home. Clearing out emotional baggage is making space for growth, fulfillment, and happiness in your soul.
Be kind to yourself. This baggage is painful to deal with. Lean into it gently but persistently. Don’t expect things to change abruptly over night.
When you feel the need to buy, or accept a donation, or bring something into your life, ask yourself why. Are you doing it out of fear and insecurity, including fear of displeasing others? If so, don’t bring it home. Are you doing it out of joy and self-love, with a willingness and a clear idea of when to let go once it has served this purpose? If yes, then bring it into your life.
Only you can let go of your own baggage. No one else can do it for you, and you can’t do it for someone else. It’s easy to see clutter in someone else’s house and see how it interferes with energy flow and well-being. It’s also easy to be blind to your own clutter, or think that your clutter is nowhere near as bad. It can be tempting to clear out someone’s clutter for them before they’re ready, especially if they’re not ready. I remember my aunts taking turn to devise plans to throw out junk in my grandma’s house. Grandma was furious and ended up replacing old junk with new junk.
Everyone decides to let go at their own pace when they’re ready. Clear out your baggage as you’re ready, and let others do the same.
P.S. Marie Kondo has spent a great deal of time thinking about decluttering. She went through trials and errors of various approaches to tidying. Her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, promises to change your life by helping you overhaul your personal space, which will in turn clear mental space for you to examine your life. If you’re looking for step-by-step guidance on how to approach letting go of your physical clutter, I summarized key takeaways of her approach.