Is There a Cleansing & Clarity Solution?

Potentially a magically immersive way to heal from hoarding.

Hoarding is starting to be a little better understood these days.

But to people suffering from this very specific affliction, it can be very embarrassing, life-limiting; it can lead to feelings of supremely low self-esteem. Clients are often disgusted with themselves, ashamed, overwhelmed, and basically all the feelings that are involved in making someone feel like they have lost all sense of hope. And it may be that they have become a loner, because people who are hoarding are often so ashamed that nobody is allowed to come to their home, and slowly they have become isolated or cut off from others.

Then there are the hoarders that have family and friends, and get to enjoy the constant criticism, nagging, or misplaced, well-meaning encouragement.

‘Why don’t you just…’
‘How about you just try…’
‘But I can’t understand why you just don’t…’
‘I know. Just get out the garbage bags and make a start.’

Amazing! Why didn’t you just think of that for yourself? It seems so simple to the bystander.

But hoarding stems from some kind of trauma. So there are subconscious reasons why you can buy black bin bags, and cleaning products, and brand new empty boxes, and just never use them. So those things in themselves become part of the hoarding. When the hoarding reaches a certain level, you just stop picking up things altogether, even sweeping loose dust, dirt, something dropped a year ago, because even to pick up one tiny thing feels terribly hard. And if you do pick up that one thing, what’s the point? There is so much other stuff, that the one tiny thing that everybody tells you to just start with, just won’t make a blind bit of difference. You are in full-on overwhelm. Freeze mode.

And then, before you know it, the house itself starts falling down around your ears. Things break down, rot, leak, burst, disintegrate. It’s too embarrassing to have repairmen call round. The critters and the bacteria move in and start breeding. You can’t find anything. The house feels like it’s playing tricks on you. Your mind feels like it’s not your own anymore because you can’t think straight, and all of that confusion makes it even harder to contemplate making a start to clear anything out. Because your thoughts are all muddled up and confused, just as much as your living space. And it all feels so terribly, terribly hard. And then you start to feel like you don’t deserve anything better, because look what you’ve done to yourself.

And you’re scared to death who might find out, or who might report you, and what you might lose. If you have animals, will someone take them away? So you start living in abject fear, too. Because hoarding can also be about not being able to handle having any more loss in your life. Even if the loss in question just happens to be a bunch of rubbish you’ve been accumulating for years, or some loose dirt that somebody else would just take the dust pan and brush to without a second thought. This is what people can find hard to understand.

Because hoarders are normal people who would never, given the right set of circumstances, have ever done this to themselves in the first place. They will often be very tidy and organised in their place of employment. Often nobody will suspect a thing at all. And that in itself is another fear, because they desperately want to hang onto this secret, and the smidgen of respect and good public-standing that they have. So it makes it very hard to ask for help. Because it would be to lose the last of themselves they have control over.

There Should Be No Shame Attached to Hoarding

So back to the origins; hoarding is about something that happened to you, an experience in your personal timeline that rocked you to the core, or happened over decades. I don’t believe anybody that hoards, if hooked up to a polygraph test, would truly say that they liked living that way. That it was a choice. Hoarding is an affliction. It’s a result of a deep devastation.

A dog laid outside a blue building; he's wearing 'the cone of shame' — **Hoarding can feel like wearing the cone of shame in your own home.**

I have had personal experience of working with a client for hoarding. And it was a very severe case, not just of the level of possessions, but the hazardous state of cleanliness and safety, and that person had suffered a lifetime of the most severe abuse and personal hurt, grief, lost opportunities, that you could imagine, stemming right back all the way through their upbringing and right through to finally losing her parents when she was in her 50s. And by that time, a lot of damage had been done. And deeply ingrained, harmful beliefs installed.

As a result of this, and it will hold true for other people, there are often a lot of mixed emotions about letting go of possessions that have belonged to those you have lost. Sometimes it will be impossible to let these go. Even if traumatic memories are attached to them. And this was the case for my client. She had a deep sense of responsibility to holding up her parents’ expectations of her, long after they had died. And this stemmed from how she had been conditioned.

Many people will have suffered through a version of this. And all of that stuff becomes like a protective device. It is both your jailor and your protector. Traumatised people can hide behind stuff. Not be seen. Not be hurt again if they can’t be found in the first place. That is why picking up ‘the one thing’ is impossible, because it would make them feel exposed. In danger even. To remove that one thing would, for all intents and purposes, trigger a PTSD-like response. That thing would have to be replaced, so why get rid of it? The compulsion to replace anything removed would be irresistible.

So hoarding can have ties to grief, wounding, self-preservation, survival. None of these are small things. And it is very important to uncover the reason why the hoarding started. Because somebody could go into a hoarder’s home, do a total overhaul, leave it spotless and organised to the minutest detail, and the hoarder, with none of the underlying issues addressed, would simply start hoarding again immediately. Because that spotless home would leave them feeling too exposed.

A hoarder will not just hoard in their home, but also in their car and on their devices, too. Their phone storage and computer/iPad etc, will probably be full to bursting. Hoarding can happen in every aspect of their lives. Anywhere there is an opportunity. Any space is better off filled. Almost like leaving no room for surprises to happen.

Remember, your mind likes what is familiar. To someone who has been traumatised, that ‘stuff’ that hides them is familiar and safe. So it’s a belief that needs to be deconstructed.

And luckily we can. And it can feel gentle. From the lived experience of one of my clients, I am very pleased and proud to say that after 2 sessions of RTT (up to the time of writing), and one instance of the Rewind Technique, (to recover from an immediate external threat to her physical safety), she has, and is, making astounding progress. And really, we approached it in quite a tentative way, because we knew on a conscious level that we could not expose too much of the subconscious memories straight away, for it would be too much information to process at one time.

Hoarding is Heartbreaking

But after treatment it can honestly be like you’re suddenly talking about a different person. Things can move so far and so fast. And it is a testament to both the strength of the individual client and the magic of getting the subconscious mind on board.

My client had a skip at her home as this is blog post was written. Cleaning, taking things to the charity shop, to the recycling centre, having workmen in to quote for repairs, making plans and dreams, and really feeling good about it. There is an eagerness to finish the job now it has been started, and to choose paint and pictures, and have a real haven for the first time in their life.

For most people who hoard, their level of trauma will not be anything like my first client experience of hoarding, but it will be no less important to resolve. The client described in this article needed to do this in a way that felt manageable to her, and on her terms, given that in the past, there had been a lack of permission to have normal human freedoms . And for her, some of the problem was that healing meant having to acknowledge what had been done to her, by those whose job it was to love and nurture, and give wings to her dreams, goals, and aspirations. None of which she had received.

So there can be some initial guilt and unwillingness to allocate blame; some self-directed anger. All of which can be addressed with hypnosis. And it is helpful to do it subconsciously so that both client and therapist are protected from conscious forms of anger.

scrabble letters spelling discombobulated — **The chaos in your mind extends to your home. Heal one and heal the other.**

And it is important that dedicated support is available. Because the client may initially feel very exposed. And that is a new concept. Remember that hoarding is often an extreme protective device.

In more conscious forms of therapy, some of those aspects of the mind that have gone unheard and suppressed for a long time can be very angry once revealed. Trauma can feel very much like multiple personality disorder to some people. It’s very scary and lonely without help. You can feel like you are going mad.

Of course, all of this depends on the client’s individual trauma, and their responses to it. But it’s important to understand that recovery can feel like a mountain to climb before you actually make a start, but it is highly achievable with a level of willingness to be helped and to want a different life.

Hoarding is probably not going to be a one-session therapy and it is important to tailor the treatment plan to the invidividual.

The Added Coaching is What Will Elevate Your Progress

Through my experience, my instinct says that most hoarding clients will need an excellent level of emotional support. Especially if they have no-one in their lives right now. So I would consider a mixed program of hypnosis techniques and my usual, thorough, back-up support package.

I know with 100 percent surety that Rapid Transformational Therapy with me is effective at treating hoarding in a permanent way. I have seen the results for myself.

With RTT more specifically, it can reveal and extract the root cause, reframe the belief, and install some very wonderful, miraculous, and inspiring words in the client’s personal recording, all geared around being motivated and safe to clean, clear, sort, process. To feel it’s manageable. To enjoy the experience and have a sense of personal pride in it. To understand that what happened back then is not the case now. That the life they want to live (which I ask them about in detail), is available to them. That they can move on safely. To feel a sense of determination, etc.

Whatever I feel will work best in the individual circumstances, and using structured hypnotic language that will appeal to the client’s interests, too. We can install a cheerleader, a superhero, a best friend who motivates and loves them if necessary. Words are my thing!

If you or your loved one want to be helped out of the current painful and limiting existence, there definitely is a pathway.

My first hoarding client recovered sufficiently to take on the task of doing all the work to clear and clean her house by herself. Her response was nothing short of incredible. But where she excelled is that she committed to this process. Which is crucial. She trusted that if she stuck with it, it would work.

I Can Be Trusted Not to Give Up On You

I’m a bit tenacious when I’m on your side! But what you need to know is that this work is entirely achievable. And client lives will change in terms of confidence, connection, clarity of the future, and a desire to live a whole and wonderful life.

You can book a free, no obligation discovery call now, safe in the knowledge that hypnotherapy for hoarding can move mountains physically and emotionally. And that change lasts forever. Developing lifelong skills to beat hoarding for good. Never going back to the way things were.

When you book the call we can discuss your needs, how fast you want to move, what you can afford, and what you can expect to experience.

After any appointment with me there is email and message support provided. You are never left hanging or uncertain. And it’s important for you to be reassured that it won’t be that the moment you have hypnosis, you will be expected to suddenly just jump to it and start throwing out all that has accumulated. It’s not as scary as that. You will feel the natural urge to make a start once the process is bedding into your subconscious. And that is different for everyone. So don’t worry about the how and when; there is no pressure to comply or deadlines. This is on your terms. It will feel organic and almost magical to you to make a start. Nobody is going to browbeat or guilt anybody into doing this.

And actually, this isn’t even about whether you personally clean and sort out your house, or you feel energised and motivated to hire someone to do it on your behalf. The logistics are all on your terms. I don’t even need to see what condition your house is in, unless you want to share that with me. We work to the outcome you decide. I can add in elements that dictate how your subconscious mind will handle that. All of this process is within your control, and you will feel nurtured throughout.

That first hoarding client of mine described the experience as having the window cracked open in her mind and allowing all the hope and the sunlight in. Basically, you will feel like you can breathe again and come up with a plan.

And I am there every step for pep-talks, talking you down or talking you up! Whichever is necessary. We can either choose to work on finding out why you hoard and reframe and rewire your thoughts (RTT approach) or simply and cleverly, direct your subconsious mind to just resolve the problem without knowing the reason for it. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine for the past to remain the past. We can discuss together how you want to approach it.

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About Me

Hello, I’m Anne-Marie. I am a RTT Practitioner, Romance Author, Championship Dog Show Judge.

I have a lot going on! But my primary focus is helping people achieve their personal and professional goals, whatever they may be. If you’re struggling, I am the kind of person you want in your corner.

Click here to book your free discovery call now

Hoarding Uncovered!

Is There a Cleansing & Clarity Solution?