Thursday, April 26, 2012

Bay Area Hoarding And Cluttering Conference Opens

May the Bay Area hoarding and cluttering conference begin!

Competitive games feature quick decision-making as a key component. Hoarding's hallmark, however, is an inability to decide (I know I suffer from the mail-sorting issue mentioned below).

I wonder if there is a way to turn hoarding into a competitive game? (It would be the strangest competitive game ever!) Hoarding can be a part of a competitive game (like the Hoard by the Lake in "The Hunger Games") Can hoarding ever be MORE, though?:
Mathews has performed brain imaging scans on hoarders that show abnormalities in parts of the brain associated with decision making and categorization. Anomalies have also appeared in the parts of the brain associated with error processing, which may explain why so many hoarders hate throwing away items for fear that they'll regret the decision later, Mathews said. She is presenting her brain imaging studies at the conference Thursday.

Dr. Mason Turner, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser San Francisco and acting president of the Mental Health Association Board of Directors, said he's treated people who had problems simply sorting through a pile of mail.

"I might go through my mail and say, 'This is trash, this is a bill.' They will have a hard time deciding what's important and what's not," Turner said.

It's not unusual for hoarders to spread their collections into multiple apartments or homes. Turner said he's seen homeless hoarders who will use cash to rent lockers instead of pay for food - and he's treated people who owned three or four houses to hold all of their stuff.

...She prefers not to call herself a hoarder because of the negative connotations with the word.

"I usually tell people I'm a recovering over-collector," she said.

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