This Christmas, I am visiting my parents. I'm afraid one of them is showing hoarding style behavior

A relative of mine has hoarding type behavior. Can I do something to help and support them?

This Christmas, I'm going back to my parents. I am close to them and I love them very much. I just heard from one of my parents that the other has bought another freezer. My parents already have several freezers in their house, all filled to the point that you can't really open them easily. It's a small terraced house, and it's just my parents who live there.

My parent also keeps a lot of other things, and filled the house with little ones. trinkets and furniture. It makes them happy to go shopping (they also get them cheap), but there is really no more room in the house for anything. Both parents are elderly, and although they are in good health at the moment, I don't know how they can continue to live in this situation.

I don't don't really know what, if anything, I can do about it, because I've never really talked about it with the parent doing it. Every time I tried they casually rejected it. I don't want to hurt or upset them by raising the issue or digging deeper, and I also find it quite painful to think about it. I've spoken to my other parent (just along the lines of what I said here) but never really anyone else.

I feel just a little uncomfortable loss. Practically, I want to do something to help and support my relative, but I don't know how.

Eleanor says: It is important for me to note that I am not a therapist and that anything I write cannot replace professional help. Only a professional would be able to place your parents' behaviors on the spectrum of complicated relationships with physical things. It's a pretty broad spectrum, from serious health and hygiene risks, to cases where there's not necessarily an overwhelming amount of stuff, but there's something disturbing about how upsetting it seems to throw anything away.

However, getting people to find this professional help can be very difficult. It can be very difficult to ask people to confront their relationship to things.

I think it's very moving that your question is about how to help and support, rather than how to remove the stuff. Many bystanders of compulsive object relationships may make the (well-intentioned) mistake of thinking that the first step is to get rid of things. But one of the most consistent pieces of advice available to loved ones is don't just throw things away. Someone who doesn't have an ordinary relationship with things won't have an ordinary relationship with throwing them away. Think about whatever you treasure the most - a teddy bear, a photo, a gift from someone now gone, and think about how you would react if someone threw it away "for your own good". Not good.

Instead, it can be helpful to keep in mind the real thing you want to help your parent get away from: it's not just things, but whatever causes them. the need to acquire and retain. There can be a lot of fear associated with this need – a fear of deprivation (especially since you're talking about food; it's common for people who grew up with disorders to store food); a fear that they will forget something important unless they have the items; or simply a fear of the passage of time, which this behavior helps to alleviate.

Whatever the cause, it is what professional assistance will focus on. It is natural, when helping a loved one through a compulsion, to focus on the behavior, since that is what we see and what afflicts us. But if the deep need remains intact, the other person may end up feeling the need for comfort just as much as they always have; but now also hyper-observed, and without release.

If you can gently nudge your parent toward professional help, I will. However, I recognize that it would take time and, depending on where you live, money, as well as a drastic act of persuasion. So maybe you could also try to make these things meaningful instead of upsetting first. Ask nicely, under the guise of really wanting to know more: "How come you like having so many...