Hoarding disorder

..worth reading

I'm suffering from what psychologist called as "Hoarding Disorder."

It means that, it is hard for me to let go the old and personal stuff of mine.

Having this kind of mental disorder as part of my life is really challenging. I will keep on hoarding things that are no longer useful for me, and stack it more and more in my room.

(and I'm afraid that it runs in the family)

One of the criteria of having this Hoarding Disorder is the inability to let go the things that I don't need anymore.

It means, whenever I want to throw it away, I will keep on thinking, "It will be useful in the future," which turns out as just another lie to keep my mind at peace, and to to be able to keep it, along with the other useless stuff in the room.

It is really hard for me throw things away, even though I want to.

( when it's getting severe, it can become like this :https://www.facebook.com/litefm.com.my/videos/1485623031456479/?hc_ref=SEARCH )

My housemates when I lived in UK, knows this. They all realised it. Although I have the largest room in the house, it seems that I'm the one with the smallest space to move, because of my items. What made it worse, after I graduated from Nottingham, I brought most of my stuff with me, back to Malaysia.

:(

The photos shown in this post is some of the stacked items in my room. Those are the items that I have acquired during my time for this late 6 years, and majority of them were from my study in UK, on which I have been struggling to clear it away. Although I really want to, I cannot do it.

Whenever I go through all of the items, to choose which to throw away, I ended just just organising it just the way it already is. I was only able to throw probably about 10%, which is not really that much.

I'm admitting this condition of mine not to be proud of it, but to show everyone that mental health is important as any kind of physical health.

Just because it doesn't show on our physical skin, doesn't mean that it is not there.

Study shows that about 30% of Malaysian are affected by depression, and those are exclusive of other kind of mental disorder.

OCD, Narcissism, Sociopathy, Bipolar, etc.

A lot of mental disorder are "available" out there, and I'm quite sure that Malaysian, just like any other people in other countries, are prone to have this disorder.

The question is,

How do we know that we have it?
Then, how do we get the treatment for it?
Even so, do we want to treat from it?

Take this Hoarding Disorder as an example.

The person who has it, one of the challenges is that they will never admit that they have it. They don't see it as a problem or a disorder, but only see it as "keeping items for sentimental value" or "sayang la kalau buang, nanti ada guna".

But I'm a bit happy that me as one of the person who have the disorder, I was able to admit that I have it, because I realised of the symptoms. Probably because I studied human psychology, so that helps a lot for me to understand this.

But what about the people out there?
How will they know about this?

The answer lies in our education system.

Just as much as we educate our generation to understand a bit about cough, fever or what not, we should educate them about mental health awareness as well.

And the first step being us to learn about it first.

Right now, although I'm struggling with the condition, slowly, I'm admitting and working towards fighting it.

I already started to differentiate what is needed and what is "needed", and I'm starting to have the strength to finally throw them away or let go the things that I know, are just another lie to keep it with me.

Some of the channel I have been thinking is through Free Market, so I will lie myself that I am not throwing it away, but giving it to other people (tak muncul rasa sayang barang elok dibuang).

I'm strongly urge that whoever reading is, please learn more about mental health, and please be more aware of their conditions. It's an era of IT, just google them. Everything is there.

They say that diseases started from having an unhealthy mind. Mental health is important just as any other physical health.

Learn about it.
Be aware of it.
Educate the others as well.

-----

With Love,

Aiman Amri,
BSc in Psychology,
University of Nottingham