by guest blogger Fugen Neziroglu, Ph.D., co-author of Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding

Hoarding is defined as the acquisition and failure to discard a vast amount of items that appear to have little or no value. It is a serious disorder that can have a severe impact on one’s everyday life. The clutter associated with hoarding provides a lack of functional living space, and even can lead to unsafe, unsanitary living conditions. Hoarding is often associated with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) with 20-30% of individuals with OCD showing hoarding symptoms. However, hoarding can also be seen in obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), depression, dementia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and eating disorders.

While many individuals may acquire multiple items or collect things, individuals with hoarding have difficulty in regulating the amount of items that are acquired, discarding items, and /or organizing the items. Many individuals with hoarding provide rationales for hanging on to their objects. This reasoning includes emotional comfort, a reminder of an important memory, a perceived value of the item, or a sense of responsibility that one must not be wasteful, and control over their possessions among others. Individuals that hoard items can have an intense perceived connection to the items acquired, thus discarding the item can provoke severe anxiety.

The repercussions of hoarding are severe and dangerous. Individuals that hoard have poor quality of life. Their living space is often unhealthy and unsafe. The incredible amount of clutter and disorganization can lead to health issues including headaches, insomnia, and allergies. Often there can be structural damage to homes such as water leaks due to the weight of the possessions, as well as fire hazards with the multitude of items blocking the exits. Additionally, hoarding may to lead to social isolation. The clutter environment does not provide opportunities for others to visit. Hoarding greatly affects family members as well as the patients. Hoarding can lead to strain in familial relationships. There may be financial problems or resentment from a spouse, child, or sibling, ending in divorce, separation, or children moving out of the home. Family members have to make accommodations and adjustments to their everyday life, for example, children and spouses cannot have friends over due to the living conditions.

excerpt from The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Workbook for Personality Disorders

Develop Alternative Responses to Unhelpful Thoughts

If you already recognize the unhelpful thinking style that you use, find it below and learn how you can challenge it. However, if you haven’t already identified the style you frequently use, be patient. For the moment, just review the list and become familiar with the unhelpful thinking styles and their alternative responses.

excerpt from Visualize Confidence

Self-confidence affords you the belief that, within reason, you do have the ability and skills to accomplish what you envision for yourself. Since confidence isn’t with each of us all the time and in all situations, our beliefs and behavior can change according to the tasks and situations at hand. You can be confident in one area of your life but not in another. For example, you may be confident in math but not in biology. You may be confident in your academic abilities but not in sports. You may relish the excitement of giving a talk before a large crowd but feel awkward going on a first date.

Since self-confidence exists within the context of your own beliefs, self-image, self-esteem, self-efficacy, memories, and perceptions, it can be summed up in three terms: attitudes (how you feel), behavior (what you do), and cognitions (what you think).

excerpt from Visualize Confidence

As children we start out full of confidence in our abilities and strengths, with unlimited creative imaginations. Free from self-doubt, we are eager to try out new things and explore new worlds. It’s only as we grow older that we start to evaluate our behavior, second-guess ourselves, and judge ourselves against others. And, as a result of hard knocks and disappointments, our self-confidence takes a beating. Self-doubt comes first and foremost from our inner critic. Let’s consider how the inner critic sabotages our confidence.

excerpt from 10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem

Let’s explore the basic types of distortions and how they can be modified. Because there are only a handful of distortions, you can learn them and their replacement thoughts so you can prevent yourself from falling into the common thinking traps. With practice you will learn to replace distortions quickly and without much effort, because this is what stressful situations often require.

• All-or-Nothing Thinking
• Labeling
• Assuming
• Making Unfavorable Comparisons
• Shoulds, Oughts, and Musts
• Catastrophizing

excerpt from 10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem

How might we make the world a better place? There are many ways. When someone asked Mother Teresa how he might help her, she simply said, “Come and see.” We can simply observe what needs to be done, and do it as best we can. This might mean providing physical help (such as cleaning or giving a ride) or giving a smile, a listening ear, or encouragement. Simple expressions of help can be given to family, friends, coworkers, or strangers. Or, if we have the means, we might donate time or money to a worthwhile cause (such as a soup kitchen, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Habitat for Humanity, or a political campaign). Further, you can think of your job as a way to contribute. For example, one janitor might view his job as simply cleaning and getting rid of trash. Another might view it as creating an environment that helps educators teach and a generation of children to learn.

Another way to make the world better is to beautify or improve our environment for the sake of others. This could involve artistic expression (such as painting or poetry), inventing, sprucing up your home or workplace, or picking up litter on your walking path. Additionally, you can think about what it would be like to be in another person’s shoes and see how your behaviors affect that person. Plante (2004) reminds us that the hotel housekeeper cleans up others’ messes and might be ignored by the guests. Perhaps she would appreciate receiving a simple greeting from the guests she cleans for. A salesclerk might be tired after a long day of dealing with demanding customers. An empathic smile or a word of thanks for her service might go a long way.

excerpt from Love Tune-Ups:

Here are some other pursuits you and your partner might try:

• Take a class together on something you’re both interested in learning more about, for example: martial arts, photography, home improvement, Spanish, the modern novel, music appreciation, or meditation.
• Switch responsibilities for a month. For example, if you always pay the bills, let your partner hold the checkbook. If your partner always cooks, take over the apron for a month. You’ll get a nice break from your usual chores and a new appreciation for your partner’s practical contributions to your life.
• Try something new in bed: act out a fantasy, do some role playing, have sex in an unusual place, read erotica aloud to each other, leave each other amorous notes.
• Get a new cookbook and try some foods you’ve never eaten before.
• If you never have people over, plan a party. Have people over for dinner, or create your own monthly film festival. Cook an elaborate meal together, or plan a potluck.

No matter what you decide to do, trying something new is always a good way to infuse fresh energy into your relationship and your life.

excerpt from Healing Together

The Impact of Post-traumatic Symptoms on Sexual Intimacy

Each of the three primary trauma cluster symptoms of hyperarousal, reexperiencing, and numbing and constriction is likely to have an effect on sexual intimacy. The disruption caused by each may be somewhat different as will the strategy that may be most helpful in working through it. Each of these is discussed and described below.

by guest blogger Susan Pease Gadoua, LCSW, author of Stronger Day by Day

One of the most common questions newly divorcing people have for me is, "how long will it take before I'm over this divorce ordeal?

My answer is always the same: "How long it takes to "recover" from a divorce depends on a number of factors, including how long you were together, how good the relationship was and how committed you were to your spouse, whether the divorce was a surprise to you or not, whether you have children together, whether you or your spouse are involved in a new relationship, your personality, your age, your socio-economic status and on and on.

I liken the undoing of a marriage to trying to disentangle two trees that have grown next to each other for years. The more intertwined the root systems are, the longer it will take for the trees to go their separate ways.

excerpt from Relationship Saboteurs

For some people, romantic fusion activates a totally different set of feelings. Those who fear it feel the same hunger for intimate connection that all people do, but the closer they get to it, the more they want to run away. Instead of the ecstasy that bonding offers, they feel terror, mistrust, anger, and debilitating fear.

Though there are many reasons why people fear intimacy, most often it is because they have experienced pain in their past intimate connections. Though betrayal can happen at any time of life, the most significant damage is done in childhood, when helplessness creates raw vulnerability.

Children who are abused, neglected, or emotionally erased have only known intimacy paired with pain or loss. They often grow into adults who cannot trust or sustain intimacy without expecting those negative feelings to resurface. These negative feelings may not show up in the relationship’s initial stages, when there’s enough emotional distance and a sense of control. But when their partner gets too close, they begin to feel suffocated, anticipating being captured and traumatized again. Driven by those fears, they push their partner away. Now separate and lonely, they may try to win back their partner and recapture the very intimacy from which they’ve fled.

People who are afraid of intimacy may eventually become commitment phobic, avoiding intimacy and long-term commitment. After multiple failures, they may talk about intimate relationships in these ways: