Hoarding It is only natural for people to want to have things, material things they will use and once they are old and do not look or work well any more, they will be disposed. It is just part of life, buying things that will make your life more joyful and then buy some others to substitute the ones that need to be replaced. However, there is a disease that would make this process an abnormal one, buying and getting things and never getting rid of anything. This disease is called Hoarding which means that a person acquires large amounts of objects that do not have any real function in the person's life, that are not valuable (considered like garbage by most people), objects that would be so many that would clutter a space in your house or any other facility that would use up all the space destined to other activities (a bedroom, for example that is so full of things that people can no longer sleep in it). Finally, in order to be considered hoarding these situations should cause a lot of distress or impairment to carry on everyday life activities due to this behavior. Even though this condition used to be considered a subset of OCD, it is not anymore. Hoarders have some special characteristics such as the fact that they are perfectionistic, have problems making decisions such as categorizing the real value and importance of every objects. In fact, while most of us would have just a few categories in terms of the objects that they own, hoarders will have even hundreds of categories. Another special feature of hoarders is the fact that they need to have everything they have visible to them, they feel that if they don't, they will eventually forget where they put their objects, this condition makes them pile things up. In hoarding, objects become part of the hoarder and are no longer seen as objects, the emotional attachment is too big as to let go. They see a purpose in everything, even stuff that is obviously worthless. Hoarding cannot be treated via medications, the only cases in which hoarders are prescribed medications is when they have other conditions that could make their hoarding even worse, or not let them to respond well to treatment like ADHD. Therapy for this condition is hard and would take long to see some progress, most therapists also recommend hoarders to hire a professional organizer that will complement the therapy sessions. Hoarders need to feel that they are making progress no matter how small it is, therapist usually encourage them a lot and praise them for their improvement, they build up their motivation so that they feel they can do it, fell that they are ready to make that important change in their lives. Just like with any other psychotherapy, dysfunctional thoughts of the condition need to be identified and replaced with functional thoughts. Every time a space is cleared, it should be used for its original purpose. Remember the case of the bedroom that we mentioned earlier? If through therapy this bedroom could be cleaned up, organized and “conquered” it should be used with the original purpose of the room, which was obviously to sleep in it.