Speaker 1: From how Stuff Works dot com. This is the Stuff
Speaker 1: of Life. Welcome to the Stuff of Life. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, and today we have a companion to the
Speaker 1: previous episode on eternity in the ways that we try
Speaker 1: to immortalize ourselves, like creating a digital avatar or a
Speaker 1: time capsule. This episode is about the objects we might
Speaker 1: put into a time capsule or a storage unit, or
Speaker 1: even a box of memorabilia that we just can't seem
Speaker 1: to get rid of. Why do we hold on so tightly?
Speaker 1: In some ways, our stuff is ourselves. It tells a
Speaker 1: story about who we are, and hey, if it sticks around,
Speaker 1: maybe we will too. It becomes a kind of talisman
Speaker 1: against death. But that doesn't explain why some of us
Speaker 1: develop pathological attachments to things. Ruined that movie with Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: he got attached to the ball and he named it Wilson.
Speaker 1: I think that was part of his survival mechanism, is
Speaker 1: to feel like he had a connection to something or someone.
Speaker 1: And so people often who have been hurt by individuals
Speaker 1: throughout their lives through by people, turned to objects and
Speaker 1: or even animals to feel like they have a sense
Speaker 1: of connection. That's dr Rebecca Beaton, a psychologist and director
Speaker 1: of the Anxiety and Stress Management Institute. We talked to
Speaker 1: her about why we project ourselves onto objects and how
Speaker 1: these projections can morph into insidious relationships with our belongings.
Speaker 1: But first, let's explore the mounting evidence that most of
Speaker 1: us have a lot of stuff, perhaps too much stuff.
Speaker 1: That's the whole meaning of life, isn't it. Trying to
Speaker 1: find a place for your stuff. Sometimes you've got to move.
Speaker 1: You gotta get a bigger house. Why too much stuff?
Speaker 1: You've got to move all your stuff? And maybe he's
Speaker 1: put some of your stuff in storage. Imagine that there's
Speaker 1: a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff.
Speaker 1: That's from George Carlin's appearance at Comic Relief in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties six. His observation of our quest to accumulate was
Speaker 1: spot on. According to the Self Storage Association, it took
Speaker 1: the industry more than twenty five years to build its
Speaker 1: first billion square feet of space ah, but it added
Speaker 1: its second billion square feet in just eight years between
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. In nine six, Carlin was tapping
Speaker 1: into a preoccupation with storing our stuff. This preoccupation is
Speaker 1: very much an American thing. Household throughout the United States
Speaker 1: have used self storage at least one in the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so. The latest numbers showed that nine
Speaker 1: point five percent of all US households have a self
Speaker 1: storage unit that they're actively using, and that comes out
Speaker 1: to a little less than eleven million people in the
Speaker 1: United States right now, and Canada and Australia have somewhat
Speaker 1: really United States resident here are the ones that really
Speaker 1: you felt storage more than in any other country. That's
Speaker 1: freelance writer and editor of Midwest Real Estate News Dan Rafter.
Speaker 1: In he reported that the American landscape was studded with
Speaker 1: nearly fifty thousand self storage facilities, eclipsing familiar landmarks like
Speaker 1: McDonald's to become one of the most common roadside buildings.
Speaker 1: Turns out we use self storage for lots of reasons,
Speaker 1: but most boiled down to change in the form of death, divorce, downsizing,
Speaker 1: and dislocation. Dan Rafter isolates three high profile examples of
Speaker 1: people who paid money to store their extraneous goods. For Reynolds,
Speaker 1: the actor came up a lot. Apparently he was a
Speaker 1: big user of self storage, and one of his self
Speaker 1: storage units he had stored the canoe from delivering and
Speaker 1: then Joe Jackson. Michael Jackson's father had a storage unit
Speaker 1: and he had about two seventy unreleased recordings from Michael
Speaker 1: jacks and stored away in there that he had forgotten about.
Speaker 1: We're just one I found. I had read that there
Speaker 1: was a storage locker. A person who owned it had
Speaker 1: passed away, and they went inside and they found something
Speaker 1: wrapped in tinfoil, and when they opened up, they thought
Speaker 1: it was me, but it actually turned out to be
Speaker 1: this person's amputated leg. And want problem there? I have
Speaker 1: a one humans. It's from manasal got me grows down.
Speaker 1: Here's what I found out about the third example. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people default on their self storage payments and their items
Speaker 1: are auctioned off. In two thousand and seven, Shannon Whisnant
Speaker 1: bought the contents of a storage unit and discovered a
Speaker 1: severed foot inside of a grill, and, as detailed in
Speaker 1: the recent documentary Finders Keepers, a legal battle over ownership
Speaker 1: ensued between Wizman and the man to whom the foot
Speaker 1: originally belonged. John Wood was just like three years ago,
Speaker 1: and that's just one hurdle light has thrown at him.
Speaker 1: Over by stating dump truck electro charity. I've been an
Speaker 1: unbelievable character, isn't it. It's an example of layering an
Speaker 1: object with meaning and in this case, ultimately coming to
Speaker 1: represent for both men the idea that if they possessed it,
Speaker 1: it couldn't make them whole. Tricky logic, for sure, But
Speaker 1: the more you learn about their individual stories, the more
Speaker 1: you come to understand that the root of their logic
Speaker 1: is steeped in trauma. I lost my leg in the
Speaker 1: plane crash, and I lost my father. After the crash,
Speaker 1: they send you home campf con and nobody says anything
Speaker 1: about the indiction. That's what about killed? And I would
Speaker 1: have just kept on what I was doing. It's really
Speaker 1: all I had was that leg. Trauma is front and
Speaker 1: center when it comes to Dr Beaton and her clients,
Speaker 1: particularly those who suffer from hoarding disorder. A lot of
Speaker 1: people who are are connected to things to the point
Speaker 1: of causing functional impairment in their lives, either socially or emotionally,
Speaker 1: uh with their occupations or there they've come to the
Speaker 1: point where they are actually hoarding, have experienced tw more
Speaker 1: trauma than the average person. That's a lot of trauma,
Speaker 1: and these generally have to do with people hurting them
Speaker 1: or loss of individuals. Did you you need look no
Speaker 1: further than an infant whose physiological development is wholly dependent
Speaker 1: on a connection through touch to see that the need
Speaker 1: for attachment is hardwired into all of us. Our nervous
Speaker 1: system does not operate in a vacuum. We have to
Speaker 1: regulate our nervous system by connecting with other individuals. There's
Speaker 1: actually a whole theory about the vague nerve that you've
Speaker 1: got to stimulate your vague nerve in order to process
Speaker 1: emotions uh intellectually, cerebral e and in order to activate
Speaker 1: our entire system to work properly. And you have to
Speaker 1: have human connection with somebody that's safe and secure. So
Speaker 1: there there's these biological reasons for connection, and when somebody's
Speaker 1: not connecting to humans, they've got to find something to
Speaker 1: connect to. It's an elaborative processing problem, a kind of
Speaker 1: cognitive processing that deals with assigning meaning and importance when
Speaker 1: making decisions. It's the reason why someone who hoards assesses
Speaker 1: an object differently, with a wider net of associations that
Speaker 1: allows them to see details and uses for things that
Speaker 1: most people would never conceive of. There's an acronym ount
Speaker 1: there which I don't like because it's not very positive.
Speaker 1: But it's sick S I, C K. And the part
Speaker 1: I do like is what it stands for is S
Speaker 1: this for sensitive, I is for intelligent, C is for creative,
Speaker 1: and K is for kind. Most people who hoarde have
Speaker 1: all those attributes. They tend to be very intelligent. I
Speaker 1: mean often in times they have advanced degrees. Then you've
Speaker 1: got the creative component, where you know they just see
Speaker 1: so many options in one small item, and they they
Speaker 1: want to do something creative with each of these objects.
Speaker 1: They anthropomorphize items where everything has feelings. They are really
Speaker 1: kind individuals. Certainly you can see you can find a
Speaker 1: hoarder that has become sort of hardened over time that
Speaker 1: doesn't come across very kind at first, but usually underneath
Speaker 1: it all there's a soft center. This is perhaps why
Speaker 1: there's an irrational fear of letting go of an object.
Speaker 1: And it looks like this. Now you have seen countless hordes,
Speaker 1: if you've stepped inside people's homes hundreds, yes, yes, when
Speaker 1: you go in, do those hordes tell you a story?
Speaker 1: More specifically about what's happening absolutely, because every hoarder is
Speaker 1: a little different, and there they could. I mean, at
Speaker 1: some point, I think they're going to come out with
Speaker 1: different types of hoarders because you have more of your
Speaker 1: addictive hoarder where they are addicted to shopping that cannot
Speaker 1: stop acquiring or dumpster diving. I've seen that and they
Speaker 1: have just bags of things they've never even opened up everywhere.
Speaker 1: We're just just dumped in places because they're all about
Speaker 1: the acquiring and there's no rhyme or reason to where
Speaker 1: everything is. Then you have the hoarder who is hiding
Speaker 1: behind a bunker. You walk in and there's a wall
Speaker 1: of clothes or stacks of boxes blocking certain areas, particularly
Speaker 1: like entrances or windows, or blocking off certain rooms because
Speaker 1: of memories in those rooms. A marriage that went sour
Speaker 1: in the bedroom is the first place it gets hoarded.
Speaker 1: The hoard basically just tells a story what happened. So
Speaker 1: how common is hoarding disorder and how much of it
Speaker 1: is genetic? It is actually becoming more and more common.
Speaker 1: It's become a disorder now officially and our our manual
Speaker 1: psychiatric disorders a few years ago that people are realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what my aunt is doing, or that's what my
Speaker 1: grandma was doing when I was growing up, because we
Speaker 1: didn't really understand it before. Three to five percent of
Speaker 1: the population has hoarding disorder to the point where they
Speaker 1: meet the criteria for functional impairment of some kind due
Speaker 1: to the hoarding. People diagnosed with hoarding disorder have an
Speaker 1: eighty four percent chance of having a first degree relative
Speaker 1: who also has hoarding disorder. We know that there's this
Speaker 1: hereditary component, there's also learned behavior involved. We want to
Speaker 1: think about the nature nurture question. If you've got a
Speaker 1: first degree relative of a parent that's hoarding, they're teaching
Speaker 1: a child how to hoard as well. So you've got
Speaker 1: this propensity one way or the other, and then the
Speaker 1: loss on top of it sort of sets it off
Speaker 1: exponentially throughout the years of life. Hoarding also tends to
Speaker 1: show itself in adolescents but then manifest later in life.
Speaker 1: People who have hoarding disorder tend to either begin the
Speaker 1: disorder in childhood or adolescents have just a touch of
Speaker 1: it where they're just a little bit, you know, more
Speaker 1: attached to things than the average person. But what happens
Speaker 1: is throughout the course of life, they have more and
Speaker 1: more trauma and more stressors. They have a lot more
Speaker 1: loss and so they show up with hoarding disorder generally
Speaker 1: around age fifty five. That's the mean age. One thing
Speaker 1: that surprises a lot of people is the fact that
Speaker 1: there are more men who hoard than women. That always
Speaker 1: seems to come as a shocker. I do think that
Speaker 1: men are more reluctant to get social support, They're more
Speaker 1: reluctant to ask for help, and they also historically have
Speaker 1: had we're talking about, you know, a mean age of
Speaker 1: fifty five. Historically they've had the burden of being the
Speaker 1: provider in the family. That's changed, of course in modern times.
Speaker 1: But we're talking to, you know, people in their fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties right now. Those folks the idea of providing
Speaker 1: was on their shoulders, so they've got to make sure
Speaker 1: they've had that item just in case they needed. Dr
Speaker 1: Eaton says that for small hoards, it can take up
Speaker 1: to two years for someone to work through their stuff.
Speaker 1: I think of a web of associations gold up like
Speaker 1: the knots and a pile of wires or necklaces. Those
Speaker 1: associations that bind the object to the person have to
Speaker 1: be teased a part carefully, and because language is freighted
Speaker 1: with emotion, it's also important to use select words. You
Speaker 1: have to use certain language around letting go to because
Speaker 1: if they've had a lot of loss, letting go is
Speaker 1: probably not the appropriate word. Um Finding a new home
Speaker 1: for it almost always works. So if you can find
Speaker 1: a charity that they really like, somebody's going to be
Speaker 1: able to use the item on a daily basis. That
Speaker 1: if you you can. You know if they say if
Speaker 1: they love animals, that they find a charity that benefits animals,
Speaker 1: and most of people who hoard love animals, by the way,
Speaker 1: that just goes along with it. There's so many components
Speaker 1: of non acquisition. Teach them how to organize, Teach them
Speaker 1: how to find new ways of keeping the memory or
Speaker 1: working with the items so they can actually part with them.
Speaker 1: Without this understanding, someone trying to help could do some
Speaker 1: serious damage by rushing in and bagging up with facey
Speaker 1: as useless items. It is such a complicated disorder. I
Speaker 1: encourage people to learn about it. Two, if you're a
Speaker 1: professional and you want to work with people who who
Speaker 1: are you need some serious training. This is not an
Speaker 1: easy disorder to work with. The one thing I would
Speaker 1: want people to know is this is truly a mental disorder.
Speaker 1: This isn't the fact that they're stubborn or messy or dirty.
Speaker 1: That this is a mental disorder, and that there's so
Speaker 1: much trauma generally involved. These individuals are in a ton
Speaker 1: of pain, and to have more compassion for them, we
Speaker 1: all cling to something for comfort, and then something started
Speaker 1: in childhood with a favorite phrase, edge blanket or a
Speaker 1: worn toy. What we now know as transitional objects meant
Speaker 1: to bridge a child's inner world with his or her
Speaker 1: outer world. So it's easy to see how someone could
Speaker 1: turn to objects over and over again as a source
Speaker 1: of stability and contentment, especially if we recast our understanding
Speaker 1: of hoarding disorder as a processing disorder. After all, we
Speaker 1: accept that there are synithets people who senses are crisscrossed,
Speaker 1: like someone who perceives a deep blue color when she
Speaker 1: sees the number eight, or another person who hears guitar
Speaker 1: music and his ankles suddenly tickle. Is it possible to
Speaker 1: accept that people who hoard might inhabit a similar realm,
Speaker 1: one triggered by trauma, in which a simple lifeless object
Speaker 1: becomes animated in the imagination and takes on a rich
Speaker 1: emotional life. The Stuff of Life is written and co
Speaker 1: produced by me Julie Douglas. Original music and sound design
Speaker 1: is by co producer Noel Brown. This episode also features
Speaker 1: music by the artists Mad and Fields, Ohio. Editorial oversight
Speaker 1: is provided by Heavy Protection Jerry Rowland. So what is
Speaker 1: it that you can't part with? And why the one
Speaker 1: thing I have kept from my high school years. It's
Speaker 1: kind of help me as a sort of a geeky guy,
Speaker 1: but I played the clarinet in the high school band,
Speaker 1: in the marching band, and I haven't played it since
Speaker 1: graduating in school. But I really enjoyed being in the band,
Speaker 1: so I haven't been able to get rid of that.
Speaker 1: For me, it's a mound of pyrite with a silver
Speaker 1: wizard perched on top. It's sat on my dresser between
Speaker 1: the ages of thirteen and eighteen and represents all the awkwardness,
Speaker 1: wonder and terror of being a teenager. Email us your
Speaker 1: story about your object of action at the Stuff of
Speaker 1: Life at how stuff works dot com and if you
Speaker 1: like what you hear, make sure to drop a review
Speaker 1: on iTunes and you can also find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook as the Stuff of Life.