BILLIONAIRE HOARDING

an introduction: by Siobhán Marriott

HOARDING BEHAVIOURS

I was living overseas when I travelled home and had a new perspective on my family’s worsening hoarding behaviours. I began reading “Buried in Treasures” by Tolin, Frost and Steketee which asked questions like “do you have sentimental attachment to things?” and “do you keep things because of ideas for creative uses?” when I realised… oh dear, it’s also me with the hoarding behaviours. I was no longer righteously reading the book on my family’s behalf (*finger aggressively points at family*) but also my own (*finger ominously turns and points to self.*)

Relatives of people with hoarding behaviours can go the other way, having a tendency towards minimalism, as a rejection of the hoard. It is often those who become professional organisers and lead the conversation on hoarding, as though minimalism is the goal, or the proof of recovery. That hoarding is something which can simply be overcome with enough effort.

There are few of us speaking up from a place of lived experience of the same behaviours we resented in our families. A tendency towards maximalism, without the skills and experience to avoid leaning into hoarding.

We are grappling with the judgement which society projects onto our hoarder loved ones who are traumatised, anxious and neurodivergent, and having it reflected back onto us when we gain insight into our own hoarding behaviours.

I realised that we essentially “cross the road” to conform ourselves into society, rather than stand with our family in compassion.

And now, if it is also us with these behaviours, can we betray ourselves the same way?

Can we endorse the conventional psychiatric definition of hoarding disorder, and blame poor and working class hoarders as the most severe hoarders in the world?

Can I raise my children to believe that they should overcome my experience of accumulating too many things, in a consumer society where they are bombarded with messages to consume, buy and acquire? Where there is a constant threat of real (and imagined) scarcity? Should I teach them that they would be “successful” if they become billionaires, and there would be no overlap whatsoever with a family history of hoarding?

MEDICAL MODEL VERSES SOCIAL MODEL OF DISABILITY

While the medical model of disability views a person as something to be fixed, in order for them to conform back into society, the social model of disability defines their lack of access as something built into society systemically. Further, the medical model tends to pathologise differences, and views mental illness and neurodivergence as “deficits,” while the social model directs “what is detrimental” away from the individual and towards the ableism of society as a whole.

As I work through the diagnostic criteria of Hoarding Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) - which is simultaneously a giant sack of shit, and also all we have in terms of working definitions – I am highlighting a contradiction. The definition is written in a way that is deeply unfair, and wilfully collaborates with and nests within capitalism.

HOARDING DISORDER: The Current Definition

The current definition of hoarding requires that:

1. an individual has persistent difficulty in discarding, regardless of actual value,

2. due to the perceived need to keep things.

3. There is distress associated with discarding for the hoarder.

4. The hoarding results in accumulation that congests living areas, and,

5. diverts spaces from their intended use.

6. The DSM-5 definition notes that any decluttering is only performed by third parties (such as family members, or ultimately interventions by authorities.)

7. The hoarding, according to this definition, causes distress and impairment to the self,

8. and others.

9. The DSM-5 (so-called “American” model) differs from the WHO ICD-11 (European model) in making excessive acquisition an optional specification of this diagnosis.

10. Further, individuals with hoarding can present with either good, poor or absent/delusional insight into their behaviours.

Subtypes: A specialised form of hoarding is animal hoarding, which can be co-present with hoarding of things in the home, or without.

WHAT DO THESE TERMS MEAN?

1. “Persistent difficulty in discarding, regardless of value”

Hoarders will feel intense conflict about being asked to discard some of their belongings. They may attempt sorting, only to “churn” without throwing anything away. We might create complicated processes for discarding, which become unwieldy and unable to be completed. The value each item represents to the individual might not be consistent with how others perceive them.

2. “Perceived need to keep”

Ranging from the emotions of “it might be useful one day” to “that is extremely important to me and I am attached to it”, and in some cases Obsessive Compulsive Disorder rituals around “something bad might happen if I throw that away.”

3. “Distress associated with discarding”

The distress from discarding can feel unbearable and people can go back into rubbish bags to check and re-sort. Being asked to discard something can be met with Pathological Demand Avoidance or Oppositional Defiance Disorder responses.

4. “Accumulation in living areas”

Accumulation can occur in any area: inside the home, in roof or crawl spaces, on covered outdoor areas like verandas, sheds and garages, storage units and shipping containers, in used or unused cars, or simply in the yard. The garden may also pose hazards in overgrown areas. The focus on “living areas” highlights the inappropriateness of turning (shared) living spaces into storage. The Clutter Image Rating Scale developed by Frost and Steketee, a visual tool rating the severity of hoarding from 1-9, can help measure levels of clutter in different spaces.

5. “Diverts spaces from their intended use”

While the “function” of open space is difficult to define, (I sometimes call this “dancing space” to illustrate the inability to throw a high kick or a pirouette in a hoarded space), there is obvious intention for the use of a kitchen or bathroom. This is exacerbated when the shame of cluttered spaces stops people inviting tradespeople into the home to fix plumbing issues leading to biological hazards.

6. “Decluttering only performed by third parties”

This is an interesting caveat that suggests that the hoarding individual is never able to discard or declutter, or rearrange or organise their possessions on their own.

We are unclear about whether the decluttering “third parties” are performing is with the hoarding individual’s consent? And whether it is in the form of a forced clean out, or intervention?

7. “Causes distress and impairment to the self”

The negative impact to the hoarder may take many forms, in being unable to use their home as they wish, how it affects their work life, in not being able to invite friends and family over or into the home, in hazards to their health.

Hoarding is differentiated from collecting by negative impact, because the collector tends to take pride in their collections, store them appropriately, and be able to share about the items meaningfully.

8. “Causes distress and impairment to others”

Those who are negatively impacted by the hoarder’s behaviours are the family – such as their partner and children, or other co-habiting people; and those who are estranged by being unable to visit. The hoarding can also affect neighbours, where hoards encroach on their properties.

9. “Can include excessive acquisition”

While every hoarder has performed some form of excessive acquisition to arrive at living in an entrenched hoarded space, the behaviour of excessive shopping or op-shopping, or roaming to collect roadside cleanup items, is not always present.

10. “Insight: good, poor, absent/delusional”

The definition of ‘insight’ in psychology is defined as “an absence of awareness of the severity and consequences of a problem.” Hoarding often comes with a strong denial that the hoarding is negatively impacting oneself or others. While education can help hoarders gain good insight into their behaviours, a lack of insight can be used to justify forced interventions.

SHAME

Hoarding is a difficult disorder to treat as many people feel shame in reaching out for help. The lack of insight into the issues, the few available resources for hoarding therapy, and the mammoth amount of work to do in recovery can overwhelm people. Shame does not only come from within, but also is projected onto hoarders, through society’s disgust response.

DISGUST RESPONSE

Disgust is one of the main human emotional responses, along with joy or sadness, fear or anger. There is a protective aspect to our disgust response which makes us avoid spoiled food or dirtiness that could cause infection.

However, this disgust response has been harnessed as a political tool.

There are many tasks in daily life which could be considered objectively “yucky.” Many care tasks in the kitchen, bathroom and laundry, are simultaneously absolutely necessary for our care and also give us the ick. However we put whatever “disgust response” we have aside in order to do the care task for ourselves and others.

There would be, for example, doctors and nurses who have a revulsion to the operations and procedures that they perform every day, but they are trained to overcome this to put their patient’s care first, to retain their patient’s dignity.

In the home, and in the hospital, we would not consider it fair or normal care to put our disgust response first. It would be considered a betrayal to project our disgust at the task onto the person who is receiving our care.

This is not a luxury that people with hoarding behaviours experience.

While education and awareness is improving, there is a history of and ongoing weaponisation of disgust onto us. Society has at once a revulsion for hoarding, and yet an intense desire to consume images of hoarding through hoarder cleanup shows and videos.

DISGUST: A POLITICAL TOOL?

The projection of disgust onto hoarders might seem so ubiquitous that it’s not something people outside the hoarder community would notice as a device or mechanism, yet it goes deeply to shaping society’s conceptualisation of hoarding:

*what it is,

*who does it,

*why they do it,

*what it looks like,

*and who it negatively impacts.

Similar to the Ugly Laws where Mad, Disabled and Houseless people were moved on or institutionalised, and begging was outlawed, hoarding is assessed by its negative impact on bourgeoisie society. Family members can repeatedly attempt to access help, and yet have less currency than a wealthy neighbour complaining to the council about the “eyesore next door bringing down their property prices.”

Further the attempts to “heal” hoarding can feel like the goal is simply to return the hoarding individual to a neat, tidy, productive cog in capitalist society. The hoarded house is flipped and renovated, resorbed into the profit-churning real estate market.

AN ANTICAPITALIST LENS

While “Buried in Treasures” and the various other hoarding therapy books now available are far beyond anything we had 20-30 years ago, I still felt while reading them that they all had a chapter missing.

While some would open with statements like, “It’s understandable that you have too many possessions, because we live in a consumer society,” or “Who amongst us doesn’t have too many books!” there was no explicit analysis of living with hoarding behaviours within a capitalist society.

How can we talk to people about hoarding in their small apartments or homes without taking into account the greater context of colonialism and capitalism?

How have the wounds of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia, environmental destruction and dispossession informed people’s coping mechanisms? Is this something they can just “clean up”?

The current diagnostic criteria of what we might call “Poor Hoarding” is limited to visible, physical clutter. By this reconciliation, the ultra wealthy and billionaires – who have unlimited storage and staff to clean up for them - will never qualify as hoarders. Have we all been so hoodwinked by the psychiatric industrial complex that it’s only hoarding if it’s messy and bin-juicy?

That it’s only hoarding when poor people do it.

HOARDING: THE DISORDER ONLY POOR PEOPLE CAN HAVE

If we look at the terms of hoarding it is mostly about proportion.

People are considered to be in healthy relationship with their possessions when their things are in proportion to:

- what they can manageably store in their home,

- what they can use in this lifetime,

- an objective, societal standard of value and meaning, and

- who else lives in the space and their needs.

Hoarders - Poor Hoarders - then are living out of proportion to their means:

- more things than they can fit in their home,

- more things than they can use in this lifetime,

- perceived value and meaning that they are unable to communicate to others,

- and their things appear to be more important than their family members and their space.

Billionaire Hoarders might be considered to constantly live according to their means because they have unlimited wealth. Does this mean they are living in proportion?

IN PROPORTION TO THEIR NEEDS

How can a Billionaire Hoarder ever be considered to live outside their means or needs? If they have 11 cars, well - they have a 12-car garage, so they’re living within their means. If they own 500 chairs, well - they own 8 houses, so they are living within their means. If the possessions don’t fit, they buy another house. At what point is there a cap on the number of possessions one human can need?

IN PROPORTION TO OTHERS NEEDS

This soulless accumulation of wealth, property, businesses, information and power is entirely disproportionate to the access that the vast majority of the population has to these things. And yet non-billionaires still defend Billionaire Hoarder’s right to exist, despite the billionaire’s possessions and identity being so much more important to them than the lives of others.

AND LIVING IN PROPORTION TO WHAT THE EARTH CAN SUSTAINABLY GIVE

Meanwhile the planet is being extorted for resources in order to fuel these profits and these Billionaire Hoarder lifestyles.

BILLIONAIRE HOARDING DISORDER: A Proposed Diagnostic Criteria

Billionaire Hoarding is typified by:

1. excessive accumulation, and

2. a persistent difficulty to discard, particularly with regards to perceived value,

3. due to a perceived need to keep their identity as Billionaires, and

4. the distress of discarding.

5. This results in accumulation of vast amounts of wealth and power,

6. that congests the democracies of the world and diverts them from their intended use.

7. Uncluttering is only performed by 3^rd parties: their staff.

8. The Billionaire Hoarder personally benefits from their hoarding,

9. yet it causes distress – importantly not to the hoarding individual – but to the rest of the population and the planet.

10. Billionaire Hoarding presents exclusively with absent / delusional insight.

11. A defining feature of Billionaire Hoarding is a sociopathic belief that the hoarding individual deserves this disproportionate wealth and power.

WHAT DO THESE TERMS MEAN?

1. “Excessive acquiring”

How did Poor Hoarders ever end up with the label of excessive acquiring when billionaires exist? There is no more excessive acquiring than billionaires.

2. “Persistent difficulty discarding”

Billionaire Hoarders experience such persistent difficulty in discarding any of their wealth, that they have police guard all of their possessions and power so that it cannot be redistributed.

3. “Need to keep their identity as billionaires”

While individual items and things can be liquidated, the Billionaire Hoarder is most attached to their identity as a billionaire.

4. “Distress associated with discarding”

We do not have strong examples of billionaires discarding because they do not generally do it. They avoid discarding at all costs.

5. “Accumulation of wealth and power”

While hoarding has come to colloquially mean the Poor Hoarder, they can only hoard that which they have access to, which is generally items which depreciate in value. The Billionaire Hoarder has access to everything in the world, most specifically items which appreciate and compound in value. Further the Billionaire Hoarder wields a disproportionate amount of power in the world.

6. “Diverts democracies from their intended use”

The Billionaire Hoarder’s access to power enables them to control companies and governments in an undemocratic way. It’s not just about having more things or money, it is about their influence over the world, via media and government that is most detrimental to the world today.

7. “Decluttering is only performed by third parties: their staff”

Billionaire Hoarders have staff. They will never qualify as hoarders by the markers of visual, physical clutter because they have people to clean up and organise their possessions for them. Personal assistants, personal shoppers, housekeepers, servants, chefs, cleaners, curators and collection managers who arrange their vast homes into - ironically - a stylish minimalism.

8. “The Billionaire Hoarder personally benefits from their hoarding”

While a Poor Hoarder may experience some forms of positive impact from their hoarding which keeps the cycle going (whether it is emotional comfort or the joy of finding a specific item) ultimately the negative impact vastly outweighs these benefits. The Billionaire Hoarder however only experiences positive impacts of their behaviours. A kind of positive impact on every aspect of their lives (except for their humanity) that many of us will never experience. Housing security, food security, safety, all ensured for their lifetimes.

9. “Causes distress to the world’s population and the planet”

Just as in the conventional definition of hoarding behaviour, there are significant negative impacts of Billionaire Hoarding. But where the Poor Hoarder’s footprint is to the immediate surrounds of their home and family, Billionaire Hoarding negatively impacts the entire world. Their disproportionate accumulation of wealth leads to extreme poverty, and extraction of resources in an unsustainable way.

10. “Insight: absent/delusional”

In Poor Hoarding, while the hoarding individual might present with absent insight, the hoarding is fairly obvious to everyone else involved. Anyone who lives there or visits the property can immediately identify the hoarding behaviours.

In Billionaire Hoarding, the individuals present exclusively with a complete lack of insight. However, an important difference is that society also collectively has absent insight into Billionaire Hoarding. Rather than everyone else being aware of “the elephant in the room” and trying to help make the hoarder aware of it, society upholds billionaires as successful. Psychiatrists refuse to diagnose them. And the Billionaire Hoarders are in control of the governments which would otherwise seek to intervene, tax them and redistribute their wealth.

11. “Sociopathic belief they deserve obscene levels of wealth”

Non-billionaires often defend Billionaire Hoarders, that they have worked hard and deserve their obscene levels of wealth. And in order to remain so disproportionately wealthy, billionaires must also endorse this belief - that they have somehow worked harder, that there is some sort of meritocracy at play that has allowed them to rise to the top - because they deserve it. This Billionaire Brainrot pervades not only the hoarding individual but also society, that it is somehow ordained for these few unelected people to have power over the majority of the world.

FLITHY RICH

It is a betrayal by the psychiatric community to allow Poor Hoarders to take the brunt of the blame for “hoarding” in society, when billionaires hoard more than anyone else. To land the definition of hoarding at the physical mess and clutter of Poor Hoarding, while Billionaire Hoarding fulfills the original definition of the word hoard: which is “to accumulate treasure.”

When and how did the word hoard, and hoarding, come to mean traumatised people with too many newspapers? When did the focus of who is accumulating too much divert from the richest people in the world?

And in what way does it serve them for us to think of Poor Hoarders with disgust? We look down on them, as though we are not on a level playing field with everyone who is not an Ultra High Net Worth Individual. We relax by watching hoarder clean-up videos, and we allow them to hoodwink us that it’s only hoarding if it’s cluttered and messy.

Apparently, it’s not hoarding for an individual to be wealthier than the GDP of some countries.

Apparently, it’s not hoarding to own multiple houses, cars, planes, boats, businesses and have enough power to influence elections.

Apparently, it’s not hoarding if you’re rich.

A HOARDING SOCIETY

It is, in fact, the modus operandi of capitalism and colonialism: hoarding.

It is take, take, take, more, more, more, and never give back, never relinquish, never discard, never land back.

The Poor Hoarder is not the aberration. They are simply mimicking what their leaders do. They are trying to perform capitalism, in their own way, and not succeeding well enough.

Billionaire Hoarders are the most successful hoarder capitalists of our time. (*Finger points up.*)