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walkitoutI have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. The first section of the book, which described recent DSM changes (which I had not been paying any attention to) and broke down various things that can result in secondary hoarding, and the various contributors to primary hoarding, was really, really great. Straight up awesome. And this is somewhat ironic, because I actually asked my sister who read it before me if there was anything in the book about the process by which people became hoarders, and she was a little vague — this section at the beginning of the book was _exactly_ what I was asking whether it existed in the book and it definitely does.
Parts of the CBT (cognitive behavior therapy — yeah, you go with your kinky self, that is not what we are talking about here!) and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy, which I also have mixed feelings about) descriptions in the next portion of the book are straightforward. The only issue I had with them is what I have with lots of books about dealing with all kinds of difficult people. The books — if competently written — are suggesting that you can “improve” or extend or wtf your relationship with these difficult people and here’s how. But if you _actually follow_ the guidelines, and the person is actually at the difficult end of these difficult categories, you never actually had a relationship with that person (or, the person that you had the relationship with is loooooong gone, and the body walking around now is fundamentally someone else, sadly) and by following the guidelines, you will almost certainly walk yourself away from spending much time with them. Which on the one hand, duh, what you should have set out to do. On the other hand, a little dishonest.
There’s always a chance — who knows, maybe a good chance — that if you are reading one of these books, you really are a huge contributor to all kinds of problematic relationships, and if you really do what these books advise, you’ll experience really great improvement and meaningful relationships with the difficult people who drove you to read the book. But again, the presentation is a bit misleading if that’s the underlying issue. And hard to believe that that _is_ the underlying issue for children of hoarders. (Or, for that matter, readers of books about various kinds of personality disorders.)
About half way through the book, the authors spend a fair amount of time describing something called “barbing”, which I had not previously encountered. They didn’t invent it — while it isn’t the easiest thing to google, you can find studies using the technique in anger management studies. I wouldn’t say that any of the studies I read were particularly compelling, but generally speaking, meditation, visualization and desensitization stuff doesn’t have great research to back it up. Which isn’t to say it is worthless. Far from it. But I have some concerns about barbing in particular. If you have an anger management problem — if people doing routine peopley sorts of things around you lead you to say and do things that go viral on the internet — then ratcheting that anger response down would be beneficial. But a lot of people have anger that they _don’t_ act on, and they really should. They are being abused, and they should leave. They should report the person or persons. They should defend themselves and their stuff. Whatever is appropriate. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Get good advice from someone you trust in confidence before proceeding. Etc. Using a technique to instead muffle further that negative emotion signal that you have a boundary violation that needs to be addressed, well.
“In as much detail as you can, imagine your parent saying the words over and over again; it is expected that you will feel some anger as you do this. Repeat until you notice that you are more bored than angry.” Then you get someone to play-act it neutrally, then with an angry tone. “Continue with the repetition of the expression, until, again, you feel boredom rather than anger.”
The authors say this: “The goal is not to gain complete relief from the anger that you feel surrounding these thoughts, images, and expressions, but rather to gain exposure to the experience of being angry. This practice will empower you to experience anger without necessarily becoming drawn into angry behavior. If you are prepared to experience anger-provoking scenarios, with resolve to act in opposition to the feelings that these scenarios might evoke, you are on the road to acting in line with who you would like to be, rather than who your angry impulses will urge you to be.”
Maybe.
Here’s what I _wish_ had been included, and emphasized instead (maybe it appears later): When parent says anger-provoking Thing A, Respond B. Chain the desired behavior, rather than just being bored by Thing A. This is super important. If you know that some dickhead (possibly a parent) will predictably say Thing A to you, and you will become incensed, then take some calm time when no one is around to plot what you want to do in response. Rehearse _that_ after someone play acts Thing A. Otherwise, when the person does Thing A, you are going to basically be slightly bored ... and still not taking the action you wanted to take.
Take it from someone who has long since figured out that it is possible to become bored jumping off a bridge. Literally. And to decide to stop jumping off the bridge because of the discomfort of banging into the bungee cord. Rather than, you know, figuring out that actually going through life so numb to it that jumping off a bridge is what it takes to make you feel something, and then realizing, oh, I can stop really feeling _that_ too. Anger is there for a reason (for most of us, anyway). Figure out what your anger is motivating you to do — probably telling you that get as far away / spend as little time around the dickhead in question as possible, but other things are possible, too, like, you know, reporting criminal activity or suing someone for failure to perform on a contract or whatever — and program yourself to do that thing. I can say with a lot of confidence that _that_ feels really good. And does not involve further numbing oneself to life and its vicissitudes.
Generally speaking, throughout the book, the authors are pretty negative about the idea that an adult child of a hoarder is going to successfully change the hoarder (hey, _that_ level of reality has been attained. Yay!). And they do acknowledge that it may be necessary for the child of a hoarder to limit or terminate contact with the parent. But equally, throughout the book they treat “estrangement” as an awful thing to be avoided. Needless to say, that sort of annoys me.
I’m going to continue reading for a bit, but may DNF this, as I have probably DNF’ed _Waste Land_.
ETA:
OK, DNF. I got into the next section, which is about depression and “behavioral activation”.
There’s an exercise, generate a behavioral-activation schedule.
“In a notebook or on a separate sheet of paper”
That sounds innocent enough.
“Generate a list of responsibilities that you have neglected...Make the list long and comprehensive; break each item down in terms of its constituent tasks. Do not become overwhelmed by the length of the list.”
If you are not laughing yet, well, good for you! Gallows humor is not one of your top tier unhealthy coping mechanisms!
I have a few responsibilities in my life (<— weaponized understatement, for anyone who parachuted in here via google). I’ve read a lot of books on personal organization, home organization, time management — I’ve even read GTD by David Allen like, a half dozen times. I can take a book on the topic I’ve never read, at this point, skim it, and describe how you can reframe the strategies in the book within the GTD framework. So I am entirely capable of reading the rest of that paragraph, and going on at some length about its suggestion to “put a star next to activities that must be completed before the end of the day” etc. and why this list making strategy might work for someone out there (honestly, virtually every Make a Haphazard List and Start Ticking Items Off approach will work for _someone_), and also why it will make things considerably worse for everyone else.
But you know, in case you were okay with the star for today, dash for end of the week, bullet point for the next month and heart next to stuff you actually enjoy doing, here is the next paragraph:
“The next stop is to plan the next twenty-four hours with attention to the list you generated...Write an hour-by-hour schedule, and be sure to include at least one enjoyable (or previously enjoyable) activity.”
Honestly, Fly Lady seems pretty reasonable by comparison (<— comparison intended to be humorous, and not taken literally, also not sarcastic).
Predictably, they then want you to put together a schedule for the week, etc. NOWHERE in here is there any discussion of Do You Actually Need to Do This. The depressed child of a hoarder is assumed to just magically “know” whether their overwhelming, unmet commitments actually should even _be_ on a list. Nothing here about urgent vs. important. Nothing here about, make a list of people to notify to say, oh, I suspect you’ve already figured this out, but I will not actually be showing up with cookies for the bake sale. Or whatever.
Instead: “As you complete the activities you have planned, it is likely that you will experience some relief from feelings of depression, because activity and productivity can be immensely powerful in this regard. Having a plan alone can serve as motivation for moving forward, but if you struggle in the moment to complete any specific task, try the next exercise.”
The next section is basically, okay, you can’t motivate to clean the house, so focus on the dishwashing. Can’t focus on that? Try just one dish. I don’t really understand how they think that you could possibly get through the above insane list making exercise, if they recognize that some people can’t get beyond washing a single dish.
“This exercise is intended to demonstrate that any task can appear less overwhelming if it is deconstructed and presented in palatable individual tasks.”
Allow me to pause here to chuckle — it is interfering with my ability to type.
If they had actually done a decent job on the list-making exercise, I would be more willing to cut them a little slack here. But they _did not_ do a decent job on the list-making exercise. And they have followed it up with platitudes — not literally, but you can hear them thinking loudly in the background — A Journey of a Thousand Miles is Eaten One Bite at a Time. Eating an elephant begins with a single step. Or something.
This is the kind of book you write when you want to say, If You Had Just Done As I Advised. This is the kind of book you write, when you want to sell to readers who do not have the problem in question, and you would like them to nod sagely at how good your advice is.
This is a terrible book. DNF.
Parts of the CBT (cognitive behavior therapy — yeah, you go with your kinky self, that is not what we are talking about here!) and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy, which I also have mixed feelings about) descriptions in the next portion of the book are straightforward. The only issue I had with them is what I have with lots of books about dealing with all kinds of difficult people. The books — if competently written — are suggesting that you can “improve” or extend or wtf your relationship with these difficult people and here’s how. But if you _actually follow_ the guidelines, and the person is actually at the difficult end of these difficult categories, you never actually had a relationship with that person (or, the person that you had the relationship with is loooooong gone, and the body walking around now is fundamentally someone else, sadly) and by following the guidelines, you will almost certainly walk yourself away from spending much time with them. Which on the one hand, duh, what you should have set out to do. On the other hand, a little dishonest.
There’s always a chance — who knows, maybe a good chance — that if you are reading one of these books, you really are a huge contributor to all kinds of problematic relationships, and if you really do what these books advise, you’ll experience really great improvement and meaningful relationships with the difficult people who drove you to read the book. But again, the presentation is a bit misleading if that’s the underlying issue. And hard to believe that that _is_ the underlying issue for children of hoarders. (Or, for that matter, readers of books about various kinds of personality disorders.)
About half way through the book, the authors spend a fair amount of time describing something called “barbing”, which I had not previously encountered. They didn’t invent it — while it isn’t the easiest thing to google, you can find studies using the technique in anger management studies. I wouldn’t say that any of the studies I read were particularly compelling, but generally speaking, meditation, visualization and desensitization stuff doesn’t have great research to back it up. Which isn’t to say it is worthless. Far from it. But I have some concerns about barbing in particular. If you have an anger management problem — if people doing routine peopley sorts of things around you lead you to say and do things that go viral on the internet — then ratcheting that anger response down would be beneficial. But a lot of people have anger that they _don’t_ act on, and they really should. They are being abused, and they should leave. They should report the person or persons. They should defend themselves and their stuff. Whatever is appropriate. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Get good advice from someone you trust in confidence before proceeding. Etc. Using a technique to instead muffle further that negative emotion signal that you have a boundary violation that needs to be addressed, well.
“In as much detail as you can, imagine your parent saying the words over and over again; it is expected that you will feel some anger as you do this. Repeat until you notice that you are more bored than angry.” Then you get someone to play-act it neutrally, then with an angry tone. “Continue with the repetition of the expression, until, again, you feel boredom rather than anger.”
The authors say this: “The goal is not to gain complete relief from the anger that you feel surrounding these thoughts, images, and expressions, but rather to gain exposure to the experience of being angry. This practice will empower you to experience anger without necessarily becoming drawn into angry behavior. If you are prepared to experience anger-provoking scenarios, with resolve to act in opposition to the feelings that these scenarios might evoke, you are on the road to acting in line with who you would like to be, rather than who your angry impulses will urge you to be.”
Maybe.
Here’s what I _wish_ had been included, and emphasized instead (maybe it appears later): When parent says anger-provoking Thing A, Respond B. Chain the desired behavior, rather than just being bored by Thing A. This is super important. If you know that some dickhead (possibly a parent) will predictably say Thing A to you, and you will become incensed, then take some calm time when no one is around to plot what you want to do in response. Rehearse _that_ after someone play acts Thing A. Otherwise, when the person does Thing A, you are going to basically be slightly bored ... and still not taking the action you wanted to take.
Take it from someone who has long since figured out that it is possible to become bored jumping off a bridge. Literally. And to decide to stop jumping off the bridge because of the discomfort of banging into the bungee cord. Rather than, you know, figuring out that actually going through life so numb to it that jumping off a bridge is what it takes to make you feel something, and then realizing, oh, I can stop really feeling _that_ too. Anger is there for a reason (for most of us, anyway). Figure out what your anger is motivating you to do — probably telling you that get as far away / spend as little time around the dickhead in question as possible, but other things are possible, too, like, you know, reporting criminal activity or suing someone for failure to perform on a contract or whatever — and program yourself to do that thing. I can say with a lot of confidence that _that_ feels really good. And does not involve further numbing oneself to life and its vicissitudes.
Generally speaking, throughout the book, the authors are pretty negative about the idea that an adult child of a hoarder is going to successfully change the hoarder (hey, _that_ level of reality has been attained. Yay!). And they do acknowledge that it may be necessary for the child of a hoarder to limit or terminate contact with the parent. But equally, throughout the book they treat “estrangement” as an awful thing to be avoided. Needless to say, that sort of annoys me.
I’m going to continue reading for a bit, but may DNF this, as I have probably DNF’ed _Waste Land_.
ETA:
OK, DNF. I got into the next section, which is about depression and “behavioral activation”.
There’s an exercise, generate a behavioral-activation schedule.
“In a notebook or on a separate sheet of paper”
That sounds innocent enough.
“Generate a list of responsibilities that you have neglected...Make the list long and comprehensive; break each item down in terms of its constituent tasks. Do not become overwhelmed by the length of the list.”
If you are not laughing yet, well, good for you! Gallows humor is not one of your top tier unhealthy coping mechanisms!
I have a few responsibilities in my life (<— weaponized understatement, for anyone who parachuted in here via google). I’ve read a lot of books on personal organization, home organization, time management — I’ve even read GTD by David Allen like, a half dozen times. I can take a book on the topic I’ve never read, at this point, skim it, and describe how you can reframe the strategies in the book within the GTD framework. So I am entirely capable of reading the rest of that paragraph, and going on at some length about its suggestion to “put a star next to activities that must be completed before the end of the day” etc. and why this list making strategy might work for someone out there (honestly, virtually every Make a Haphazard List and Start Ticking Items Off approach will work for _someone_), and also why it will make things considerably worse for everyone else.
But you know, in case you were okay with the star for today, dash for end of the week, bullet point for the next month and heart next to stuff you actually enjoy doing, here is the next paragraph:
“The next stop is to plan the next twenty-four hours with attention to the list you generated...Write an hour-by-hour schedule, and be sure to include at least one enjoyable (or previously enjoyable) activity.”
Honestly, Fly Lady seems pretty reasonable by comparison (<— comparison intended to be humorous, and not taken literally, also not sarcastic).
Predictably, they then want you to put together a schedule for the week, etc. NOWHERE in here is there any discussion of Do You Actually Need to Do This. The depressed child of a hoarder is assumed to just magically “know” whether their overwhelming, unmet commitments actually should even _be_ on a list. Nothing here about urgent vs. important. Nothing here about, make a list of people to notify to say, oh, I suspect you’ve already figured this out, but I will not actually be showing up with cookies for the bake sale. Or whatever.
Instead: “As you complete the activities you have planned, it is likely that you will experience some relief from feelings of depression, because activity and productivity can be immensely powerful in this regard. Having a plan alone can serve as motivation for moving forward, but if you struggle in the moment to complete any specific task, try the next exercise.”
The next section is basically, okay, you can’t motivate to clean the house, so focus on the dishwashing. Can’t focus on that? Try just one dish. I don’t really understand how they think that you could possibly get through the above insane list making exercise, if they recognize that some people can’t get beyond washing a single dish.
“This exercise is intended to demonstrate that any task can appear less overwhelming if it is deconstructed and presented in palatable individual tasks.”
Allow me to pause here to chuckle — it is interfering with my ability to type.
If they had actually done a decent job on the list-making exercise, I would be more willing to cut them a little slack here. But they _did not_ do a decent job on the list-making exercise. And they have followed it up with platitudes — not literally, but you can hear them thinking loudly in the background — A Journey of a Thousand Miles is Eaten One Bite at a Time. Eating an elephant begins with a single step. Or something.
This is the kind of book you write when you want to say, If You Had Just Done As I Advised. This is the kind of book you write, when you want to sell to readers who do not have the problem in question, and you would like them to nod sagely at how good your advice is.
This is a terrible book. DNF.