I do...many of my fellow friends who have shops overflowing with "good
stuff".

In my own case, I see it as a very slippery slope....one great thing
after another can follow you home until the doors to the shop won't
shut.

Sometimes...no many times...you just have to say "No".

Your thoughts?

TMT


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2790669&page=1

Medical Mystery: Compulsive Hoarders
A Psychological Compulsion to Keep Everything, Even When It Ruins Your
Life
By CECILE BOUCHARDEAU

Jan. 16, 2007- - We are all pack rats to some degree. We hoard,
collect and buy more stuff than we have room to store.

But what if something in our brains made us incapable of throwing
things out? Janie Allocca and Lorraine Brennan both suffer from a
psychological disorder called compulsive hoarding -- an urge to hold on
to even the most mundane objects, even when they take over their lives.


Watch "Primetime: Medical Mysteries" Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET, and go to
ABCNEWS.com during the show to diagnose a real medical mystery.

Lorraine Brennan has been hoarding for nearly 20 years. She lives in a
two-story house in Massachusetts with her father, son and fiancée.
Most rooms in the house are cluttered, and some are even unusable. The
bedroom-office that she shares with her fiancée is overrun with stuff
they tried unsuccessfully to get rid of at a yard sale. Lorraine's
purse is bursting with junk mail and receipts.

Brennan's hoarding is not only ruining her life, but affecting her
entire family. Her son can't bring friends home from school. Brennan
and her fiancée have been engaged for eight years, but he hasn't been
able to commit to marrying her because of the clutter.


'There's No Place to Sit Down'

Many hoarders are also compulsive shoppers. Janie Allocca has
accumulated so much stuff that she uses her own house as a storage
facility and lives with her mother.

"I remember collecting, and keeping, and hoarding things since I can
remember," Allocca said. "And now I am just living around the piles and
piles I need to get rid of."

"I have so much stuff that my house is totally unlivable," she
continued. "There's no place to sit down. I can't get to the kitchen. I
can't have anyone over for tea even though I have everything for tea.
My collecting is taking up the space where I normally would live."

There's a fine line between simple clutter and extreme hoarding. Most
hoarders, observers say, are physically incapable of throwing things
out. They can't live in, or use, rooms like the kitchen for their
intended use. They also experience extreme distress from their
condition.


The Brain of a Hoarder

Hoarding is currently considered a subset of obsessive compulsive
disorder, but that may soon change. New research is finding that
hoarding may be a unique disorder completely separate from OCD.

Dr. David Tolin, director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the
Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., has devoted his career to
studying what goes on inside the mind of a hoarder.

"At the moment, compulsive hoarding hasn't been fully defined by the
psychiatric and psychological communities," he said. "One of the things
that we wanted to do was to understand some of the brain mechanisms
behind compulsive hoarding."

Allocca is part of a study Tolin is conducting to see which parts of a
hoarder's brain become active when they are faced with making
decisions. She is hooked up to a brain-scan machine and asked to look
at pieces of her mail and decide whether she wants them to be thrown
out. She then must watch the mail get shredded.

At this point, two parts of a hoarder's brain become active. The
brain's orbitofrontal cortex is involved in decision making and causes
a hoarder to process this experience as a punishing one. At the same
time, the hippocampus of a hoarder actively searches for memories about
the object. The hoarder tries to remember the object: what it is and
why they saved it in the first place. By contrast, people without
hoarding problems just don't think about the object that much.


'A Painful and Effortful Process'

"What we find is that the brain is acting very, very differently when a
person hoards," Tolin said. "When the person is trying to make a
decision about what to throw away, it seems that the person who is
hoarding, is processing this activity as if it is deeply punishing."

"The person who hoards is going through a very, very effortful search
of their memory to try to think of as many things as they can about
this item before they make the decision," Tolin added. "What this all
amounts to then is a painful and effortful process of decision-making,
that you and I might take for granted."

There is no cure for hoarding, and there is no medication to treat the
condition. Right now, cognitive behavioral therapy is the only way to
help hoarders make decisions and deal with their emotions.


Getting Help

In Beth Johnson's "Clutter Workshop" in Hartford, hoarders and
clutterers practice throwing out possessions they have grown attached
to. Johnson also takes her clients on nonshopping -- or nonacquiring --
trips to teach them not to buy things they don't need.

"I try to help them see the larger picture and how this item won't fit
into their life," said Johnson. "If you have a jam-packed house, if
you're adding to it on a weekly or daily basis, you're basically
defeating yourself."

Dr. Randy Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College in
Massachussetts, focuses on helping hoarders make their homes
clutter-free.


"One of the things we know about hoarding is that the beliefs people
have about their possessions are so powerful, that it's very difficult
for them to get out of this behavior," said Frost, who is also author
of the upcoming book "Buried in Treasures." "If the person throws
something away and experiences distress, and does it again and again,
eventually, they won't have that extreme emotional response, throwing
something away."

Frost held a one-on-one session with Brennan to see if he could help
her. After a few hours, she was able to throw away receipts and a few
pieces of junk, but, as with most hoarders, there is still a long road
ahead.

One major motivator for Brennan is the possibility of losing her
fiancée if she doesn't clean up her home. When asked if she thought he
would really leave, Lorraine said, "I don't want to find out. I don't
want to end my relationship. I want to do better. I want to make it
work. I don't want to live like this anymore. I really don't."

Dr. David Tolin and Professor Randy Frost are co-authors of a self-help
book called "Buried in Treasures," to be published on February 5th.