A sliver of space left on a mattress, narrow winding pathways carved through clutter and precarious piles of newspapers – this is just a small glimpse behind the curtain of a person living with a hoarding disorder.<\/p>\n
Jess, not her real name, navigated a turbulent childhood which she said manifested itself in adulthood as a “paralyzing anxiety” when faced with difficult situations.<\/p>\n
“I feel my environment has always been out of control and that’s part of the problem,” she explained. “It’s an inability to deal with things.”<\/p>\n
Jess, who lives in north Bristol, said her problem with clutter began innocently through accumulating books in a bid to become more “self-reliant” after moving to university to escape her difficult home life.<\/p>\n
As the years passed her collection morphed into a hoard that was too “overwhelming” to face – every room in her flat overflowing with boxes of paperwork, food, packaging and clothing. <\/p>\n
On one occasion, her parents turned up unannounced on the doorstep for a surprise visit but she could not bear to let them in. <\/p>\n
“I felt absolutely dreadful, I was so embarrassed” she said. “In that moment, I felt the pain of not being able to be who I wanted to be.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sliver of space left on a mattress, narrow winding pathways carved through clutter and precarious piles of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":{"0":"post-212812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}