Healing Requires Change on Many Levels
Fully confronting your hoarding tendencies can lead to deep ancestral healing.
Overcoming hoarding behavior requires a lot of physical changes, such as removing things from your living space and stopping or slowing down how many items you acquire. There are also the psychological shifts that are required in order to address whatever your root cause is for attaining and retaining so many things.
Beyond the individual emotional shifts that you’re making, I firmly believe that changing your hoarding ways also is connected to making big, sometimes scary, and often subconscious breaks from generations-old patterns that you might not realize exist.
Old-School Hoarder
I came across a mention the other day about a possible ancestor of mine from many centuries ago who was a “curious and diligent” antiquarian known for his “extensive collection.” I thought to myself, “So that’s the mofo who started it all.” That got me thinking about the ancestral nature of hoarding tendencies, which led me to create this post.
Family Hoarding Habits Die Hard
Before I started clearing out my parents’ place, I had no clue how many people in my extended family had compulsive collecting tendencies. As I was doing the cleanup, more and more stories were revealed to me about people’s hoarding behaviors. I think it was finally coming to light because they realized it was safe to share this information without being shamed.
(Editor’s note: Fuck unnecessary shame. Phantom “shame” keeps too many people in the dank, dark, overcrowded Shame Closet and prevents them from getting the support they need and crave.)
Hoarding and Ancestral Wounds
Maybe the folks in my family knew, even before I did, that I was the one who would call bullshit on perpetuating outdated patterns once I managed to recognize how I was unconsciously continuing the hoarding saga. Maybe they shared with me because I was willing to hold space for them, to listen, and to dig into WHY some of these patterns existed.
A few of the patterns were driven by the usual things like sentiment and a sense of family obligation. A whole lot more of them were driven by pain, scarcity, anxiety, trauma, and a need for self-protection and escape.
Like I said, this is ancestral healing work.
I Want to Break Free
If you undertake this work for yourself or a loved one, you too will likely come face-to-face with some family traumas, deep-rooted fears, beliefs, and value systems that have been taught as gospel for generations.
Rejoice, because this is your opportunity to put those beliefs to the test.
Yeah, it can suck having to wade through the darkness and explore the shadow side of your family. The kick-ass part is that you can weigh up for yourself whether those beliefs hold any value or whether they can be laid to rest, jettisoned, eradicated, and kicked to ye olde curb.
How refreshing is that?
Challenge the Past, Shape the Future
Some traditions should be gleefully obliterated, such as the ones that perpetuate pain, depression, and resentfulness. Some (literal and figurative) things are never worth hanging onto.
You can liberate yourself from things that have been imposed upon you. You can acknowledge your family history while deciding to leave a different legacy.
Healing Yourself Heals Your Family
When you make conscious shifts to deep-rooted, inherited behavior, you heal yourself, you heal the ones who came before you who weren’t empowered to make those changes, and you provide a clean slate for those who may come after you, regardless of whether they’re your children or whether they’re others who are inspired by your example.
You can seek help for yourself without shame and can establish traditions that are meaningful to you. This work may continue throughout your life, and it’s well worth doing.
Things can be different if you decide that you want them to change.
Hope and joy,
Rachel
