Recently I spent an afternoon with a friend who is a hoarder. He had me over to his place to help him overcome his problem of papers all over, an inability to function within his environment & accomplish things. What I found was a chaotic mind & a problem too great to solve with an afternoon of sorting. At the end of the day, he decided that the value of my help & time was $125 plus the promised dinner out. As I've said, I work by donation rather than charging a fee.
What I ended up doing for him was life coaching & counseling. I had to gently speak the problem to him. He was aware that he's officially a hoarder & that his environment is not healthy or functional, but he needed to hear someone he respects say it in order to squarely face the issue. I was also able to help him see that his mind is as cluttered as his home & that each affect the other. He is cautious & has papers in triplicate for any eventuality that may arise, but those very things keep him from functioning. It defeats any purpose. As it is, he wouldn't be able to find what he needs if he needed it. He gets entirely caught up in details in his mind, & in notes & papers all over. This stops him from making any progress on almost everything, & the problem just gets worse. I had to explain the problems in detail as they affect him & his environment. I then had to spell out how exactly to go about getting out from under all this. I had to give him examples of overcoming adversity to show him that all is possible. I assured him that he can change the situation & gave him a full action plan in workable baby steps. I taught him how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time is the key. I taught him about small, steady progress. I assigned him 3 files a day, 5 days a week - to eliminate or weed out unnecessary papers to reduce the amount in his file cabinet so he has room for the truly necessary ones. He works, does volunteer work, & takes care of the affairs of an elderly relative so his plate is full. Instead of letting that keep him stuck as it has, my assignment gave him a plan to get a little done each week. This allows for progress without burden. And when you make progress in one key area of your life, it can have a positive effect on all others. I also gave him the assignment to use a box & place all items from the room into the box as encountered. He was then to put the things from the box in their proper place when he left the room. That teaches "do it now" in little ways. Again, with a chaotic mind & space, "do it now" but in little bits is the way to retrain yourself. I also expressed that he needed to just do one room at a time, from one point to another until it's done. That eliminates the chaos of doing a little here & a little there. Nothing gets accomplished that way because it's too random & unplanned. Chaos & clutter requires regular work & discipline, a plan that you work. It's got to be a workable plan. You can't take on too much at once or you'll quickly become overwhelmed & quit. And you have to be able to see progress. At the moment, I forget what else I taught him. I will continue to work with him by phone & email for awhile, reinforcing the messages & answering questions & concerns, checking progress.
During one chat break he asked me what he'd done to deserve this loving attention from someone like me! What a great compliment! Here I'd been telling him some truths he'd been reluctant to face & that was his reaction. But I was speaking the truth in love. I did it gently & with all the kindness I could while still getting the message across. I did it from my heart & with Divine Guidance. Of course, I'd prayed about it on the way over. I can always tell when I'm being guided vs. when my own mind kicks in. My mind doesn't very often, & never when I'm truly counseling people. That happens more when I'm in long conversation with friends or family. My reaction afterwards is funny to me in retrospect. I end up thinking "what was that load of BS?" regarding what I'd just said. I always feel bad about it afterwards, too. Usually it's nothing important - I have quite an active guilt conscious. So I don't go back & fix it because there's truly nothing to fix. But I don't feel good. It happens when conversations go on too long & start really getting "out there." If you've ever experienced that, you understand what I mean. When I counsel people my feelings are entirely different. I feel graceful & loving, Spirit filled, & the words, help, & counsel just flow out of me. It's a lot of what I usually experience when writing these blogs, only more so. I also experience this flow when I teach. I teach, counsel, & coach all kinds of things.
One of the things I'm trying to say is that when you speak the truth, or when you speak your own truth, in love, it's always the right thing to do. That's work of the Spirit, of God, & you/we are given what to say. This requires there to be no personal agenda, no ego in the way. There is a difference between speaking the truth & speaking your truth, by the way. I was speaking the truth when I told him he's officially a hoarder & has a chaotic mind that causes this. It falls more into the category of speaking my own truth when I simply told him that I'd been sexually abused as a dependent child but had learned to heal & grow & overcome the affects. My message was that if I can overcome that, there's hope for him to overcome his problem. Speaking your own truth usually refers either to your own personal religious or spiritual beliefs, or confronting those who have wronged you, whether or not it was intentional. No matter what kind of truth you're speaking, if you do it in love & purity of intent, you're doing the right thing. How it's received is then of less importance than the doing of it. Yours is the telling. The receiving & response isn't yours to control or therefore own. When I speak of my own beliefs I'm very careful not to try to dictate or convince - those are control efforts vs. sharing in love. I also make sure I express that these are my beliefs, what I believe in for myself. Most of the times I spoke my truth to my mother - confronted her about the abuse, it was just that - a confrontation, & not from love. The final time, I spoke my truth in love. I told her that although she hurt me too deeply to ever fully express & that the damage was widespread & lasting, I knew she had loved me & not done it knowingly. I told her I forgave her & that I would put it behind me, not continue to have it come into our interactions. That was speaking my truth in love. At that point, my only motive was assurance & expressing forgiveness. I changed my behavior toward her by no longer bringing anger into my interactions with her. None of that means I had to then embrace her & put myself back into it all. She is unchanged, as narcissistic as ever, so I protect myself from further hurt & stress by limiting all contact with her. I've made sure she's well cared for, where she gets all the attention she needs in the particular way she needs it. I am not unloving or uncaring when I visit her, but I very seldom do. I haven't withdrawn my attention as punishment. I'm simply doing what I need to do for myself. You don't heal from the flu & then deliberately get in the face of someone who has it. So too, you can always speak your truth or the truth, in love, without obligation to the other except the delivery. By delivery, I mean the purity of intent, lack of ego, motive of love.
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