Hoarding Disorder: Creativity and Procrastination

Courtesy of The Center For Anxiety

Try the following behavioral experiment of creativity: In two minutes, write down as many uses that you can think of for a disposable plastic water bottle cap. Go ahead, give it a try, we'll wait ...

Okay, how many uses did you come up with? Only one? Three? Five? Ten? Did you consider that the bottle cap can be used as a paper clip holder? Or that gluing several together can create a soap dish? How about hanging them in a noisy wind-chime to dampen the sound? Or using the ridges on the sides to create designs when painting? Click here for some more ideas, but the bottom line is that if you are creative enough, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of uses for even the most common, basic household items.

What does this have to do with hoarding, you may be wondering? While Hoarding Disorder is a serious psychiatric problem characterized by maladaptive emotional attachment to possessions, marked emotional distress and avoidance, as well as significant occupational and social/family dysfunction, one thing that many hoarders do extremely well is come up with creative uses for objects. To quote from Drs. David Tolin, Randy Frost and Gail Steketee's famous book Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding "Many of the people we have met with hoarding problems are highly intelligent, clever, and creative people ... When a person who hoards holds an item in his or her hands, all kinds of wonderful ideas and opportunities come to mind." (pg. 33)

While creativity is certainly not a psychiatric problem - on the contrary, in many cases it is a great blessing - the plight of hoarders lies in procrastinating and ultimately never finishing the myriads of creative projects they initiate. Instead of working on one project at a time, hoarders continuously come up with new creative ideas without bringing them into reality. The result, is an apartment or house (or in some cases, several houses!) filled with unfinished projects which ultimately make it impossible to get things done.

The lesson is clear: The blessing of creativity needs to be balanced by tempering the curse of procrastination. 

To make this practical for hoarders and non-hoarders alike, try the following exercise: The next time you come up with a creative idea, BEFORE you get started on the task, stop and generate a master to do list - create a document that breaks down everything that would be required to accomplish the idea into sequential steps. Then, realistically evaluate whether you can or cannot accomplish each step at the present time. If so, go ahead and proceed with the creative idea without procrastinating! If not though, put the idea on hold until you are ready to bring it into reality.