Mental Hoarding Help

The intent of this article is to explain how excessive consumption of information can leads to paralysis. Solutions are offered to help become productive with excess information. This article is divided into two parts. First part is a personal history of my hording. In addition, I reveal how I came to realize there is such a thing as idea or mental hoarding. The second part offers a solution on how to reduce and eliminate mental hoarding. If you wish to skip a life story and read the solution, tips, and help for idea hoarding, skip down to How To Deal With Mental Hoarding.

My Hoarding – A History

The concept of hoarding is to acquire compulsively a certain object type or a wide range of objects even if these objects are not used or are useless. A pack rat is a term used to describe a hoarder. I can be a hoarder and have dealt with controlling this behavior for most of my life.

When I was a child my bedroom was packed with a massive amount of useless things. Then one day it dawned on me – and really it was an instant flash of insight – that I can clean my room and discard everything and start over. Riding that momentum I first photographed the packed, messy room (pictures I still have) then spent the day cleaning it with a friend. I do not have pictures of the result but I discard a large amount of stuff. This insight to discard belongings was based off the realization that most of the things in my bedroom belongs to a boy from last year – a person I no longer was. Having turned 12 or 13, I was entering a new phase of life filled with new thoughts and new experiences. The objects from childhood no longer represented me. They belong to a person who does not exist anymore. This understanding allowed me to detach from the objects and throw many things away.

Except my cards. My hoarding behavior became focused on sports cards and other collectible cards from TV shows and movies. I had binders and binders of these. Several years later I was introduced to a very fun collectible card game which my obsessive and compulsive hoarding behavior became focused on.  Very soon I became swallowed by this card game. I spent countless hours organizing and reorganizing the cards. It was madness.

Over the years I learned techniques to manage this hoarding behavior with this card game so that it does not control my life as it had in years prior. However, my hoarding behavior would reemerged briefly in other areas of life and I would begin to collect vintage computers, books, bottled drinks, plastic bags, cardboard boxes, rubber bands, hair, whiskers, bones, pencils, health bars (I had hundreds of bars) and I am sure there is more.  I would not say I was messy, I would just collect certain objects and store them in certain areas of the house for future use that never arrived. Learning how to manage my hoarding, recognizing it when it emerged and refocusing it on the card game or pinching the hoarding away by saying “No” to more collecting and discarding all the particular objects in question helped a lot but did not eliminate the behavior, whatever the root cause of it was.

One (ridiculous) solution to avoid hoarding I arrived at is to avoid having material objects. Currently I have far less than I ever had in my life. In fact, the number of things I have which I want to keep for various reasons, mostly sentimental, can be fit in the back seat of a car. Limiting ownership of objects is punishment however; scarcity is not a remedy.

A change in perspective on how to deal with common objects helped. By realizing that most common, useful objects are replaceable and that money is energy, I can reproduce an object quickly and therefore have no need to store one for future use. Collectible objects, a concept I am quite intimate with, are given away to others who can guard, preserve and persists the objects existence. The urge is there for me to be that person, but I no longer wish to be. Reducing the number of stored objects for future use freed up my life allowing me to be more engaged with the world around me.

A Thought About No Thought

I read once that objects are ideas manifested in physical form. Therefore, to preserve an object is to preserve an idea. I understand the theory, the creation processes, the aether and the form, but I to failed to realize at heart ideas are equally as real as objects (or more real). In this line came as a flash of self-realization that was made possible by meeting a particular person.

I read once that it’s possible to live in the present, in the now, to not cling to a past or a future. Here we have people who do not strive for control nor resists change. Here we have present awareness and contentment. Here we have joy that wells from within rather than from an external condition. Here we have a person who lets go, lives now and has a clear future path. I could go on in this scholarly book fashion but no amount of words read or tales told could have prepared me for the experience of meeting and seeing such a person.

I met such a person. In all regards the person was normal, behaved as socially expected, and spoke English. But when I made eye contact something incredible happened. In the eyes, deep into those eyes there was nothing there except what I perceived to be a white void. There were no walls, no barriers, no masks, no avoidance, just a pure, open connection. This was an intimate data connection with no rules, no force, no control. This is a connection with no dance, no flash, and no assumptions.  The past and the future dissolved away as I stared into the eyes. Nothing was said. Several times I felt like I should talk and so I did about whatever silly subject which came to mind that only conveyed useless information that distracted me from what was currently happening in the Now. Each time I spoke I very quickly I came back to the silence in the present found through the eye contact. I would say it was similar to looking and connecting with a plant or an animal, perhaps, except for one notable difference (besides the obvious like speaking English).

The energy intensified. It kept growing in me or between us – it was hard to locate the source. While the other person remained calm, I became ever more excited and filled with energy and soon I felt as if I were to burst. What I perceived to be this white void of the eyes soon became a glowing radiance of whitish light sprinkled delicately with some rainbow colors. Here was a mirror that was unbiased and without force continually magnifying my energy or our energy. After we separated, I was left feeling energized and more importantly, I left with a remarkable insight about myself.

For this person to be present and open without conditions in our meeting meant this person had let go of past ideas, future needs, social labels and had to have no willingness to control the situation. In doing so I witnessed present awareness and full one-on-one honest engagement.  To reach this same place, I need to be presently-aware by reducing mental clutter.

How To Deal With Idea Hoarding

Idea hoarding or mental hoarding is the continuous, complusive act of learning useless information. This includes the analyzing of events past and the obsessive projection and imagining of future events. With this a person becomes increasingly disconnected from the present. Idea hoarding is when our abstract thinking goes extreme preventing us from being happy right now in the present. Instead, we think we will become happy if a certain scenerio plays out tomorrow. Or, we feel we are unable to be happy right now because the way the past played out creating a misfortune. Along with obsessively dissecting and controlling timelines, another issue is the continual feed of new information creating momentary bursts of pleasure but where both – the information and pleasure – are not connected to the present moment causing disconnect.

How come I am not experiencing happiness right now? How come I do not experience present awareness? Because my head is filled with past memories and constructs of for future scenarios. I do not live now. I do not experience now. I am somewhere else, somewhere distant, somewhere you cannot reach me.

Where are you? Are you surrounded by the past or do you worry about the future? This powerful ability of abstract thinking can get out of control.

Here are three criteria to identify a mental hoarder:

1. You know a massive amount of facts covering a wide range of topics others would be surprised to learn.

2. You have difficulty dealing with spontanous and real world situations that are dynamic and rapidly changing.

3. Your intense need to control the future and past leaves you unable to maintain social contacts for extended lengths of time, you have difficulty connecting deeply and authentically with people, or your health is not vibrant.

Here are three tips to help mental hoarding:

1. Limit exposure to new information (input). More information is not always better. You do not need to know that extra piece of information. Do not overthink. Your gut reaction is right. Learn to follow it. Perfection is not always best. Learn to live with incomplete data. Life on the edge of your seat! It’s fun.

While I strongly support learning new things and ideas outside your box to expand your mind, spending hours and hours instead of one hour per day learning about subjects that have no direct impact in life is not a smart use of your time. Learning for entertainment is acceptable. We all need to relax and brainstorm. Entertaining yourself daily for hours on end with no intention of using it to service reality is not.

2. Prioritize learning (assimilation). Will this fact or book be directly useful to me right now? I do really need to know this? Stop seeking. As an idea hoarder myself, I know a lot of surface stuff about all sort of things. There are even a few subjects that I know deep level information about.  None of the information is useful right now. The reason I hoard ideas is because I save the data for the same reason material hoarders save things: it might be useful at some point in the future. When that point arrives I shall have exactly the idea or fact that is needed. Not only is this an example of living in futures that do not exist, but there is no priority or focus to what is being saved.  Focus on one subject and do it well. The more you spread out your focus, the less effective you will be when it comes time to act. Think of sports players. Categorize and focus.

3. Act (output, creation). Storing all that data does no one any good when it’s stuck inside your brain! We must practice input/output over and over. Absorbing ideas like a sponge is useless unless output is being generated that serves reality. That output needs to happen now. Right now! Not tomorrow or when you feel you know enough. Right now. Act, even if you stumble. When you learn something new, share it. When you learn something new, share it. Over and over again. Do not sponge – act. Use that incredible mind right now to serve reality. You are here for a reason, you know.

Final Thoughts

Idea hoarding creates mental clutter. Just as we have difficulty moving around in an object-filled room, we have the difficulty being mentally flexible when our minds are packed with data.  Free up room in the mind by slowing down the absorption of new data and the world will open up to you. Seeing the world as it is now is beautiful. Sitting back analyzing the past or hoarding for possible futures is not.

The more we idea hoard, the less aware we are of the present. By analyzing the past we remove ourselves from the present. By worrying about the future we disconnect from the present. When we remove ourselves from the present we become a witness to reality rather than an active participant. Sidelined, life passes us by.

The obsessive desire to understand the past and predict the future is an act of control and manipulation. Doing so we remove free will and the right of expression from others. While we do need to understand and take responsibility for the ramifications of our actions and of those of others, we do not control others nor can we ever understand the full spectrum of causality that led us, an event here.

Hop from rock to rock in the stream. Don’t stand in the middle trying to divert the stream. Appiciate the stream as a whole, not as indiviual pieces of water. Enjoy the flow of the stream instead of worrying about where it’s headed. Don’t worry about whether an obstacle will show up, but if you spot one you can hop.

The past and future do not exist. They are illusions. Idea hoarding to prepare for a future is the act of constructing a simulation to live in rather than living where you are now. Mulling over the past or analyzing the past is to construct a simulation to live in rather than living now. Idea hoarding and over-analysising creates a fantasty, an illusion, a simulation that seperates the dreamer from the current reality. A person may do this because they are not willing to accept their real reality.

Reduce the number of hours spent learning and trade those hours for activties that insert you into present reality, such as sports, dance, or connecting with another human. Stop being distracted by shiny new ideas and facts and instead stick to one, two or three subjects. Stop giving your attention away to information outside those subjects. Focus only on reading material that gives a better understanding of your prioritized subjects. Then produce material of some sort that contributes to this subjects depth and range. For every three units of information learned, output one. We are here to build reality, not look at it. Service reality, not yourself. Stop damming up information and let that river flow. To do so, you must exercise creative power let the river of information flow from you now to will water the minds of reality. Contribute.

The root cause of hoarding is an unwillingness to accept the present. Free yourself from the illusions of past and future. When centered in this moment you will notice that’s not so bad to get your feet wet in the river of life. There’s happiness here.

Conclusion: The root cause of hoarding is a resistance to accept the present. Whether it’s a feeling of inadequate or fear of accepting change, hoarders are removed from the present moment where life happens.