The Spiritual Side of ADHD and Hoarding

I interviewed Dr. Melva Green of the TV show “Hoarders,” who told me why we stockpile our stuff and how we can let go of it.

I had the opportunity to have lunch with psychiatrist Dr. Melva Green, an anxiety disorder specialist on the A&E TV show Hoarders. Have you seen it? There is something particularly frightening about this show to anyone who has the cluttery-type of ADHD. (I just made that up. Are there any other types?)

When I ask Dr. Green about the connection between ADHD and hoarding disorder (which was recently designated as a distinct form of mental disorder instead of a type of OCD), she says, “Many, many hoarders have ADHD, and all with ADHD are at risk of becoming hoarders.”

When I ask her why that is, she explains, “those with ADHD become hoarders by losing focus and moving on to the next thing before finishing the last one. This problem becomes pathological when their perception becomes so distorted they can’t see the whole picture. They may be focused on a lamp, a piece of clothing, a painting, and lose track of their supportive relationships.”

I ruminate, as we share French fries, about my own closets, shelves, and basement. Without children around, the house now seems full of, well, just stuff. A lifetime — three lifetimes — of memories, collections, current and former passions are stacked or stuffed on bookshelves, in drawers, in boxes, and sometimes in dreaded piles. Yet all of these things are full of meaning and will take a certain strength to part with. I mention my confusion.

“It’s OK,” Green says compassionately. “It makes sense. Cognitive disorganization leads to physical disorganization.” She dips into the barbecue sauce and continues. “You have to be honest with yourself. Don’t take it personally that you have problems. We all need to learn what we do well, and get help with what we don’t know. The only difference between hoarding and collecting is… staying organized!” Which is not easy for those with ADHD.

Green acknowledges the difficulty and talks about how those with ADHD need to connect with others who see them as whole people, and who get their difference without pathologizing them. “Medical treatment doesn’t acknowledge the spiritual side of the disorder.” When I press Dr. Green — who has been intuitively gifted since she was a child — about the spiritual side, she talks about the “aha” moments when we begin to see the connection between our internal and external states.

“But there is a difference between a breakthrough and a transformation,” she says.  “A breakthrough is when the light bulb goes off and you get perspective on your problem, whatever it is. But actually creating sustainable change in your life happens step by step, one thing at a time.”

When you watch the TV show, the psychiatrists, therapists, and counselors appear for just a few minutes to help hoarders get to the breakthrough that allows movers to clear the junk out—but the true challenge comes after the show is over. Transformation doesn’t always happen because, she says, “It is a practice. A spiritual practice.” I ask her what makes it spiritual, and she says, “Spiritual, in that you find room to breathe.”

Dr. Green co-authored the book Breathing Room: Open Your Heart by Decluttering Your Home, which is full of tools to address the spiritual side of clutter. In the book, she talks about the difference between hoarders and regular clutterers, in that hoarders can’t prioritize which objects are of greater value than the others. “When faced with a decision to choose between a tangle of wire hangers and a childhood photo album, a hoarder will panic. It’s a near-impossible decision for them to make.”

The ADHD connection is clear here; prioritizing does not come naturally to us, and choosing can be agony. But sometimes we do know how we feel. When we are clear about what we want, our strength of focus flows through us and we can move mountains.

Dr. Green’s last bit of advice is scientifically proven. “Meditation is crucial. It helps us be clear.”

The World Is ADHD Enough

What if James Bond had ADHD? Would The World Be Enough?

Once, while the guys were watching a James Bond movie in the other room, the out-of-context gunshots and explosions were rubbing me the wrong way, and I got to thinking about how people say “society encourages us all to be ADHD.”

Before I understood the medical side of ADHD, I agreed with those who say we are all more distracted, hyperactive, and impulsive, because of all the screens in our faces. In the time that I have been on the planet, the Internet went from a sci-fi idea to a thing you could surf to a basic need like beds and sheets and water and cars (all of which you can now buy on the Internet, of course). There were kids, in my childhood, who would watch TV for hours each day, but they were neither normal nor the norm. Today, nearly a third of American children live in a household where the television is on all, or most of, the time.

Ours isn’t, but we may, at any given time, have up to seven screens on in the living room between all of our laptops and cell phones. We laugh over the fact that going to movies is the only time our family of three ever has a one-screen experience anymore.

But some things are just crazy-making. To me the world itself seems to have gone completely ADHD whenever:

• Google Ads suggest I buy things I just bought
• The phone rings in the middle of a text conversation
• I get a text while I’m in the middle of writing another text
• I go to Facebook to check one thing and get lost there for hours

Still, we don’t see real life reflected back in art and the media. On TV shows, people walk around their houses without the constant soundtrack or chatter, having dialogue where one person finishes a sentence before another starts. Where they do one thing at a time, deliberately, with a quality of presence that is impossible to achieve in real life when there’s something interesting on TV, a ping sounds on the phone, or someone starts laughing at a meme thread they just have to share.

And there’s James Bond, sauntering through explosions. Really? Talk about hyperfocus! Do you ever see him frazzled? I’d like to know how he would handle frazzled, the way it happens in my crazy world, the real crazy world where people don’t chase each other through the streets with guns but do get hysterical because someone lost their keys or forgot their bag or couldn’t get started or missed a detail or a blew a deadline or just didn’t think to fully communicate.

We are surrounded by chatter and challenge. The guns fire and men utter threats and die and I put my hands over my ears and think: It's up to us as women and mothers, as adults, and as human beings, to filter out all the chattering voices, to create calm amid the chaos. Creating spaces, and times where our families can be peaceful and centered and thoughtful takes effort. Turning off the screens, holding the center, insisting on eye contact, that seems like hard work these days. But with or without ADHD, we need to nurture our values, tend to our relationships, and find life beyond the adrenaline rush.

31 Flavors: the Torment of Choice

Choosing is agony…but listen to your gut, not your tastebuds.

Back in the olden days, there were only nine channels on the TV set, and only one or two of them showed cartoons, so I was able to watch for hours without falling into despair. A trip to Baskin-Robbins, on the other hand, was agony, and they only had 31 flavors to choose from!

While the rest of my family sat there enjoying their chocolate fudge, their mint chocolate chip, or their orange sherbet cones, I tried to decide if I wanted pistachio more than black walnut or piña colada more than bubble gum. I would so avoid making the wrong choice, I ended up with two flavors on a cone so opposite in flavor that they tasted awful together.

If little choices were this difficult, how on earth would I face the big ones? Where to go to college? When and whom to marry? What career path to take? And, God forbid, what if I had to navigate an unplanned pregnancy?

Everyone struggles with choice in America. At the supermarket, we find 81 varieties of crackers, 285 kinds of cookies (21 of them chocolate chip), 51 kinds of bottled water, etc., etc., and we have to make decisions on all of them.

They say there are two kinds of decision-makers: Maximizers and Satisficers. Maximizers try to make exactly the right decision, get the most out of every choice, and therefore get as much information as they need before choosing. Satisficers take what comes to them, settle for less, and are happy with what they have. Clearly, I was a maximizer as a child. Entering Baskin-Robbins, a satisficer might order the first kind of ice cream she sees when she walks in, or just choose a flavor she knows she likes every time.

There are pros and cons to each type of decision-making, but in the big picture, maximizers suffer a higher psychological toll, becoming more stressed, more anxious, and more disappointed when their expectations aren’t fulfilled. Maximizers tend to make more money, but satisficers feel more satisfied in the end.

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that people with the inattentive type of ADHD tend to be satisfiers and those with the hyperactivity molecules tend to be maximizers, but the good news is, we have a choice in how we make choices. And different decisions call for different styles.

The two types of decision-makers reflect our brain’s two decision-making processes: rational and intuitive, or conscious and unconscious. Those of us with racing brains assume we are doing the right thing to work our pros and cons lists, to shop in three places, or to compare all the different qualities of the things between which we are choosing. Curiously, this is true for small but not large decisions. When we read the labels on our shampoo bottles and comparison-shop for smaller items, we make decisions we are happier with. With bigger decisions, we need to listen to our gut. Studies show that people actually are more satisfied with their decisions when they take in all the information and then turn their minds to other things, making their final decision with a gut feeling.

People with ADHD have to be extra-careful not to become stuck in theparalysis of analysis and the shutdown of overwhelm. This is when we need to learn to trust our intuition. We make big choices best when we get all the information our rational minds can handle…and sleep on it. Literally.

I now go into an ice cream store and pick a flavor like a normal person, because someone helped me realize that it doesn’t really matter. Powerful words. The worst possible thing that could happen to me if I make the wrong choice is… I would still be eating ice cream.

Ablution Performance 101

Simple hygiene is sometimes outside the scope of ADHD.

I have this amazing girlfriend, whom I shall call Gladiolus. We met inkindergarten and became close friends in high school when we agreed that one shouldn’t wear plastic in one’s hair. (It was the ’80s.) She has a delightful sense of humor and a fully engaged mind. Over the years, we have assembled a group of delightful, engaged human beings around us, and we have, as mothers, made some more.

Whenever I travel to her house for a visit, I am in awe of her bathing sensibilities. Her various bathrooms are always clean and appointed not only with soothing colors but interesting and uncluttered arrangements of vials and doo-dahs, all of which, upon closer inspection, have interesting and meaningful and beautiful things on the labels, including organic ingredients, funny sayings, deep thoughts, or comic insights.

Gwendolyn’s bathrooms reveal the orderly thinking of a composed mind. The steps of her ablution are evident in the accessories: matching shampoo and conditioner, milled soap inside a loofa, and a neatly hung razor under a mirror in the shower. The products make it clear what one’s shower tasks are, without any distractions. Around her bathtub, beautiful containers full of scented bath products and sample packets are artfully arranged near neatly stacked jars of salt and sugar scrubs and a wooden bristle brush. All of these are emblems of her personal motto, which you find in the signature of her emails: “Be well, find joy, and exfoliate.”

Yet for all this attention to little luxuries (a bath at her house will take me hours, because I have to open every jar and smell every product), Genevieve can prepare herself in minutes flat and be ready for the day. Her ritual takes her into the bathroom for short dips between making food and getting dressed. By 7 a.m. the dogs are walked, breakfast is ready, her eyebrows and jewelry are on, and all she needs to do is take out the hot curlers and put on her shoes.

These are the thoughts that run through my head as I get out of the shower at her house and rummage under the sink for a towel. She showed me where they were when I came in, but doing things in the right order is never my strong suit; I put foundation on my face as an afterthought. I am grateful for the feminine culture we’ve shared over the years; my own ablution performance went from a loathsome childhood routine to a pursuit of pampering and rituals of self-care.

Gwyneth and I raised sons together. We both provided them with soap and toothpaste and the things boys need to grab in the shower. I tried for years to impart the “5 things” bath/shower routine that took me 34 years to come up with (shampoo, condition, wash face, shave legs, and I know there was a fifth thing, oh yeah, soap up the armpits) to Enzo, but the bottle of teenage cleanser never got any emptier, even when he swore he’d washed his face. I learned to consider it a triumph that he remembers to brush his teeth nightly and flosses when told.

At 18, though, he really does smell nice. He has finally found an ablution routine that makes his brain click. I have to give Old Spice credit for manufacturing creative, funny matching shampoo and deodorant flavors for young men. And I have to give Gardenia credit, too: It was her son who turned Enzo on to “scent layering,” a new fashion frontier for boys.

Impulsive? Instinctive? Intuitive? Or Inspired?

Learning to trust the voices in your head. 

BY KRISTEN CAVEN

Because of the way our brains are wired, people with ADHD have the potential to access creativity in more powerful ways than most people realize. Long before it was defined as a disorder, many great artists, thinkers, explorers, and leaders through the ages struggled with ADHD symptoms, driven by something inside that looked, on the outside, like madness.

What is that thing inside that drives us, the thing that on the good days doesn’t feel like madness? It is enormously important for all human beings to learn to tune into their intuition, to trust their gut feelings, but this can be a challenge when your mind has so, so, so much to say. In our moments of genius, we are moving with grace while trusting our instincts. But trusting our instincts can also get us into trouble.

What all these motivational I-words have in common is that they are all connected with the subconscious. What is the difference between impulsivity, instinct, inspiration, and intuition? When some sparkly idea calls to you, something that aligns with what you already know, or with questions you have, pursuing it feels irresistible, inspired. But children who feel inspired and act accordingly are hard for teachers and parents to keep up with, and need to learn to control their impulsive behavior. We help them to do so by getting them to slow down and become conscious of their actions.

It’s the same with adults. The difference between random idiocy and reactivity, versus inspired, powerful action, has to do with knowing yourself.

Do your impulses come from curiosity, or are they reactions to feeling unheard, bored, or anxious? Are they part of a greater theme? Or are they habits held over from an earlier time in our lives? If we take the time to unravel those urgent feelings, we can find out if they have a deeper purpose or need to be released. But with ADHD, sometimes those urgent feelings are part of the background noise, and we need to calm them, not unravel them.

All humans struggle with creativity and self-expression. Creativity is a spiritual urge as much as sex is a physical one, and on these paths we want to be inspired, not impulsive. Yet pursing these paths also calms us, keeps us sane, and gives our life meaning. In some countries, mental illness is recognized as “unheard muse” issues, a.k.a. blocked or stifled creativity. Recognizing and responding to our callings makes and keeps us sane.

Clearly there is a difference between following your dreams and following every whim that comes into your head. One creates a rich and purposeful life; the other takes us in circles and prevents us from carving a deep groove. Those of us with neurological tendencies toward the disorderly mind of ADHD need to become keenly aware of our own motivations, and use all of our tools—rituals, routines, and rewards, personal supports, nutrition and exercise, medication and medication—to choose between the thoughts that take us toward our callings and the ones that keep us stuck.

Slow down and listen to your dreams and ideas. They may be lofty or humanitarian or creative. Or they may be self-interested, like making money or having nicer things. Whatever they are—graduating from college, having your socks match, or finishing the book you started—becoming conscious of your motivations will make them real. When your impulses align with your inspiration, you can trust your instincts and thus develop your intuition.

And that is called using your imagination.

Third Time’s the Charm

There’s an art to getting out the door and staying married—and I discovered it. Or, I should say, my husband did.

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

I was so proud of myself, in my late 20s, that I had finally gotten my leaving-the-house foibles figured out. When my boyfriend (and-future-father-of-Enzo), "Dave," moved in with me, I remember crowing about how awesome it was that I could now get out the door with only three trips back inside.

"I remember crowing about how awesome it was that I could now get out the door with only three trips back inside."

— Kristen Caven

His reaction surprised me. It was critical, not supportive. “That’s unacceptable,” he said, glowering at me from the passenger’s seat, where he had been sitting for the past 15 minutes. Actually, I think he laughed and said, “That’s ridiculous. When it’s time to go, you go.” Whatever he said, his strict attention motivated me to start keeping my keys in the same place, to have two pairs of glasses, and to put lipstick on in the car.

I was so proud of myself in my 30s when I recognized how often I made it out of the house on the first try. When there was dressing up involved, or a small child in tow, I’d make allowances, but, by golly, I had really improved! “Dave,” however, who always knows where his stuff is, and who mystically follows the same routines at every dressing and departure, was still less than impressed.

His constant frustration became a source of enlightenment when he met my Great Uncle Zazen.

Uncle Zazen is married to Enzo’s Great Auntie Twinkle, who, when my mother asked her to be my godmother, embraced the “fairy” aspect of it and made me a wand. She is a highly sane person who knows she talks too much, has trouble keeping track of things, and needs to dance or ice skate every day in order to get anything done. (She is also of the generation that does not believe in ADHD, so we are not going to go there.) We were at a family wedding, clustered in rooms together, and all trying to get ourselves out the door. “Dave” noticed Uncle Zazen sitting calmly on the couch, reading a book. He was startled by his serenity.

My uncle explained that, as a practicing Buddhist, he had learned not to try to control her flow but to relax and let it happen. When he is ready to go, he explained, he sits down and relaxes. He does not get up off the couch until Auntie Twinkle is on the porch… or actually in the car and it is started (a sure sign she has the keys). “Dave” was agog. This moment changed his life, and our marriage. Now it doesn’t matter how many times I have to go back. He is happily engaged in a pastime of his choice, with a few more minutes to watch or play.

And I rejoice at how far we have come, each of us: Me in the realm of being more deliberate and prepared, “Dave” in the realm of being patient and peaceful. One less struggle is one more triumph.

Kristen Caven is a mother and a writer, a mover and a shaker, and a creative force in her community. To her, ADHD stands for “Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive.” Learn more at www.kristencaven.com.

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Ablution Performance 101

Simple hygiene is sometimes beyond ADHD ability

Life in the Fast Brain | posted by Kristen Caven

I have this amazing girlfriend, whom I shall call Gladiolus. We met in kindergarten and became close friends in high school when we agreed that one shouldn’t wear plastic in one’s hair. (It was the ’80s.) She has a delightful sense of humor and a fully engaged mind. Over the years, we have assembled a group of delightful, engaged human beings around us, and we have, as mothers, made some more.

Whenever I travel to her house for a visit, I am in awe of her bathing sensibilities. Her various bathrooms are always clean and appointed not only with soothing colors but interesting and uncluttered arrangements of vials and doo-dahs, all of which, upon closer inspection, have interesting and meaningful and beautiful things on the labels, including organic ingredients, funny sayings, deep thoughts, or comic insights.

Gwendolyn’s bathrooms reveal the orderly thinking of a composed mind. The steps of her ablution are evident in the accessories: matching shampoo and conditioner, milled soap inside a loofa, and a neatly hung razor under a mirror in the shower. The products make it clear what one’s shower tasks are, without any distractions. Around her bathtub, beautiful containers full of scented bath products and sample packets are artfully arranged near neatly stacked jars of salt and sugar scrubs and a wooden bristle brush. All of these are emblems of her personal motto, which you find in the signature of her emails: “Be well, find joy, and exfoliate.”

Yet for all this attention to little luxuries (a bath at her house will take me hours, because I have to open every jar and smell every product), Genevieve can prepare herself in minutes flat and be ready for the day. Her ritual takes her into the bathroom for short dips between making food and getting dressed. By 7 a.m. the dogs are walked, breakfast is ready, her eyebrows and jewelry are on, and all she needs to do is take out the hot curlers and put on her shoes.

These are the thoughts that run through my head as I get out of the shower at her house and rummage under the sink for a towel. She showed me where they were when I came in, but doing things in the right order is never my strong suit; I put foundation on my face as an afterthought. I am grateful for the feminine culture we’ve shared over the years; my own ablution performance went from a loathsome childhood routine to a pursuit of pampering and rituals of self-care.

Gwyneth and I raised sons together. We both provided them with soap and toothpaste and the things boys need to grab in the shower. I tried for years to impart the “5 things” bath/shower routine that took me 34 years to come up with (shampoo, condition, wash face, shave legs, and I know there was a fifth thing, oh yeah, soap up the armpits) to Enzo, but the bottle of teenage cleanser never got any emptier, even when he swore he’d washed his face. I learned to consider it a triumph that he remembers to brush his teeth nightly and flosses when told.

At 18, though, he really does smell nice. He has finally found an ablution routine that makes his brain click. I have to give Old Spice credit for manufacturing creative, funny matching shampoo and deodorant flavors for young men. And I have to give Gardenia credit, too: It was her son who turned Enzo on to “scent layering,” a new fashion frontier for boys.

Kristen Caven is a mother and a writer, a mover and a shaker, and a creative force in her community. To her, ADHD stands for “Awesomeness Development & Happiness Directive.” Learn more at www.kristencaven.com.