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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My parents and siblings are hoarders, and I am not. Parents had a lot of storage space so their actual living space was clear and you could walk around. But storage spaces are PACKED. At least 150 boxes of junk, stacks of old newspapers, etc.

How did I “escape” this outcome?[/quote]

If you boil it down to essentials, serious hoarding isn't about having not enough stuff in childhood, or about the example you had, or anything like that. It's about being unable to make decisions. When decisions are overwhelming, you put them off, and off, and off. Watch the extreme hoarding shows and see how the holder can't make rational decisions like "everything in this room has to go, or I lose the house" -- they have to touch each item, deliberate, and mostly can't make the call to let go.

That's about things like OCD and anxiety. These mental health traits and disorders have some connection to heredity, but not every child gets them. You might not be great at paring down or housecleaning if you didn't have a good example, but it's not going to make you dysfunctional. You can learn. Your siblings probably are struggling with problems you can't see and have no empathy for, especially because those ways of being aren't yours.[/quote]

NP. A different way to look at this is reflected in my household. 
My DH gets one room and it is a hoarder's paradise. It creeps out but for the most part is contained to that room.  He is anxious and his anxiety results in this desire to not make decisions. 
I am also anxious and my anxiety propels me into action, like decluttering.
We're both working on our anxiety but our default is different.[/quote]

Oof, I have the exact same situation: I'm an anxious doer, he's an anxious not-doer, he has a basement room that's upsetting but that's our compromise. Thanks for laying it out so clearly.

I have an anxious parent who is a hoarder. I don't think their dynamic is the same. I would describe the hoarder as an anxious doer, usually, and that's how they accumulated the stuff. [b]They can decide to get rid of stuff, but there's a need for control about what happens to the stuff (sale for enough $, or to someone specific, or used in a particular way). It's time consuming or impossible to make those things happen, so the stuff stays. [/b][/quote]

DP. That's a way of not making a decision. You can see that, right? It's the excuse, not the reason -- or over time, they could have spent the energy to work out those logistics. They didn't. [/quote]

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