Emotional Hoarding

Hoard:

1: to lay up a hoard of

2: to keep (as one's thoughts) to oneself

I have recently discovered my child is a hoarder. No, she is not not stock piling old clothes, crafts, or even chickens. Rather, I found a pile of toys on her top bunk, and under her sisters bed. My older sister was here the other day and was trying to give Isabella a pep talk about sharing with her sisters (she was crying about having to share her Barbies), and explaining how a certain little sister used to take her toys! Us little sisters are such a pain :) Anyway, I have noticed her hiding toys in her bed, but yesterday the pile was out of control. I found two Barbie dolls, three Polly pockets, Buzz, Woody, two Jessie's, Dora, Boots, Rapunzel, among a bunch of other random small trinkets. Its funny how random crap is a treasure for her. Plus, I found old broken leaves and rocks in her "jooly" box (jewelry box). She calls them her special things. I started to think about why she would keep these things. But its simple, to her these have meaning. To me they are trash.

Have you seen the people on TLC living in mounds of stuff? I know they are crazy, I know they have serious issues. It makes me so sad, I cant watch. Usually at one time or another they lost everything (most of the time a loved one died), so now they hold on to EVERYTHING. Literally every wrapper has meaning. Although I don't hoard things, well I may hold on to things I shouldn't!  I am not a hoarder with material objects, but I think there are times I can hoard my feelings. Because of past hurts from relationships I often push a feeling or emotion back. With the intention of sharing the emotion later with my husband. I don't always do it intentionally. I usually have intentions of going back and opening up.

  For my daughter, a pretty leaf is her own perfect little treasure that she can tuck away for a later time. What she doesn't realize is that the leaf dies, falls apart and is even more meaningless than before. Much like our hidden emotions it rots, falls apart, and dies. Therein the same problem or issue still exists, and is not resolved. I am an out spoken person, but often emotionally hoard to avoid conflict in my marriage. So I am making a point to tell my husband when something bothers me, or hurts me.