Write An Essay On Hoarding

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien approaches the topic of how the weight of both tangible and intangible baggage affects people’s performance. This story explains that emotional and physical baggage is a burden that if not dealt with could be lethal.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, or so the saying goes. What this classic idiom portrays is the idea that value is something entirely subjective, what is useless to one person is highly valued by another. Furthermore, the use of the word “treasure” implies a value so great it is almost incomprehensible; a treasure is something so valuable and important that it is cherished and held dear. The difference between something of value and something that is a treasure is generally an emotional attachment or reaction to the treasure.

This quote from the movie supports my reasoning for her unnecessary collection of useless things. As the movie goes on you can see her huge collection of useless gadgets and other random things. She clearly has no intent in getting rid of any of it. In a few years she collects a huge amount of junk and stores it where nobody else can find it. In the book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, the difference between just collecting and hoarding is that, "When people collect things, they typically want to display them to other people.... Hoarders want to keep things hidden because of the shame they have (Frost).”

Hoarding is defined as the acquirement of, and inability to discard worthless items even though they appear to have no value. Hoarding behaviors can occur in a variety of psychiatric disorders and in the normal population, but are most commonly found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Those people who report compulsive hoarding as their primary type of OCD, who experience significant distress or functional impairment from their hoarding, and who also have symptoms of indecisiveness, procrastination, and avoidance, are classified as having compulsive hoarding syndrome (www.ocfoundation.com). An estimated 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States are thought to have compulsive hoarding syndrome.

A. There is no "cure" for compulsive hoarding, meaning there is no treatment that will make the problem go away completely and never come back at all. However, some treatments may help people to manage the symptoms more effectively.

← EDIT FOR THIS TO BE CLEAR “The Things They Carried” presents artifacts and identifies their connotation. For example, a simple pebble picked up by Martha on the Jersey shoreline and sent to Jimmy Cross as a good-luck token became much more significant once in his hands. His interpretation of the gift was that it was a romantic symbol of her truest feelings for him. Alas, O’Brien writes that Martha stated, “It was this separate-but-together quality, she wrote, that had inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days, where it seemed weightless, and then to send it through the mail, by air, as a token of her truest feelings for him”

This paper will describe the nuances of hoarding disorder and investigate the opportunities of treating hoarding disorder with person-centered theory.

People carry things with them all the time on a daily basis. They might be physical, emotional or spiritual things. Some people could carry a traumatic past while others simply carry a bag of groceries into their house. The things one carries defines them as a person and brings out their qualities as well as their defects. Some people might think of those things as burdens while others see them as a way out of reality or as something to push them forward, something to believe in.

Like in the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the thing I carry are “largely determined by necessity” (2). Just like in the book, there are very few things that I carry that just because I want to. Most things I carry are things I have to carry because of school or my life. I carry a lot of things with me in my everyday life that are both physical and emotional. Some of these things include my driver’s license, my stress because of school and from planning for college, and the memory of losing my grandpa Glenn.

People hold on to pieces of jewelry, furniture, and other symbolic collectables that is passed through generations. These things can remind a person of a loved one that is seen as being priceless.

In the short story “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien wrote about the experience of war and the feelings young soldiers felt during their long days of travel. During the story he keeps referring back to the things the soldiers chose to carry in their packs. Some of these items included necessity items like grenades and ammunition, but they also carry sentimental items like love letters and pictures. These items help the reader better understand each person for who they are and help us to understand the physical situation the soldiers are in. In “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien describes the item the soldiers carry in their packs and the emotional weight they carry to help give a better

George Carlin, during the early 80’s, had a routine that was a witticism on the importance of having "personal effects". These “personal effects” or items that a person accumulates through life symbolize their identity. The impractical things carried in pockets, purses, bags and suitcases that make people feel "as themselves" while in strange surroundings. These things are so essential to identify the person these “personal effects” represents. If asked how to identify someone it would take on a completely different meaning. Name, social security number and birth dates are the items mostly associated with someone’s Identity. This phenomenon can be oppressed by the replacement of possessions by removing the things that make a person feel complete and replacing them with items that represent a new identity. Tim O’Brien’s story entitled “The Things We Carried” illustrates how people carry objects that represent their identity. Some objects are tangible like weapons and items for personal protections and other are intangible like fear and guilt. No matter how or what these objects are they hold the key to one’s identity. This story gives us an introspect of an unfamiliar person’s identity is through physical characteristic, mannerisms, or the objects that used for personal reassurance.

People Need to Recycle In the United Sates, where the population is inflated every year. The amount of space for landfills decreases every day. The need for recycling should not be asked, it should just be done out of habit. Everyone in America needs to recycle, to help the lamdfill problem, help the environment, and help produce new products from recycled goods. In America there is about two-hundred and eight tons of residential and commercial trash generated a year, 4.3 pounds per person a day (Prichard 1A). This is an overwhelming amount of trashed produced yearly. When people recycle this number can be drastically cut. But many people do not practice and use

I remember my first semester here at the University and the dark halls of the Bates House Residence Hall. Many a party was concluded with an idea for what to do with the endless piles of cans that had congregated on the floor. One idea, I remember, was to wall someone into his room and another was to see how many we could stand on end without toppling. But, we usually just ended up throwing them in the trashcans in our refuse room. Sometimes out of the five trashcans in the room set aside for trash disposal, three or four would be completely filled with hundreds of cans of various beverages. Upon further contemplation, I can also remember the small, blue bucket that was thrown

We don't have to be a genius to be aware of global environmental mess we created over the