JUNE
13, 2005 --
Caveat
-- these are just random thoughts of a lay person, based on
personal experience. Just some personal thoughts are here expressed,
not prescriptions for particular solutions concerning the subject
matter.
If you know someone with a clutter problem and plan to help the person, it
might be wise to make sure that nothing is left in the open your friend
really needs to save. Learn from this writer's experience. A few items were
left on
a top shelf and they were no longer there after clutter had been removed. Really
important items need to be put away, or the clutter-clearers will remove them,
no matter how high the shelf.
And a piece of clothing left on a chair might be regarded as something to be
removed.
Clutter situations make it real easy to learn who your very, very good friends
are (again, huge thanks Howard and Debbie Jonas, and Gary Pontelandolfo, among
others) -- and who just might be a bit insensitive, if not callous to your
predicament.
It takes very special, kind, patient people to understand that clutter-based
anxiety could well keep the individual from proceeding on his own. A good friend
-- someone activiely helping the clutterer is not just a mere friend -- helps
the clutterer out of his sense of stymied isolation.
Last week, the day after LPR mentioned clutter-based anxiety, The New York
Times reported a study, primarily sponsored by the National Institute of
Mental Health, that more than half of Americans will be mentally ill during
their lives. The disorders were broken down into "Any anxiety disorder," "Mood
disorder," "Impulse-control disorder" and "Substance
disorder."
The article by Benedict Carey noted that "On the other side are psychiatrists
who
say the estimates are inflated."
LPR found no definition of disorder in the Times report. Can the affected
individual otherwise function in society with the "disorder?"
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The listings
under "Any anxiety dsorder": are:
Panic disorder
Agoraphobia without panic
Specific phobia
Social phobia
Generalized anxiety disorder
Post-traumatic disorder
Obsessive-comp[ulsive
Separation anxiety
And under "Mood disorder" there appear:
Major depression
Dysthymia
Bipolar I or II
Dr. Ronald C. Kessler, a professor at Harvard Medical School and reported to
be "the lead author of the survey" was quoted as indicating that the
survey
covered a "very wide range ... with the equivalent of many psychiatric hangnails."
Well, one should be able to function in society with a psychiatric hangnail.
But what is a psychiatric hangnail?
LPR wonders if the old saw how we might be susceptible to colds when our
resistance is low might apply to an anxiety situation. Anxiety might, LPR thinks,
arise from indecision, uncertainty -- actual fear. It is LPR's experience that
fear is not "irrational," not without basis in fact for the individual
found to be a clutterer.
Very real threats might fall on the clutterer, including threat of eviction.
If the individual resistance to anxiety is low, such threats can, LPR believes,
be devastating.
LPR has a hunch that perhaps, along with medication, active help and boosts to
the morale from good friends, help increase one's resistance to anxiety -- including
overcoming possible weight loss, and loss of sleep that hardly helps one build
resistance to
physical or mental vulnerability.
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