Yes! All his little interruptions!! I was wishing their mics would shut on and off during their times to speak. At times she couldn’t even go for more than a sentence or two in a row till he would jump in. Every time he started to lift his mic to his mouth, I wanted to jump through the tv screen and grab it from…

Yeah you’re exactly right. I am mid-thirties and I have been managing a retail operation for a decade. I have always felt weak because I am such a girly-girl and so adverse to conflict. But these last ten years, I have gotten a much thicker skin (at least when it comes to customers). I’m still best at killing…

Yes. As a kid I used to hate how much crap she got over her hair and how everyone talked about it. Now every time I see her, I think to myself, “Her hair looks so good right now!”

YES. At that point in the debate, when I realized he was prowling around behind her and then staring her straight in the face while he talked - I thought, “damn, she has ovaries of steel!”

Boo yah!

Yeah, I also shared a room and a (full-size) bed with my sister until I was about 10. My parents did have to fight our night-owl tendencies to get us calmed down and into bed, but we never minded being in our own room. The only time one of us went into our parents’ room was after the occasional nightmare. I am…

I would stop liking sex with anyone, no matter how hot he was, if I wasn’t ever getting off!

Okay, I confess that I get what you’re driving at, but my reaction is: why does it matter the age of the victim? Why don’t you say something like, “Not a great idea to raise a son who thinks it’s okay to hurt others?”

Yeah, I have a few coworkers at work who are bit like Ron Swanson - men’s men but also deeply caring under the stern shell. I happened to get a big bruise on my upper arm right about the time I moved in with my then-boyfriend, and each of them privately checked in with me about it. They weren’t prying or acting…

Big props for taking care of yourself!!! I don’t think that the anti-anxiety meds I take make a dent in my hoarding tendencies, but they sure do give me the strength and calmness to battle it.

Yes. I am a hoarder but not lazy at all - I am known as one of the hardest-working people at my company, I will do physical labor for hours on end if someone asks me to help them with something, I volunteer to do roadside trash pickups regularly. Yet my brain works so weirdly when it comes to dealing with my own…

It’s funny, after growing up in a hoarding home, my sister and I went in different directions. I struggle with hoarding constantly, whereas she became a neat freak OCD and lives in a tiny house so that she can keep everything spotless.

Yes exactly. Luckily, when my mom’s hoarding got severe, we lived on the water. So in the winter, when the pipes would freeze and break, we were able to go fill up buckets in the creek and use them to flush the toilets.

One thing that has helped me keep my hoarding in check is actually, ironically, spending some time working at a thrift store. It helped me get a healthier grip on reality as to the value of things.

Good for you! That must have been so tough - I’m really glad you had some success.

Yes, taking pictures has helped me be able to let go of some things. It is one small strategy that can help with a portion of things.

One of my most important strategies for keeping my hoarding in check is to have friends over every few weeks. That forces me to constantly deal with stuff so it won’t pile up.

Having been through this, I think the only way to tackle it early is to just resign yourself to the inevitable. You can’t stop this, you can only save money to pay for the inevitable cleanout. You can get therapy for yourself so that you are calmer and stronger when they die and you finally have to deal with all of…

The people who get featured on Hoarders are just the worst extremes. But the fact that they are socially isolated is not actually the cause of the issue, it is just a factor that enables their illness to get worse. In fact, many people who are low-level hoarders (stage 1 or 2 - i.e. they have too much stuff and it…

It’s a mental illness and can run in families. Folks think it has to do with having grown up in the Great Depression or something, but it really just has to do with how your brain is wired. My mother was a Stage 3 hoarder, and I now consider myself a hoarder just like some children of alcoholics know that they have…