My granddaughter likes to watch a TV program called Hoarders. After a hard day at school, it allows her to relieve some stress by screaming “that’s stupid!” at the television. I usually read the news while grandmother and granddaughter engage in a session of mocking people who have made a total mess of their lives (literally speaking).
Hoarders is a reality program about extreme hoarders – which are apparently not slobs, but people with an actual mental disorder. Who knew?
Each episode features an actual person, who has filled their home to the ceiling with boxes, bags, papers, trash, and dirty dishes. Their homes are usually unimaginably filthy with rodents, non-functional plumping, molding walls, and rotting food.
Each episode also features a team of people who descend on the property to help the hoarder order, peace, and harmony to their lives. The team includes:
- Concerned friends and family,
- Refuse removal truckers,
- Hazmat technicians,
- Organizing experts, and
- A psychologist specializing in hoarding disorder – who is usually the target of my granddaughter’s wrath.
As the mob of laborers work to clear the home of everything from rusty appliances to human feces, the shrink sets out to “cure” the hoarder of their lifelong debilitating illness – in under an hour.
The therapy invariably consists of consoling the afflicted hoarder in a gentle voice, while exploring what past trauma caused such self-destructive behavior. It seems hoarders are never selfish slobs who refuse to give up their stuff to have a meaningful relationship with friends and family. They are one of societies’ countless victims, driven to a life of misery by someone else – hence, not culpable for the tons of trash they brought into their own home.
The other day I was perusing the most recent morally bankrupt interview by one of the Lindsey Clancy jurors, while my wife and granddaughter engaged in one of their weekly Hoarders ridicule-fests in the same room. That’s when I overheard the most asinine statement I’ve ever heard come out of a doctor’s mouth that wasn’t attached to “Doctor” Jill Biden. The therapist asked the hoarder to open up and, “Tell me your reality.” Huh?
Now, I’m an engineer, and I can tell you unequivocably, there is no “my reality” and “your reality.” There is only one actual reality. The laws of physics do not bend to one’s beliefs. I accept that people can perceive reality in different ways, and the mental health field has a term for people who perceive reality other than as it is – psychotic.
If a psychologist encourages her (it’s always a “her” on Hoarders) patient to believe in “their reality” she is encouraging her patient to embrace rather than overcome psychosis. And if a psychologist believes in fungible reality herself, she is also psychotic. And now I see why my granddaughter finds the program so entertaining. It’s like watching Wile E. Coyote run off a cliff while holding an anvil – because “his reality” doesn’t include gravity. For those of us who understand “reality,” the ending is always predictable, and often hilarious.
That got me thinking: How many people have been conditioned to think in terms of “their reality” versus “someone else’s reality”? That would explain a lot – such as why an alarming percentage of the population has come to believe that
- Gender is a choice,
- Murderers are victims,
- Words are violence,
- Manhood is toxic,
- Failure is noble, and
- Accomplishment is oppression.
How much societal damage has been done by the “tell me your reality” mental health “experts”?
In William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, the butcher says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” I would only add: “Don’t forget the Hoarders therapists.” Figuratively speaking, that is.
Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now on strike in Galt’s Gulch – which the locals call Idaho. He is a retired engineer who spent much of his career applying engineering principles to organizational development (yes, really). He has written for The American Spectator, Convention of States Action, and American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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