In truth, a hoarder who loses part of all of their hoard without consciously choosing to get rid of it themselves, is just more stressed out than they were when they were forming the hoard in the first place… it’s like messing with the nest of a really territorial bird. You will get pecked HARD.

I’m hoping for “misguidedly trying to help” not just “getting rid of someone else’s stuff because it bugs you”. But who knows.

If he’s a full-fledged hoarder in the psychological sense, he may have attachments to the objects themselves, or to the collection as an intact whole, that CANNOT be broken by taking his stuff away out of his side or without his involvement.

Hoarders whose hoards are removed without their consent or without their help and input, such as those subject to “forced cleanups” like on “Hoarders” (which is basically exactly what Roz is doing here, just a lot more slowly and more surreptitiously) tend to suffer anxiety as a result.

They can have psychological breaks, it can cause strain on the relationships with those who have removed portions of the hoard (which is seen as an intrusion or outright betrayal), and can, and often does, cause a backslide or increase in hoarding behavior.

Think of it like this: if someone went into your room and started taking shit, or throwing it in the garbage, wouldn’t you feel a little distressed? To a hoarder, the hoard is part of their nest, as it were, and messing with the nest creates a defensive reaction at best.

Leaving aside my own experiences, if you don’t believe me, give this book a read: Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, (by Gail Steketee and Randy Frost). It does a pretty good job of showing the potentially disastrous results of a cleanup effort that doesn’t involve the hoarder themselves.

If they were actually doing a real intervention, forcing Jacob to address his attachment to each object in turn and talk him through why he needs to let go of a good chunk of them, that might actually work.

But just randomly having a lamprey-mouthed kitty swallow it?

Yeah, this is Not Going To End Well.

The really galling thing is that she knows what she’s doing will hurt others, she just doesn’t care.