I attended a workshop recently in which the presenter, talking about clients’ thoughts, said, “Content is garbage!” His topic was ways to help clients reduce anxiety, and he said that focusing on the content of a person’s thoughts–the story, the interpretation, the “why”–is counterproductive.
This presenter is well-known for his work with anxiety. He showed an impressive filmed demonstration in which he used his techniques to help a client recognize that her anxiety is controllable. As a counselor, I can see how his approach could be a life-changing breakthrough for some clients.
But there were two problems.
First, this presenter wasn’t speaking to a group of therapists. This was a conference for professionals, mostly organizers and coaches, who work with chronically disorganized and hoarding clients. The few therapists in the room could be expected to recognize the limitations of this approach, particularly with our client population, but those without mental health training were placed at an unfair and potentially harmful disadvantage.
The second problem: Content is not garbage to our clients. In fact, this memorable exclamation carries a heavy emotional charge of its own for our clients who struggle with their attachments to objects. At first, many in this audience thought the presenter was saying that our clients’ belongings are garbage. Once we realized that he meant the content of their thoughts, it was less offensive, but the idea still didn’t sit right with many of us.
We can’t address hoarding or even the relatively simpler problem of chronic disorganization without addressing content–both the cognitions (thoughts) and the emotions attached to the disorganized or hoarded materials. It is ineffective and often harmful to tell a client, “It doesn’t matter why you’ve kept it, you just have to get rid of it” or “It doesn’t matter why you feel anxious about change; you have to just change.” A person can’t understand her or his own mind without reconciling the “why”; to charge ahead with change that tramples that “why” is nothing more than a forced cleanout.
Content is not garbage–it’s gold. Our challenge is to help clients recognize that the value they perceive in their excess belongings does not reside in the items … it resides within themselves.
Linda Stanley
October 4, 2011 at 2:41 pm
How great to document this! I can’t imagine not “talking” with a client/potential client about the “why” before even deciding “if” I would take on the challenge. Case in point, a recent client, who was uber organized (I’m talking about closet separator dividers between short skirts, business skirts, long skirts, skirts as part of a suit, etc… Until.. about 1 1/2 years ago… The home was beautiful! But, behind each closet door, each cabinet door, and in the garage-those places “guests” don’t usually see, there was a cacophony of pushed/shoved in items-bursting at the seams, if not for strong latches they would have popped open. How did she get from there to here? How could I begin to rectify the situation, without it being a “forced cleanout” without finding out the why? Without that information… the scenario would just rebuild itself, probably more quickly that before! Thankfully, I was able to get her to open up about the changes in duties at work, and how she was just now accepting those changes, and “talking” with the owners about a true need for more staffing, and getting positive agreement=light at the end of the tunnel! That coupled with her son deciding to “settle” down in the same 1,000 mile away place where he’d just graduated from college and her daughter having finished community college locally, and now living 100 miles away at university, had contributed to her “not wanting to bother” until it suddenly became overwhelming! She’d begun to make the first steps, with the talks at work & affecting change there, and had continued the process, by establishing an agreed by all schedule of visits both ways with her grown children. She is now much more content. She’s reestablished boundaries over her own possessions, no longer “filling up” her children’s rooms with unneeded items, to supplant the loss of the children that once filled the rooms. Her home is now 90% back to normal, which only leaves the garage, & it’s on the schedule! A true success story, that wouldn’t have happened without knowing “the why” Content is NEVER Garbage!