What do you think when you hear the word hoarding?
I think of keeping physical objects.
Even the dictionary implies the physical collection. The definitions of hoarding from the Merriam Webster dictionary:
“The practice of collecting or accumulating something (such as money or food)”
OR psychologically described as:
“The compulsion to continually accumulate a variety of items that are often considered useless or worthless by others accompanied by an inability to discard the items without great distress”
However, another definition of hoarding can be related to emotions as well. Hoarding is an emotion vial in the NAET emotions kit. But the connection to emotions did not fully click for me until a particular session with a patient. Let’s call this patient BT.
We had cleared the emotion of hoarding in a previous session, but it came up again in the current session. During the NAET breathing passes for hoarding, BT remembered positive experiences after the previous clearing. BT mentioned that he had difficulty letting go. In the past, BT would easily get angry at his wife or kids. He was not able to change that attitude until after the previous treatment with hoarding. He told me the story about his wife who was talking to her mom late into the night. He woke up to use the bathroom and found his wife was still on the phone at 2 am, almost 2 hours later! In the past, he would get angry, argue with his wife, and not be able to let go. This time, BT recognized that what was done was done. There was no point in getting angry at her, ruin her morning or his. He was able to go back to bed and be ok with it. He did not continue to harbor any anger towards her as he has in the past. He also noticed his patience with his kids was better too.
In this case, hoarding was BT’s inability to let go of his emotions and beliefs. Therefore, the difficulty of letting go may be related to this word both emotionally and physically. So, if you have difficulty letting go of your thoughts and emotions as well as physical items, you may want to look at treatment for this particular word. Remember words have power and energy to them. Do not let these emotions accumulate with no outlet! The emotions can build up like a dam inside the body waiting to be let out.
“Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.” ~Yehuda Berg