Oprah's tips on overcoming compulsive hoarding

Oprah has some good tips on overcoming compulsive hoarding, but I disagree with them. All of these tips involve, in some way or another, fighting yourself.

Tip number seven is Be Brave, and number eleven is Be Strict With Yourself.

Hoarders and people who live in environments ranging from cluttered to squalor tend to be hypercritical of themselves and depressed. The last thing someone who's critical needs when they're trying to throw away something is to have another voice in their head telling them to be braver, to be stricter with themselves!

The path to genuine change isn't through being your own worst bully. It's through taking care of yourself, and through being gentle. You've beaten yourself up long enough!

You can use the EFT points and set up phrases to heal the hurt. If you can't bear to throw away a gift given to you by an old friend who abandoned you, being brave isn't going to make you feel any better, and throwing it away won't heal the empty feeling inside. Instead, tapping on the pain, the sadness, the loss, the abandonment, and the loneliness- the root causes for your hoarding behavior- and letting them go gently, is the way out.

If you change yourself, your surroundings will start to reflect it. If you change your surroundings, you will change them back to reflect yourself.