Clearing a Path

Like many people living with hoarding disorder, Treena’s behaviours began years before anyone noticed something was awry. After a difficult upbringing, she derived a sense of comfort and safety from the things that she held onto. “I’ve gone through a lot of trauma in my life, so (hoarding) did feel safe,” Treena says. “But it was also the attachment to things,” she adds, describing the strong emotional connection to belongings that separates hoarding from other compulsive behaviours. “I didn’t want to get rid of things. I wanted to keep them if they were useful and I also had a core belief that I wasn’t ‘worth it.’ So I could feel better about myself, I’ve held onto things for the life I was imagining for myself, the dreams I had.”

Treena’s behaviours worsened over time, and after struggling with undiagnosed post-partum depression for two years, her hoarding began to put her health, and that of her son, at risk. Treena reached out to the Office of Children and Family Services because she was worried about taking care of her son due to her mental-health decline. Treena also knew she needed help with hoarding — it took many years to find support but thanks to a referral from a support worker at the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton, that’s exactly what she found at the Hoarding Disorder Foundation of Alberta (HDFA).

Minding the Gap

While the International OCD Foundation estimates that hoarding affects approximately three per cent of the population — which translates to roughly 150,000 Albertans — there is a lack of resources when it comes to addressing the disorder. That has a lot to do with the misconception that hoarding is just a type of “messiness.” But for practitioners who regularly encounter the disorder, it’s clear that the why of the behaviours is just as important as the what.

“It’s an anxiety disorder and it’s characterized by very, very strong attachments,” says Terri Bailey, a counselling therapist specializing in hoarding disorder and co-founder of the HDFA. “There’s a problem with saving, where that attachment is so strong that it’s hard to let go of things. But there’s often also a problem with acquiring and bringing things into the home excessively, and so you can end up with an environment that really isn’t safe or functional.”

Getting to the root of those attachments is at the heart of Bailey’s work at the HDFA, which she co-founded with her partner, professional organizer Stacy Walker. “We were working with clients with some similar challenges and we didn’t quite know how to support these folks,” Bailey says of her early experiences offering services to people living with hoarding disorder. Bailey and Walker initially recognized the need for services while facilitating an outreach program through the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). After that program lost its funding, they had the idea to form a peer-support group facilitated by and for people living with hoarding disorder.

That was over 15 years ago, and today, the HDFA offers a drop-in support group, referrals to like-minded service providers, informational workshops for community members and professionals, and one-on-one support as funding allows. The HDFA also offers education about what hoarding is and what it isn’t. While the commercial success of shows like Hoarders have increased the public’s awareness of the disorder — it’s no coincidence that the American Psychiatric Association recognized hoarding as a distinct mental condition at the height of the program’s popularity in 2013 — those programs also define hoarding by the most extreme cases, in distinctly unflattering terms. In Bailey’s experience, however, the reality of hoarding can seldom be distilled into a one-hour timeslot.

“It’s certainly on a continuum,” Bailey says. “Not everybody’s home looks exactly the same. “We find that there’s a lot of misconceptions … not realizing what an extreme anxiety problem it can be,” she adds. “People often have quite derogatory views of folks who struggle with hoarding, and really misguided ideas about how to support somebody with hoarding.” One of the goals of the HDFA’s work is to assist individuals with tackling the very real health and safety concerns associated with hoarding. Whether it’s blocked emergency exits, a proliferation of fire and injury hazards, or increased incidences of infestations, hoarded environments often present tangible, and even fatal, risks to the people living in them.

The HDFA also looks to address the psychological roots that often underlie hoarding disorder. While the exact causes of the disorder are complicated and unique to each individual — it may in part be genetic, with hoarding tending to run in families — there are links to past experiences of trauma, abuse and loss. Hoarding may exacerbate those factors by isolating individuals from friends and family, both figuratively and literally.

The HDFA helps individuals unpack those core issues by centralizing lived experience and encouraging small, consistent steps to bring their spaces to a baseline of livability. It’s an emphasis on slow, sustainable progress that, in Treena’s case, is ongoing and continues to be transformative. “You’re changing the way you think about things and the way your brain works,” Treena says of the HDFA’s approach, which is about practicality, not aesthetics. “You’ve had these beliefs all your life, so there’s not a quick fix.” “I was very judgmental, even about myself, and I’ve learned that I don’t have to be that way,” she adds. “I’m understanding it better and having more compassion for myself, which helps me have compassion for others. That’s what our group is, it’s very compassionate.”

Empowerment Over Treatment

Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) has been supporting HDFA’s work to address this complex issue for the past three years. This year, ECF provided $9,300 to host virtual and in-person weekly hoarding support groups, and in 2024, granted $80,000 to fund the organization’s Executive Director position. In 2023, ECF provided a $15,000 grant to enable HDFA to partner with Sage Seniors Association and CMHA to co-develop a trauma-informed response strategy for people living with hoarding disorder.

“Through a trauma-sensitive lens, it’s a collaborative, coordinated response where there’s a multitude of tools to help with the hoarding crisis,” Bailey says, describing the partnership’s multi-pronged approach. “If you can imagine the hoarding crisis at the centre (of that strategy), there’s all of these different things around it that we need to support folks … We need to be all working together so that we can respond in the most efficient, sensitive way possible, so that people can get help before it’s a crisis.”

Through the support of the ECF grant, the HDFA, CMHA and Sage Seniors Association have facilitated sessions and conducted research, and successfully completed the framework for a comprehensive coordinated community response for those affected by hoarding in our city. While the implementation of the initiative is still in its early stages, the goal set out in the grant proposal has been achieved as the organizations begin to bring the plan to life. “This initiative reflects the best of what community collaboration can achieve,” says Serena Banman, Grants Assistant at ECF. “Having seen the effects of hoarding disorder within my own family, I’m especially moved by how this partnership brings together expertise from mental health, senior services and grassroots advocacy to create a compassionate model of care that could transform how we respond to hoarding in Edmonton and beyond.”

The strategy’s framework is centred not just on treatment and healing, but genuine empowerment — for people living with hoarding disorder, as well as the friends, family and practitioners supporting them. And although the process of encouraging personal and communal development might not be quick or pretty, the folks at the HDFA wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We want people to practice being able to let go of things and to be able to do it themselves, and that is quite a long process,” Bailey says. “We want people to really uncover what’s going on underneath, to help shift some of those beliefs and create more capacity to be able to be uncomfortable. And so it takes a while, but that’s our favourite way of doing things.”

This story comes from the Winter 2025 Edition of Thrive Magazine.

Read the full issue.