078 I Grew Up with a Level 5 Hoarder Mom

Living with a hoarder parent isn't just messy—it's traumatic. In this eye-opening episode, Calissa shares what it was really like growing up with a level 5 hoarder mother who also showed signs of narcissistic personality disorder. From the overwhelming clutter and filth to the shame of never being able to invite anyone over, she reveals the emotional, mental, and physical toll it took on her childhood.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We were never a happy family. My mother just wants stuff. All of it just gets thrown into a pile. There's no organization. It's very, very intense. It's literally floor to ceiling stuff. And I was forced to share a room with my brother because of her hoarding. I graduated college and never got that closet. It's the risk that there's a possibility they could look inside and they could see what the reality of her facade is. My dad and I will joke about how she acts like a toddler when you take her out in public. It's tied to OCD. Instead of working with fear, work with confidence.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Kalissa, welcome to Multispective. I'm super excited to have you here on air with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Why don't you start off by just telling us a little bit about where it all begins for you. Where are you from, your background?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

So I live in Indiana in the United States. I grew up in a relatively small town, super rural. My parents are actually from New York around Buffalo area, and they moved to Indiana a few years before I was born. So I was very isolated from my extended family, my cousins. When I was younger, I kind of immediately knew that there were some issues in my family. We were never a happy family. We were always arguing, always having some sort of tension. And I was a big problem. I have sensory issues. And so my mother would force me to wear clothing that she wanted me to look cute in and that sort of thing. And I would have meltdowns because I would be overstimulated. They were uncomfortable. I would be crying having meltdowns. because my tags and my clothes and I would get spanked or punished physically for being overstimulated and that sort of thing. And I think that shaped the way that I viewed the subsequent issues that arose in my home.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So was it just you were the only child or do you have any siblings?

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I have a younger brother. He is two years younger than me. So I'm 26. My brother is 24. Like we don't have a very close relationship nowadays. We never really did the way that my parents handled him versus the way that my parents him and my brother were vastly different. And so it led to two completely different experiences. And it's just, I don't hate him. I don't wish any harm on him. It's just, as him being a safe person for me, he's not going to ever be able to achieve that position,

SPEAKER_00 2:56

I don't

SPEAKER_01 2:57

believe.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Do you feel like a lot of this is kind of like owed to your parents for why, you know, you both don't really get along, like you were kind of pitted against each other in a sense, the way just they treated the both of you?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

100%. My... expectations of my mother were much more strict on me. The way that she is, she's When she was pregnant with my brother, she had told my dad that if she was to have another girl, that she would have an abortion. She did not want two girls. She did not want two boys. And I was the first one, so I was fine. But my brother was the one that she wanted, right? It was the one that she got. And I think that kind of followed us through childhood. And so my brother kind of became the golden child, and I became the scapegoat. go. So my brother at a very young age would take advantage of it. If he did something wrong, I would get blamed for it because he knew that my mother would never question him. And so I kind of became, you know, that person that took the fall of every action and, you know, all issues within the family. So it was definitely pretty difficult. And definitely my mom's fault for the structure that she had in the family.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

What was your dad's role through all of this? Was he aware of what was happening?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Aware is a relative term because he was being conditioned to the same thing. You know, he would go to work. He was the breadwinner. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. And so he would go to work and he is very successful in what he does, but he's a workaholic. So he would get home, you know, six, seven o'clock in the evening. and he would immediately be presented with all of the problems that my brother and I had caused. So if I was upset about something, or if I was questioning something, or if I was upset about something, which was very often for me, because I was like, this isn't right. I know that what's going on isn't right, and so I would fight back. And my dad's coming home after working for 10 hours a day, and he's being presented with issues. If he didn't solve them on my end, my mother would abuse him so it was like if he didn't come and say hey Calissa please do like will you just get over it you know I'll buy you a milkshake or you know less severe circumstances or you know like what can I do for you to have you drop this issue because if I didn't drop the issue my mother would create a worse one so his perspective now is adults and now that we're all out of the house he understands that what was going on was wrong. But when you're conditioned to that much abuse, there is no ability to understand necessarily right and wrong.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

And growing up, did you feel that your dad also was not a person that you could feel kind of safe around because of the way that your mom would present things? Or did you feel like, okay, at least dad is somewhat of a soft landing for me?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

It was kind of both. There was definitely circumstances, and if I needed some... Him and I are the same person, ironically. You know, same taste in music, same personality, same rationality of our brains. So I would, you know, go to him if I needed to, like, think through my thoughts. I would go to him. But he would not solve my problems. I never went to him expecting that he was going to help me solve something. It was more so... I understood at a young age that I emotionally had to regulate myself and by talking my way through my own thoughts and kind of like having him be a backboard. You know, I'd tell him and he'd basically just be there to listen. That was super helpful. But as far as, you know, actually getting something and actually winning something or actually receiving, you know, basic care as a child, he wasn't going, I wasn't going to get that.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

What effects do you think this kind of had on you later on and now even? I

SPEAKER_01 7:16

am I'm not a hopeful person. I'm optimistic. I see being hopeful is, and I don't mean, this is going to sound harsh, but I don't mean it as harshly as it comes across, but I think it's delusional because you have to, you're going off of basic things that you don't know, too many things that you don't know. You have a goal, right? You can be hopeful to achieve this. But I think that like for me and the way that all of my story has kind of congregated together, I have to look at the facts and I can choose to be optimistic even if i know there's a negative outcome i don't hope i don't have the ability because if i hope i get my hopes up and you know every single time throughout my entire life they've been destroyed but it's making that choice to still be positive um and and make the decision and the choice to be optimistic um but hopefulness i just i don't have i don't for me and this isn't applicable to other people but for me it's not realistic and it leads to really negative mental issues, dealing with the consequences if that thing that you hope for

SPEAKER_00 8:26

doesn't work out. Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

I also, for me and my experiences, I've kind of done life alone. You know, it affected my ability to have friends as a child. So I was kind of alone and being hopeful and, you know, hope oftentimes relies on a series of things happening. And all of those series of things are never not dependent on other people. So it's more so a lack of being able to depend on other people or have people I can depend on.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So can you talk to me a little bit more about your situation at home? So, you know, you mentioned the relationship aspect of you between you and your family. Now, let's talk a little bit more about the physical home.

UNKNOWN 9:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So

SPEAKER_01 9:17

yeah, tell me a little bit. and outfits that she would pick out, themed outfits. And she would take pictures in these outfits. And that was really the first sign to me that there was a massive problem because those outfits would never be worn again. We would literally, I would stand, I would take pictures. Sometimes we'd go out to a park and take pictures. We would take the pictures and then it would just get stored in the house. Never sold, never gotten rid of, never anything like that. And when you have the amount of things that my mother was buying, that stuff, It multiplies very, very quickly. We didn't have closets. My mother had stuff in the closets. I threw my, all of the clothes that I had and I would intentionally like not ask for clothes because I didn't have anywhere to put them. So I probably had like five or six t-shirts and, you know, three or four pairs of pants that lasted me like all of high school because I didn't want anything else because my storage place was a storage container outside of the bathroom i didn't have anywhere to hang them up i didn't have anywhere to like lay them down and i was like well i'll just put them here there wasn't a drawer i could put them into anything like that um and that's kind of followed me into adulthood as well where i'm very minimalistic um not attached to anything uh not sentimental if i i'm somebody my motto is that if it was important i would remember it if i don't remember it it wasn't worth remembering, you know, it

SPEAKER_00 11:51

wasn't worth keeping, it wasn't worth tracking, it wasn't worth taking a picture. Yeah. You're saying that this sort of all started when you were already around. So would you say that this was not a non-issue before you kind of came around? Have you ever spoken to your dad about it? How was it before that when they were living in New York and stuff?

SPEAKER_01 12:31

So my mother, she was kind of an accidental child. And understanding her childhood, you know, I'll touch on that real quick, because I think it's important. She was an accidental child. So she's like 10 years younger than her sister and 12 years younger than her brother. And her parents didn't want to deal with her. You know, it was like, I have this kid, I don't want to deal with her. So they would go on vacations. Her dad was a pastor. So they would go on, you know, church trips or church related trips, and they leave her at home. They basically a abandoned her and i think that she she has secondary issues that were very noticeable early on so it was the fact that they didn't want another kid added on to the fact that now they have a kid that they didn't want that has issues that they don't know how to deal with because i mean that was the time back in the you know 80s our understanding of mental health was not there so even if they did go and try to seek help for her there wouldn't be any place to seek help and so they just kind of abandoned her and would push her off onto friends and send her on church camps over the summer. And to kind of adhere to and make her happy, they would throw money at her. You know, if she needed something, they'd throw money. If she asked for something, they'd throw money. I remember my dad said that when she was in college, they would give her like three grand every three or four months just to buy clothes. And in today's money, this is this is the 90s. And today's money, that's probably, you know, I don't know, five, six, seven,$8,000. That's a lot of money because they wanted her to shut up because she would just and if she didn't get what she wanted, she would just complain even more. And then she would get it.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

And

SPEAKER_01 14:20

she's still like that today.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So that makes sense. Now it's all kind of coming together. Why and how? Maybe she turned to materialistic things, clothes and all of that, just to kind of fill in that kind of void of that lack of support and love that she needed as a kid growing up. So in terms of with her marriage as well, how did that sort of manifest? I know you mentioned that she was like that with her husband as well, your father. Yeah. Just talk to me a little bit

SPEAKER_01 14:49

more. She was very manipulative. This is something that my dad has communicated to me. She is somebody that if she wants something, she has a desire for something, that's the only time that she will ever be nice to you. She will never be nice just to be nice. It's always that she wants something. And so, you know, getting married and her wanting to get married and her wanting kids, because she always had those desires, things weren't really that bad. Now, there were some issues, but the issues were not, you know, looking back, you know, 30 years later, looking back, it's like, oh, yeah, there were big problems. But at the time, you're like, oh, this is just normal relationship stuff. You know, this was the first long-term relationship that my dad had been in. So you don't know what it's going to be like. And, you know, my dad was somebody who was very insecure, and my mother took advantage of that and exploited that. My dad didn't want kids. My mom did. My dad now has two kids, you know? very manipulative she'll give you what you want

SPEAKER_00 15:53

when she wants something when she wants something

SPEAKER_01 15:56

and so when she had the hoarding there wasn't that wasn't as bad as when she had me after she had me it went from you know very little to oh my god because there's so many things that you can buy for a baby right there's clothes and there's toys and there's all of this stuff and I think that she had this idea of what she wanted, but never took into account who I actually was. And that kind of created this spiraling, unending, you know, cycle of just hoarding everything that she possibly can.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I'm curious. So like, okay, would this term hoarding, hoarders, can an individual be diagnosed with this? Is this a mental health issue? So it's

SPEAKER_01 16:41

actually OCD. I think OCD is one of the most interesting forms of mental health issues. Yeah. Yeah. doesn't exist organization doesn't exist you know my my mother the issue with hoarding and my mother is the fact that there's no organization you know if you have a collection of things you display them you know they're organized you want to be able to see your collection my mother just wants stuff so all of it just gets thrown into a pile there's no organization there's no desire to actually know what you have or display what you have and Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. But yes, it is tied to OCD.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

And does this form of OCD, can it or does it mostly manifest for people with along with other kinds of, you know, mental health issues? But does it generally come together with something else? Or can it just be a standalone thing?

SPEAKER_01 17:52

I think it can be a standalone thing, depending on how you look at it. OCD is just an extreme anxiety disorder. So if you had if you classify anxiety separate from OCD, that those two things would be comorbidities.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

What about addiction, like a shopping addiction or a person who's just unable to control impulse in terms of with that?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

100%. 100%. My mother is somebody, my dad and I will joke about how she acts like a toddler when you take her out in public. You know, she doesn't pay attention to her surroundings. I mean, the number of times that you have to like move her out of the way because she's She just doesn't take into account those things. She's just very... Hmm. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

I know that there are tiers, there are levels to being a hoarder. Can you walk me through those?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yeah. So level one is you just have like, it's cluttered, right? I would say levels like one through three are different levels of clutter. And I think everyone has their own definition of what clutter is, but it's not anything that's going to impede your life in any way. It's not anything that's go, it's just dirty. You know, it's going to take you an hour or, you know, a couple of days to clean it up. Level four is where starts to get pretty severe that is where you start to have stacks of stuff you're not storing it in storage containers you're not you know you have no place to display it it's just kind of evolving on the edges of pathways and level five is basically floor to ceiling There's sometimes pathways. A lot of times, like in my mother's situation, you step on stuff. There's no clear pathway anymore to get from point A to point B. You do have to step on stuff. And my dad and I, one of the things that we ensure is that her plumbing, her electricity, all of those things that she would need to live in that house, that they stay relatively maintained. because she you can't have somebody come in and do those things that it's not accessible um and i she no person should have to live in a house if it can be helped um where they don't have plumbing or they don't have water or they don't have electricity she's a person with mental illness and you know she's negatively impacted me but she's defined by her mental illness she's not aware of all the ways in which she's hurt me she's not aware of all the ways in which she hurt my brother my dad so we do what we can to just make sure she has those things but yeah if not she would it would be i don't even think you'd be able to get into the house if it wasn't for us just coming in and doing like your basic maintenance

SPEAKER_00 21:13

talk to me about hygiene in this situation how does that work

SPEAKER_01 21:16

the showers and toilets and that sort of thing they don't get cleaned very often if at all my mother because of her narcissism though she presents incredibly well so unlike a typical hoarder who kind of puts a they kind of put their hygiene and you know that's the second place hers is still number one um she finds a way i don't know how but she finds a way in her bathroom to like do her hair her makeup she naturally has curly hair and she will not leave the house if her hair is not straight Dean will not leave the house if she does not dye her hair blonde. She's so meticulous about the way that she looks out in public

SPEAKER_00 22:04

and

SPEAKER_01 22:05

defends that. And that's kind of different from other hoarders because a lot of hoarders are just very, you can see it. They're not, they have no shame over the condition of their house. My mother is very protective of her house.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

So if your mom was to walk out now and go out with like a group of friends or or at a social event or something, no one would be able to tell that her condition of her house is like that.

UNKNOWN 23:15

No.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Now, she's, you know, my mom, she now works as a teacher's aide. So she has a job. She goes and she spends time with kids every day. The kids love her. You know, I think if they're not her kids, you know, she's a positive thing, positive influence for them, which I love. But yeah, you would never know. And yeah, she's very protective, very protective of her house. She doesn't like people coming up to the doors, doesn't like, you know, that we have a porch. in the house. We have a porch and then we have a side door where the driveway is. She's blocked off the porch from delivery drivers putting them up there because there's windows. And like, yes, there's blinds and stuff, but it's the risk that there's a possibility they could look inside and they could see what the reality of her facade is.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

It's really fascinating because she's fully aware that this is an issue because she's obviously covering the windows and making sure people are not getting in she doesn't want anyone to look in so she knows it's an issue yet she doesn't acknowledge that it's an issue enough to be able to do something about it

SPEAKER_01 24:25

yep and

SPEAKER_00 24:25

yeah and

SPEAKER_01 24:26

that's incredibly frustrating like as a child um and somebody like i was very aware of it you know i've always been a question asker so i'd be like do you does your parents do they make you wear a bunch of outfits and take pictures and they're like no that's crazy and i'm like okay i knew i didn't like this and i didn't think it was normal i was very young I would say... Probably five or six years old when I was fully aware that the situation that I was in was 100% wrong. I didn't ask, oddly, I never asked about the house. I never asked about, hey, does your parents not allow you to have your own closets? It was probably because of her conditioning and manipulation that I can't remember. But I knew that the boundary was the house. I knew that there were certain things that I couldn't talk about or ask about or anything like that. But I asked, so I was very aware. And that led me to being more of a problematic child because if you tried to do something, I was going to be like, no, no, that's not, that's not right. You know, going back to my clothes and throwing them over the storage container. I wanted a closet. And my parents would not give me one of the closets. And they were like large closets too. And my mother would not agree. And my dad was like, well, what if we got you like one of those, you know, temporary closets, mobile closets. And I was like, no, I want the closet. I already share a room with my brother. I'm just asking for a closet. Like, I don't even have a room that is my own. I don't even have a space that is my own. All I'm asking for is a closet. That's the only thing in this house. But I'm asking to be mine. And a temporary closet doesn't cut it. I knew that I shouldn't have had to share a room with my brother. We had a third bedroom. I wouldn't care about doing it if it were a money issue or if it were a size issue. Maybe we didn't have another room. But it was the fact that there was another option. And I was forced to share a room with my brother because of her hoarding. And I never got the closet. I graduated college and went off to college. And never got

SPEAKER_00 26:42

back closets. Would you kind of like question it and be like,

SPEAKER_01 27:13

oh, that's what it's supposed to be like? That's what they had. Those types of experiences early on, I became very embarrassed of the house, probably to the same level as my mother. I played travel soccer when I was in high school. I used to hate that because we would carpool over to practice together because it was about an hour away. And I hated being dropped off because I knew that if they could see when I opened up the door, that my mom's stuff was right there, right there, right as soon as I opened the door. I would get dropped off at night. So you have the light coming in, it would be illuminated. It was very embarrassing. And I would get so much anxiety, like, oh, because they would make sure I could get into my house before they would leave. And I'm like, please just leave. Please just drive away. I hated it. Of all the experiences I had when I was a kid, that's probably the experience I hated the most. It was just, it was fear that if they saw that and they did something, what's going to happen to me? You know, if they open a CPS investigation, what's going to happen to me? You know what I mean? Like, am I going to go into, you know, protective care? So yeah, it was incredibly terrifying. Incredibly terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

At that point, did you know that that would be a possibility, like being called to CPS and them doing like a check?

SPEAKER_01 28:59

My mother, I do know to a certain extent, she, every once in a while, she would kind of talk very negatively about CPS. a little bit of fear mongering like oh like these kids you know aren't taken care of or these kids like you won't even be able to get clothes and my mother was very fearful of me calling because I would be the one to do it you know but she there was enough doubt where I'm like I don't know if this would be the better option

SPEAKER_00 29:28

so can you tell me like in terms of like that concept of cleanliness and that concept of you know clearing things and stuff like how did that impact you kind of growing up did you have a concept of that for yourself or were you no

SPEAKER_01 29:44

there wasn't there was never an ability to because if it was almost as though if i found like a cheat if i found space um it would get taken away so you know you just kind of you just kind of accept the reality. But I could never like accept the reality. I was always somebody who was trying to find a better option. So I remember when I was in high school, I was like, okay, I went to my mom and I said, what if we moved like all of the stuff that's in the house and we moved it into that third bedroom? Like I'll accept the fact I have to, you know, this is 10 years later, but I'm like, I'll accept the fact that I share a room with my brother. I'll even accept the fact that I don't have a closet. Can we make, like, can I have a clean house? you know, I'll give up my own personal space to like have people to where I could have friends over. So yeah, I was like, can we move it into the third house? And that was, that was world war three. That was the worst question that I could have ever asked. She got, you know, incredibly upset about it. So it was like, I was always trying to find ways for things to work in my favor and propositioning those things. And it created more, you know, looking back, it was definitely creating more problems than it was worth, but I just, for me and my sanity, I have to fight. Because if I don't fight, I'll never get anything.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

How bad was it? Can you describe this physically for me?

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Yeah, so we had... a family room, a living room, a dining room, three bedrooms, one of which was a master bedroom. Then there were two bedrooms and a bathroom that was in the center of them. My parents' bedroom was filled with stuff all around the bed. So basically, you couldn't even get into the closet that was in the room. There was just a mass of stuff. Our living room was completely full. You can get probably about a quarter of the way through the room, but you can't even get to the other side of the room. There's no pathway. There's no anything. It's just stuff everywhere. Our dining room, there's a pathway because it's the cars and where we park is on the other side of the house. So the dining room The pathway, outside of the pathway, there's like a dining room table that I haven't seen. You couldn't see the chairs. You couldn't see the dining room table. I would kick the legs of the table a lot because it would just be a mass of stuff. And if you're, you know, working with a pathway that's, you know, a foot or so wide at six o'clock in the morning before you've really been able to wake up, you know, you kick a few tables. Our kitchen was relatively clean, but the sides and the walls at the the kitchen very very you know cluttered it was like if there was space there's going to be stuff yeah um and then like i said that third bedroom we used that bathroom so there was a path i mean you can't see the other side of the wall like you know because it's a fairly decently sized bedroom you can't see the other side of the wall because of the the mass of stuff that she has in between the pathway and the other side of the room so it's it's very very interesting It's literally floor to ceiling stuff.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Did you guys find rodents, cockroaches, bugs?

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Actually, no, we were pretty lucky. I do know that there was a couple times in which we had a few mice, which happens. You know, that's not an abnormal thing. That's not due to any level of hoarding. It just happens. Sometimes you get a few mice that come in. But we never had a perpetual issue. We never had cockroaches. We never had cockroaches. We never had bedbugs. Bedbugs actually kind of became an epidemic after we were kind of out of the house. We never had lice. My brother and I never had lice, which still to this day, because if we had it, we would never get rid of it. I would have lice for the rest of the time in which I was living there, because you can't clean the way you need to clean. And we fortunately somehow never got it. So yeah, I mean, from that perspective, it was kind of crazy that we never, no. I know a lot of other kids that are in this situation, they do deal with those issues, Thankfully, I never did.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah, that's really lucky. There's one thing like being cluttered and messy and one thing being clean, right? But if it kind of borderline, like the mess is just beyond, there's no ability, there's no way that you can even clean, like wipe a surface because there is no surface to wipe. So naturally there would be dust collection everywhere and there would be, you know, issues of molding.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Mold, yep, yep, yep. All super bad. I think part of it was, is that my mom was not like, I don't throw stuff away like at all. or like a laziness issue, it's she just buys a lot of stuff. So it's not, you know, if you watch like the show Porters, a lot of times you'll see wrappers and food. My mother's not like that. She's very meticulous about making sure that all of those things are out. So our house is incredibly cluttered. I mean, it's a level five out of five, but it's not amassed with food, which I think probably helped to eliminate a What would

SPEAKER_00 36:08

happen if you were to just take something from a pile and chuck it?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

It's been done a few times. When I was young and I would get angry, I've thrown a few things. I've knocked things over. I've broken things. It depends. I remember like I would knock something over and if you knock something over by accident, it got treated like you did it intentionally. You know, if you, oh, you need to be more careful. Like you're lying. There's no way. Like, it's like I tripped over a shoe that was on the floor and I fell into this bottle. It's like, how can I be more careful It wasn't even my shoe. But she would notice if I, like, re-sacked the pile. She would notice. She would notice if something was out of place. She also would, like, check the trash to make sure that no one was throwing anything away. You know, she never had trust in, you know, what... i would do specifically because i would be the person to be like yeah i'm gonna throw this away she's not even gonna know you know you you have that much stuff there's no way you actually care about it but you would be surprised with like you can take more than i probably think i can but if i take one thing that's wrong and one thing that she knows i'm screwed and she'll figure everything else out so it's like yeah it's it's fine until until you get caught and then you will have to face the consequences for everything that you've done

SPEAKER_00 37:41

would you like what would happen if you guys asked her like why why can't we throw this like what what's wrong with okay like why do you want to keep this what was her reasoning

SPEAKER_01 37:51

she that would be an attack on her own insecurity there is a level of insecurity that she has about the house um and whenever her insecurities are attacked or threatened in some way she will do the same thing back so oh You're questioning what I'm doing. Well, I can question what you're doing. I can question like how you treat me. I can question what you're doing. You know what I mean? So there was never any rationality, reasoning, logic.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Would you say like if you went into that house today, you will still find a dress from when you were a child?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

When we changed the water heater, we found baby books. And like I said, I'm 26. I'm almost 27. And these are probably from when I was a kid. There's dresses and, you know, we went to Disney World a few times when I was growing up and there's ungodly amounts of souvenirs. I mean, my childhood is in that house. Like everything that has ever been bought for me is in that house, which is, you know, a lot of people would be like, oh, like that's got to be so a fond memory. And it's like, no, could you imagine like everything that you've ever had, everything that's ever been bought for you, you've never got rid of any of it. And it's just like... You don't place value in those things because there are memories. She keeps the grades. Back in the day before computers, you would have your grades and your papers. All of them are still in our house. She has folders from when I was in kindergarten. Just regular homework Can

SPEAKER_00 39:27

you walk me through, for example, typically a person may go home from a day of work or school and they're going to relax, they're going to faff about at home, maybe watch a movie or two, take it easy, sit down, do their homework. They have that kind of space to move around in their house. What would a day look like for you going home? Would you guys as a family be able to do that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

No.

UNKNOWN 39:48

No.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

We had... We did have a TV, but the TV had a couch, and that couch... could not, like only one of the like areas of the couch, you could have occupancy. And that was really the only place in which you could see the TV. So you couldn't like stand, you know, in another place in the room and watch the TV because there would be stuff. There's literally like, you know, because I went over to change my mother's water heater, there's literally a pile and then like a little dip in the pile so she can sit down on the couch and watch the TV. But if you were sitting like right next to her, you wouldn't be able to see the TV. And that was really, very much what I grew up with. So this was like before smartphones were really a thing. I had like an iPod touch, but I couldn't have it in my room. The answer was kind of sports. My brother and I both played soccer and I played basketball as well. And that was a lifesaver for me, specifically soccer. It was a place where I could get that anger out. You know, all of the things that I couldn't say to her, I could get that frustration out without actually having to say those words. with high school sports, you had practice Monday through Saturday. So I wasn't in the house very often. As far as doing homework, I would do it in my bed. I didn't have like a desk or anything that I could do, or I would do it on the bus. You know, I didn't watch a whole lot of movies because again, there was no place to watch them. No, I lived a very sheltered childhood because of it, but it wasn't because it was intended to be sheltered. It was just more so a byproduct of the capabilities of what I was able to do.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Yeah. I mean, I can really imagine it being sort of like, I don't know, 95% of your life is just around this. Because I mean, your home is your haven, right? It's like the center of like, you, I guess, right? And so if you can't really feel comfortable going home, or you're like, I'm not gonna have space to do anything, well, then how much time can you really explore yourself or just do things that people normally would do outside of their house? So...

SPEAKER_01 41:56

you, when I went to college, I had no idea who I was, you know, because I was always battling my mother's expectations, you know, because her expectations of me are not in any way, shape, or form even close to how I actually am. And so I went to college and I'm like, I have no idea who I am. I don't even know what characteristics I'm looking for in a friendship because I felt uncomfortable having friends because I was scared that if I got close that they would find out. My adult life has been much more tumultuous. You would feel like oh I'm out of the house like freedom but it kind of presented with its own set of additional issues on top of that

SPEAKER_00 42:33

walk me through like leaving this house so how did it how did that all kind of come about for you and your dad also is not living with your mom anymore right

SPEAKER_01 42:42

no no

SPEAKER_00 42:43

yeah

SPEAKER_01 42:43

so when I was 18 I went to college it was very you know I did very well in school and so it was very much the expectation that I go to college and so So I would have gone to community college and saved a little bit of money, but I could not live at home anymore. So I left and I got a dorm for my first year and then my roommate actually bought a house. So we moved into that house and I was there for several years until I got an outside job and that sort of thing. I would not have survived if I had had to stay at that point in time. Everyone's getting and finding themselves in their own way. I needed to do that. It was just a miserable experience. Because the older you get, the more you realize what you've been conditioned to. My brother, like I said, he's a couple years younger than I am. And he stayed for, I want to say, a year after he graduated. And when he left, my dad left within six months later. It was very, like, because there was nothing left for him. You know, it was... the negativity that my mother and I would have, or the negativity that would be directed towards my brother, those didn't exist anymore. And so all of that negativity and all of those expectations got directed onto my dad. That was the first time where he had to deal with the full expanse of how toxic and abusive he actually is.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

How would you describe now your dad's apartment and your brother's apartment? Are they quite like you, very minimalistic and just don't want to have any clutter, anything in their house? Yeah. So it's had the same effect on all of you.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

My brother is, he's much more, he can get pretty messy. He's a typical boy, you know, has, you know, things and, you know, glasses on the table or things like that. But the way that it impacted him was far different. But he wasn't affected to the way that it was such an aversion to him that he can't be like her, if that makes any sense. He has to avoid it. He didn't really have that because he never had problems making friends. He was always saying at other people's houses, girls are a lot different than boys are. So it's like, if I do something for you, you have to do something for me. When guys are like, yeah, I'll I'll help you out, dude. Catch me later or not. I'll forget about it. Girls are not like that. So just from that aspect, he didn't have the negative impact. But my dad, because my dad actually lives with me now. We live together and it's been really good. He's a very clean, likes to keep things clean, doesn't like to have trash everywhere. Everything has a place. We both like to collect things. My dad likes to play guitar and has a variety of guitars that he likes to collect. And then I have a variety of... I go through phases, right? Right now it's like Legos. I like to build Legos and that sort of thing. But if I buy a Lego set and I don't have a place for it, I sell another one. I can't just amass too much and I don't ever want to get to that point. But I'm not somebody who's like oh if there's like a glass on the table then I'm like oh my gosh I have to clean it up so I found what's best for me is to just let if I see it I see it but I don't let the stress of that overrun me because it very much has in my in my past where I've been so obsessed with doing anything I could to avoid being like her and so as an adult it's like no I if I make a conscious effort and I know that I'm going to take care of everything in one fell swoop I can be stressed for those two hours or so, you know, the amount of time it would take. I can be stressed during that time, but I'm not going to be stressed the entire

SPEAKER_00 46:46

week.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

That's good. I mean, it sounds like you've done a lot of work on yourself, even with that.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

I think it's different for me because I tried therapy and stuff. I have a really great therapist now, but I tried therapy early on and it was just so much stuff that it's so hard to comprehend, like the expanse of trauma that I've experienced. I would get really angry because I'm like, you're not listening to me. Like you're trying to say trying to go this direction I need you to go this direction or I need to address this and it was just really infuriating so I kind of thought about myself and I thought about where I wanted to be but it also I fully understand that there are negative aspects to it um you know but to be where I'm at and to be in a exist in a world where I'm happy and I experience happiness and um look forward to each and every day and seeing the good and finding the good that's a place that I never thought that I would be I didn't think I'd be alive you know so no I'm very proud of myself and proud of how I've become but

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Yeah. What were some of those little epiphanies or those moments, those realizations that you had that kind of helped you steer yourself out of that kind of pain of the trauma and move into a more healthier headspace?

SPEAKER_01 48:04

I realized that when I was chasing or not chasing it, when I was running away from it, I was going directly into what I was avoiding. So like with the cleaning and like being obsessed with cleaning. If you're so stressed, you can't pay attention to the big picture. You're seeing all of these small little things. And so So you end up doing a really terrible job picking up everything because you're so stressed. Like if I don't miss something and you're going back and forth instead of just stepping back and being like, okay, this is everything. You don't have the ability to do that in that state. And because you run from it, that's your instinct is to run away and to seek that freedom and to not do anything. And I think for me, the pivotal healing point was realizing that can't run from it. This is trauma that I have. This is something that I went through. These are experiences that I have had. This has shaped the way that and who I am as a person. You know, it's so you want to think that no part of you is is Mm-hmm. how that really affected me instead of, I don't ever want to feel that way again, or I don't want to be anything like that. It's no, there's, I know, I, I know I don't, I'm not going to be like that because I, I, you know, in the back of my mind, I'm like that, but how did that situation affect me in a good way or a bad way? How did that, it's okay if it's bad there, you know, that was such a bad situation. It's expected that there's going to be bad things. And understanding that those negative consequences aren't always as negative as that situation. Like my mother would say, oh, like that's selfish or oh, that's, and you realize in your life that isn't, I'm not selfish or, you know, like I'm not selfish in that situation. Like, yes, it is selfishness, but when I apply it to the rest of the world and not the environment I came from, that's actually a really good quality to have. Not running away, you know, finding and figuring out how I was affected and learning to love those parts and find them as the most because those are the things that define my unique experience and my unique person I mean you know that's what makes me unique and um you know I always say that no person is being better than you than you no person is better than being me than me and those are the things that define me yeah so why not love them you know why not appreciate them not why not respect them why not you know

SPEAKER_00 51:03

yeah I love that would you also say like celebrating those first times as well can be really big like the first time you actually had your own closet space the first time you invited someone over to your house the first time you made a friend and shared the story with someone or

SPEAKER_01 51:17

well I think what's really interesting is that was one of the issues that I've had was I'm somebody who likes my space you know what I mean like I'm very particular about my space I don't like you know I it's funny I like going out to spending time with friends and stuff or like going out to the bar but I want to sleep in my own bed I'm very particular that if I go out drinking I will find find a way to make it back to my bed to sleep. You know, I realized that that's something that's very important and I don't have to like, necessarily meet societal expectations. My experiences are definitely not what I thought they were five or six years ago when I first got out. You know, it was like, I have to be social because I don't have any friends, you know? And so you go and I hate drinking. I personally like now, I don't like drinking. I don't like being drunk. I don't like the hangover. I don't like going to a bar. And I've realized that like, I don't need to go to a bar because I need friends, right? You know, I'll go to a bar if I want to, not because I need to.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

And

SPEAKER_01 52:18

deciphering those wants versus those needs was the keystone piece. It's like, yes, I will find friends that don't want to go out to the bar. You know, those people I can have fun with, but they're not going to be friends because I don't want to do that every weekend. You know, and it's not, I don't need, if that's what I need to do to have, I don't need those friends. You know, I'll find other ones.

SPEAKER_00 52:41

Final plugins, final message, because before we end the episode, what would you like to say to our listeners today?

SPEAKER_01 52:48

I would just say that, you know, like I said earlier, if you are running away from a version of yourself that you're scared of, you are going to end up being that person that you're scared of. You will end up being the person that you don't want to be. And instead of running away, instead of working with fear, work with confidence, work to overcome that fear. Don't think about the end goals, right? Don't think about the thing that you're avoiding. Think about the feeling of your fear and come to terms with that. The end goal will change. That will change naturally. The cause is the fear. So if you happen to, you know, get your fear under control, your outcome will naturally be different and it'll be better because if that's your biggest fear, your outcome will be better. Naturally, it will be better than what your worst fear is. Don't think about the fear and keep reminding yourself of the fear. Because you'll draw your mind to making comparisons or analogies to that situation, which drowns your mental health. It really drowns your progress because you're like, oh, well, this happened. That reminds me of this. Don't think back. When you're focusing on yourself, when you have that freedom, You have that ability to figure out who you are. Work on yourself. Those things, they're not going to change. Those are your experiences. Figure out how they shaped you. And those ways in which they shaped you, I can 100% guarantee are positive things if you're aware of them. They're only not positive if you're not aware of how those situations affected you.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

Alyssa, thank you so much for being on Multispective. I really appreciate your vulnerability on air and the insights that you've shared with us today.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Thank you. so much I hope this helps people

SPEAKER_00 54:47

if you enjoyed the episode and would like to help support the show please follow and subscribe you can rate and review your feedback on any of our platforms listed in the description I'd like to recognize our guests who are vulnerable and open to share their life experiences with us thank you for showing us we're human also a thank you to our team who worked so hard behind the scenes to make it happen Stefan Menzel Lucas Piri The show would be nothing without you. I'm Jenica, host and writer of the show, and you're listening to Multispective.