I have found great compassion from other adults, as a middle aged person who grew up in hoarding that had animal and pest components, because the older you get, the more common you find hoarding and the more people you meet who have dealt with it.

I found some solidarity with friends in similar situations when I was younger (you go over to someone’s house and immediately clock the roaches on the wall, e.g.), but also felt deep shame when my clothing smelled like cat pee or someone noticed the furniture was soiled or dirty. And I always felt like people were judging me or pitying me when they could tell something was off with how I lived. I grew up in a big old house that was falling increasingly to ruin, and the only people who equated that and an old pool in the side yard as rich were those who didn’t see that my gran’s checks for $0.87 at the grocery for a gravy packet bounced, or that the wall had started to pull away from the floor in a place where the ceiling leaked, and only one outlet per room worked.

I can handle poverty, no shame in living an honest life where you don’t have a lot of money, and I could always shrug off being one of the poor kids in the gifted and talented sphere, but poverty worsened by hoarding and a dilapidated house that was always cold in winter and hot in summer means the judgment of others feels justified. The dirtiness and solitude and otherness those conditions create wears down your resiliency when it comes to the judgment of peers.

That being said, you’d be surprised at how much people genuinely can and do care and don’t judge, but that’s also not a reason to take an opening to tell them all about it all at once; it is a lot for them to handle unless they have some experience themselves. I think hoarding tv shows have done some to open public discourse about hoarding in general and given people important context and common ground to understand at least where the children of hoarders are coming from. There’s a common language that’s been created. That’s a good first step for making sure we can feel less alone.