Poll Do You Struggle With Organizing?

[Deleted member 27340]

Do you have troubles keeping it clean and neat around you and are your places an entire mess with no system? Or do you manage to keep things clean?

Just seeing how much poor organizing PTSD may cause.

 

[Suzetig]

I don't know whether its caused by ptsd or not but things tend to be a bit of a mess around me. I give the impression of being absolutely on top of things but rarely am, the public areas of my house are mostly ok but scratch the surface and its all a bit chaotic. My parents really didn't look after our home well or teach me to keep up with things so it may just a skill I've never learned.

 

[Springer80]

In an attempt to try and overcome my ptsd I was super organised for a very long time. I had a folder on the bookcase for any takeaway menus and when I did my post-grad I took two days off work and sourced every reference I would need for the next three months, made copies and had them ready.

I wouldn't call this ocd but it was a propelled version of removing stress. It was also a sort of unintentional distraction. Nowadays, I've relaxed about it and I don't need to do it. But I've always been organised, I like design, so the two sort of go hand in hand. When I was five, in preparation for mothers day, I spent the two preceding days designing a breakfast menu!! With little tick boxes for each course.

 

[Emsy.77]

I am the other way too clean. Always cleaning and can't sit still. I have to feel clean and be clean around me because of what my abuser did to me I always felt dirty as a child. So have gone the other way in adult life. But I do get what your saying and think it is to do with your PTSD. Take care keep strong x

 

[scout86]

My house, my vehicles, and my life are sort of semi-organized chaos. This could be an ADHD related thing too. But, I grew up in a house that was always impeccably neat, to the point of seeming sterile. I'm not at all comfortable in that kind of setting and actually feel way MORE comfortable with chaos. (maybe because I know what to do with "chaos"?) I have no idea if this is a PTSD related trait or not, but have wondered sometimes.

 

[KwanYingirl]

I don't know what my real nature is. At work in the medical field, everything was spotless and disinfected. At home my kitchen and bathroom are clean, but the rest of it like dusting and vacuuming I let slide. I generally am fatigued a lot of the time secondary to being so hyper vigilant and depressed.

Now my house is on the market and I have to keep it in shape for showings. That means making my bed every morning, yuk. I grew up being my mothers indentured servant, now I slack and don't worry about it. I don't like clutter.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

I grew up in a house that was always impeccably neat, to the point of seeming sterile.

So did I! Just like that. My mother was bipolar with psychotic tendencies, and I think she cleaned so much to cope and to make sure the people coming for home visits we had once to five times a week wouldn't react on mess. It was just too clean there...

 

[Resilientbibliophile]

Although I don't quite remember where I might have read such, people react to traumatic events in different ways that could be manifest as a certain obliviousness to physical disorder around them or alternately a fierce determination to not let matters exist outside of their control ever again, this translating into a need to assert order within and upon any environment they occupy. Such makes sense to me, whereas I do suppose I'm a control freak. This said, I understand and appreciate that order and cleanliness can be taken too far.

Memories rooted in a situation or a succession of circumstances where control of matters vitally important was absent if not seriously abused can be taken by us to carefully lay out environments and work habits that factor against the recurrence of such awfulness. We needn't be crushed by all that has happened - we can learn and demonstrate that the generational abuse and ignorance can stop with us. I can only hope that people who visit me register the ordering of my personal environment as that of one who is especially grounded and sane too! Thanks...

 

[Friday]

I'm ADHD. I have to periodically beat the mess back with a stick.

That said, I'm also super organized, and I know where everything is at all times. Even if it's "calf height, near something orange, past a crinkly thing I'll feel with the back of my hand, then bend the elbow and lunge".

I cannot BREATHE, or relax unless I have a perfect mental map of damn near everything... And I've got heightened senses (including smell) and sensory input issues (I can camp in the mud, but grit on a floor in bare feet will drive me bonkers). So I generally spend a couple hours a day cleaning, plus 1 field day each week where I wash... Everything. Order in pizza, crack a beer, put on the music, and just sanitize everything. From walls, to curtains, to floors. Everything gets either tossed into the machine, sponged down, put away, or mopped.

So my house may LOOK chaotic, but it's actually super super clean.

I can CLEAN like nobody's business.
I just can't pick up after myself -at home- to save my own life.

Mmmmmm... Just to be honest: I also have a problem with a stalker. So I also will purposefully trash my place before I leave so I can tell if he/they have been there. Baking soda on the floor for footprints, hairs licked against door, a small pile of feathers that get blown away. Just so that if that stuff is disturbed, I know to go looking for "presents". It's usually fairly obvious (pictures taken down off the walls, furniture moved around, etc. But I also find my files urniated on, dog poop in my shoes, my mattress soaking wet, the hose left on full blast giving me a $3,000 water bill.... So if stuff is disturbed, I have to go hunting for what's wrong.

 

[NovemberStar]

Was going to start my own thread on this just now. I really struggle to do anything around the house. It takes me 2 weeks to do a pile of dishes. I have not vacuumed in months. My comfort zone is a very tiny box where I'm in. Y pjs, not leaving the house, and spend all my time online / watching utube videos. Anything seek, massive anxiety.

Plant even identify WHY or WHAT I actually think 'will happen' if I did the dishes or some housework.

I think it's huge fears of being triggered - the more I do, the higher the chance of being triggered - staying still and frozen and not doing anything I think is my way of trying to avid a trigger.

I get triggered by so many things I can't even list them. Anything and everything can trigger flashbacks / traumatic memories and intense feelings of fear and dissociation. I said to my T the other day - it is like my entire childhood I was so hyper-vigilant, every microsecond was saved in my brain as a potentially powerful trauma memory. I am particularly vulnerable to being triggered by the very subtle affects of the time of year. Not so obvious as it being 'the cold' or 'the rain' or ' spring' - but how the shadows are cast in the right light at particular times of day...

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I'm a mess, but its because I grew up in a home where organization wasn't a priority. I would probably be just as messy if I didn't have PTSD! So no, I really don't think my messiness is a part of my PTSD!

 

[pamcoco]

I have never been good at organizing although I can be rather clean. But since ptsd I do my very best to organize, but then can never remember how it was organized, what the set up was. I have tried labels, list, computer programs but have settled on setting aside time for my lack of organization, taking it as a given. It is the only thing that has helped.