What Psychological Causes Can Make Us Disorderly?

When we look at a messy house or messy room, most of us only look at the superficial chaos. We can even, in a quick and unfair trial, come to think badly of the person for being so careless with their belongings. However, behind the disorder there are many reasons for its existence, some more serious than others.

Sometimes, the disorder can be a consequence of the past, an unconscious tool to achieve, paradoxically, a certain mental balance.

Being messy can be normal

Disorder does not always have a psychological origin related to past experiences. There may be other reasons for the clutter as well (and not all of them are troublesome).

• Clutter in adolescence is normal and natural (it is a time when teenagers’ rooms turn into chaotic territory). This evolves over time.
• A considerable number of gifted people are disorderly, but not because they have a problem, but because their priorities and their conception of order are different. For them, being like that is not something negative or reprehensible.

Psychological causes of disorder

In consultation, I have met people for whom it is a disappointment to be disorderly. If they try to change and make an effort to fix their house, they cannot avoid, after a few days, accumulating things again, although this is detrimental to them and makes it difficult for them to find something when they need it.

These people do not control the disorder, but it controls them.

For these people, clutter is the tip of the iceberg that hides a deeper problem. In these cases, it is necessary to understand its history to know how this disorder arose and what function it had in its origin. If we can discover this network, it will be easier to change this pattern of disorder that bothers them so much.

This is the case of Pablo, who came to my office showing a very marked pattern of disorder. Pablo was the fourth child in a large family. His parents worked long hours a day and, in addition, they were always deep in their own arguments as a couple. They took care of their children materially, but on an emotional level, neither Pablo nor his brothers ever felt their needs were attended to.

This was a highly unstructured family, where children counted for nothing and had to adapt to the arbitrary whims of their parents, grandparents, and uncles. All the adults were so focused on their own problems and traumas that no one seemed capable of caring for the little ones.

Also, Pablo’s mother was a person obsessed with cleanliness. Every weekend he forced the whole family to clean the house, both on Saturday and Sunday, and if they stained or broke something, he punished them very severely, even using physical violence.

Disorder as an expression of freedom

When you are young and you live in an unstructured family that does not take you into account and in which you cannot have an opinion or decide, one of the few things that you can control is the order (or disorder) of your own room. Pablo felt so lost and had so much emotional disorder around him that he had to make up for it with the only thing he could control in his life, his own room.

Luckily for him, his older brothers had already left home and he had a room to himself. When she closed the door, her bedroom was her world, her private space where no one entered. In her room, she felt free, she could do whatever she wanted without scolding, punishment or reproach.

The problem for Pablo was that the disorder ended up becoming a routine, the only way to relate to his belongings. At first, the disorder helped him compensate for the lack of control in his family, but over time, it ended up dominating him and affecting his adult life.

How to stop being messy by looking inside

In therapy, Pablo was able to understand the origin of his disorder. He understood that it was his desperate way of defending himself and maintaining some control within a completely dysfunctional family. Little by little, he was able to put words to his own feelings.

As a child, he was unable to verbalize it, but the underlying message to his parents with that disorderly attitude was: “You are annoyed, this is my room and here I do what I want. You can’t control me here ”. Disorder was the only way Pablo found to protect himself, to vindicate himself and to stay sane, in such a chaotic family.

In his present, Pablo had raised his own family and maintained a prudent safe distance from his family of origin. Throughout therapy, she understood that she had more autonomy and control over her life, and that she no longer needed the disorder at all. Progressively, he was arranging areas of his house, creating his own order and feeling comfortable in it.