PATTY: I'm Patty, and in the Bible
it says you should confess your sins.
And my first sin is hoarding.
[dramatic music]
I have no idea what's in what box, where, or anything else.
It's just one big mass of stuff.
I'm Chris and Patty is my mom.
I moved out at the age of 17, just
decided to get out of that situation
and move on with my life.
I'm Sean and Patty is my mom.
There is about four different places in the living room
that I slept over the years.
For a period of time I slept in the bathtub.
I stayed living with her there until I was 19,
and then I finally moved out then.
I told her, you need to get out of here and come with me.
Otherwise you're just going to die here.
CHRIS: When we were growing up, this is what we lived with.
But I would blame this whole hoarding
thing on my dad's drinking.
PATTY: Shortly after we got married,
my husband started drinking, and somewhere around that drinking,
there was affairs.
SEAN: It was 1984 when we moved in there,
and then it was about a year after that
that the first affair happened.
That's when things start going downhill.
PATTY: There was this hole inside of me,
and this fear of another affair, of his leaving me.
So that's how my hoarding started.
CHRIS: To her, hoarding it was--
it was protection from the outside.
When there was a wall of boxes, it was
another layer of protection.
PATTY: Boxes got set against the wall.
I was, like, safe.
When he left, that just pretty much sealed it.
I was worthless.
And so my hoarding got bigger and bigger
and bigger, and to where I couldn't stop the ball anymore.
CHRIS: [clears throat]
Oh my Jesus.
Going into the house was extremely different than when
I was there before.
I'm standing on four feet of stuff, garbage.
It was a kick to the chest.
Matt, hey, how are you?
- Good morning. - Good to see you again.
Good to see you.
My name is Dr. Robin Zasio, I'm
a licensed clinical psychologist,
and I specialize in OCD and compulsive hoarding.
Tell me about your night.
My name is Matt Paxton and I'm an extreme cleaning specialist.
[rustling]
What the [muted] is that?
It was tough.
I tried to spend the night in the house
in a couple of different rooms, and I couldn't do it.
What's the house look like on the inside?
There's nothing really of value in that house.
I mean, this one's all nil. - Mm-hmm.
I mean, this is-- this is gonna be a tough hoard.
I have a feeling I'm going to have my hands full.
Yeah.
As we begin to de-clutter the home,
Patty's going to be left with having
to face her feelings about the past, which
she is so guarded against.
[dramatic music]
Remember, everything that you keep has to have a purpose.
Mm-hmm.
And it has to have a home.
PATTY: You can throw all the plastic away.
You can throw the bags away.
All this stuff we can throw away?
But just keep the--
Oh good. PATTY: --the contents.
So--
So this can go in the rummage sale pile.
Yes, that is what I'm talking about.
Garbage.
Excellent.
Proud of you.
2003.
Garbage.
That's garbage.
Doesn't have anything written in it, that's garbage.
Oh, look at you go.
Garbage, garbage.
DR. ROBIN ZASIO: Good job.
Good job, Grandma.
You're doing really good.
[sigh]
I'm very proud of you.
DR. ROBIN ZASIO: At this point, Patty is trusting the process
and trusting us.
She has been working hard, but I'm
at a place where I want to challenge
Patty just a little bit more.
We want you to be dealing with the psychological triggers that
led to the hoarding, which means dealing with some
of the more difficult stuff.
This is the easy stuff.
[breathing through mask]
Holy crud.
OK, you ready?
Go ahead and go in.
This is a battle that we've known
we've needed to tackle for years,
and it just kept getting pushed off and pushed off.
DR. ROBIN ZASIO: That moment I walked in, she was
in a lot of emotional distress.
I wanted to stay in that core of the hurt and the pain
and for her to really experience those emotions that for so long
she has been avoiding.
You've experienced very severe abuse and trauma,
and this is the consequence of your trauma.
This is trauma that led to this.
As painful as it is to sit in here,
I'm hoping that you're going to see that
by moving through this, you're going
to be in a much better place.
PATTY: It's really hard for me to know that I
let the house get so bad.
I failed my kids, and I failed myself.
OK, so same thing with the dishwasher then?
The range? Yeah, I'll pull it.
MATT PAXTON: We are moving stuff out of the house.
But the reality is, I only got a few days to clean it.
Are you sure you want to pull all of the appliances?
MATT PAXTON: I got to go a lot faster
if I want to get her back into this home
by the end of the week.
[dramatic music]
DR. ROBIN ZASIO: It's time for Patty to start
facing more of her demons.
We started to bring out items associated with her ex-husband.
Tell me about this one.
This was a 1990 stein.
This was the year he started drinking a lot again.
And things went downhill again.
I'm not hearing anything positive, the more you
talk about this stein.
This does not produce a happy memory.
You've held it in for decades.
It's time to let it out.
[glass breaking]
I hate what you did to me, and I hate what--
[glass breaking] --you did to my life.
And I hate what you did to my kids.
[bang]
By Patty smashing the steins, it's
her way of starting to release that emotional pain
that she was so afraid to face.
It's really, really good to see this family come together
and start to learn, you can express any emotion
and it's OK.
The family is tired.
They worked really, really hard.
If Dr. Zasio had not had this family
learn to talk together and work together,
there's no way we would have gotten
the house as clean as we did.
Look up.
What do you think?
It's beautiful.
[laughs]
What do you think?
Oh, it's wonderful.
There isn't enough words to tell you how I feel.
I can't express how thankful that I am.
My grandkids can come and spend the night in my home
for the first time in their lives.
My mom was able to face her fears, and none of this
could have happened if she wouldn't have done that.
PATTY: I was able to let go of a lot of horrible memories
that were in that house.
I feel more like Patty today than I had felt like Patty
in a long, long, long time.
You've given me my life back.