RE: When Hoarding Goes Overboard

I call myself The Reformed Hoarder, and I am quite serious when I say that. I wasn't as bad as people on the TV shows, but I was sure heading in that direction if I had continued down that path for another decade or two of life. I had every piece of clothing I had ever owned since I was a teenager, every piece of paper (including junk mail) too. I saved the fur I brushed off my cat in a bag because I felt like if I threw it out, it was tantamount to throwing away my cat. That is the kind of mindset that causes hoarding.
I started dealing with my hoarding years before I finally saw a good therapist who diagnosed me with CPTSD and worked with me about that (which is probably the main reason I hoarded). What triggered the change was I moved into my apartment which really doesn't have any storage beyond the bedroom closet and a tiny, coffin-sized coat closet (and the kitchen cabinets). There was no place I could pack like an overstuffed suitcase and hide most of it away; the stuff was in my face all the time and was inescapable, and driving me up a wall.
So I started trying to purge stuff. It was hard. It was stress inducing. It was slow. I agonized over every decision, and could barely let go of anything at first, but I made myself keep going. It got easier with time. Later when I made a second pass at things that I had already gone through once before, I wondered why I had kept half of it, and got rid of more. You really have to learn and practice doing it, and that's why I kinda hate those TV shows; I realize that it's usually a dire circumstance like the one you saw where the home isn't safe anymore or they're going to be kicked out or something so it has to be done now, but in the long run they probably made that person's underlying problem worse. You really have to take it slow and make the decisions yourself to stop having so much stress about letting things go and get better at it. Now, I feel really good when I get rid of things, and often I'll just go on a "what can we get rid of today??" streak because I like it now. That's probably why the move stressed out your dad, because it was too fast. It takes years of practice to build up those mental muscles, as it were.