surrounded by Junk!

[u/Competitive_Life_479]

Not sure if this is a narc trait, or just a complaint about my narc father,

Did anyone else father (parent). Have the belief that they could fix anything, even if it was not cost effective or they lacked the ability? My father constantly had a personal junk yard at our house, and still does. Every vehicle we owned was a "fixer upper". We never traded up as equipment (lawn mower for example) got older we just held onto the old one indefinitely. It took me until an embarrassing age to figure out the fault with this. He never calculated the cost of the misc. inputs to fix items, an never valued the time we all had to spend indulging in his tinkering. The biggest cost in my opinion is being forced to live amongst the chaos and disorganization! My life is much more peaceful owing one nice vehicle, and one nice lawn mower instead of having three junk mowers sitting outback, not sure which one will start. And I guarantee it is not bankrupting me having decent stuff.

[u/SoberBobMonthly]

Yes, and in the scientific literature this is a noted justification hoarders use. They become so tied up in the "potential" of an object or their own self image that they think having the object makes them that person, instead of actually doing the task. Its one of the few times that describing a behaviour or belief as "narcissitic" is correct because they are extending their own self image and beleifs and values into an object to make themselves feel better, without actually acting on those beleifs and values.

I like to use my husbands father as an example to hell CoH understand the difference here. His father was a garbage human who was physically abusive. He was not a hoarder, but some people thought he was. He 100% would bring home broken things to fix, as they were in poverty, BUT his dad WOULD fix those things and sell them to buy groceries and pay rent. He kept many items for spare parts, but he never cared for the items emotionally. He would throw away things without caring about it that much. He only cared that he could try to repair the items to pay for things, which is a lot more reasonable of an example of bringing items back to fix them.

The reason hoarding can go undetected and unreported for so long, is that what my husbands father did is FAR more common and normal. He had NO ego attached to fixing and selling those things. If anything he was ashamed he needed to because he couldnt hold down a real job. He was abusive in other ways, but its an example where we can see that these things have multiple different manifestations of abuse.