If you are experiencing lots of stress from something in your life (work, school, family, etc) you can feel urges to clean. These urges stem from not being able to relieve the stress but needing to do something to feel better. Having a clean space helps promote mental health and wellbeing.
Researchers theorized that people gravitate toward repetitive behaviors (such as cleaning) during times of stress. Why? It's all about control.
It's a coping strategy against anxiety
One study finds that repetitive and predictable actions– in this instance, cleaning– can help you cope with temporary anxiety. Moreover, the order in a house or environment makes people feel safe.
As it turns out, if a messy house makes us feel out of control, picking up makes us feel a sense of mastery and a feeling of being in control. Similarly to exercise, cleaning releases a surge of endorphins that helps stabilize our mood and calms the mind.
Here are reasons why clutter leads to stress: Clutter puts your mind into overdrive, causing your senses to focus on what isn't important, leading to stress. A messy environment draws your attention from where it ought to be. Clutter continually tells your brain that work isn't finished (you have to clean up!)
“Decluttering allows you to cross things off the to-do list, which gives you a sense of accomplishment. Removing clutter also takes away visual interruptions. It's an easy way to cleanse the palate and have a fresh start.”
Depression often manifests itself through a lack of motivation. Feeling this way means it can “take significantly more energy and effort to accomplish small tasks — like tidying your space,” Teresa says.
Excessive clutter and disorganization are often symptoms of a bigger health problem. People who have suffered an emotional trauma or a brain injury often find housecleaning an insurmountable task.
Additionally, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America indicates that the physical activity of cleaning coupled with the end result of a cleaner home helps reduce stress, feelings of anxiety, and depressive symptoms. 8 Cleaning can also reduce fatigue and improve concentration.
He concluded that in times of high stress and anxiety, people default to repetitive behaviors (such as cleaning) because it gives them a sense of control during a chaotic period. This behavior has its benefits.
Sometimes, yes. For many patients, obsessive thoughts revolve around germs, which makes the compulsions manifest as obsessive cleaning. People with OCD may also feel the need to organize everything to make sense of their thoughts. However, the symptoms are still the obsessions and compulsions, not the cleaning itself.
It's not that you don't care; it's just that keeping up with your hygiene has taken a backseat to your struggles. For others, hygiene and cleanliness become an obsessive activity that causes more stress and strife. Constant cleaning and grooming become a part of the anxiety cycle.
It's important to consider the key difference between being unusually clean and having OCD: whether it negatively impacts your life. As with all mental health disorders, one of the criteria for an OCD diagnosis is that it must cause turmoil for the person.
OCD symptoms include not only obsessions and compulsions, but also significant anxiety and unease. Signs and Symptoms of Cleaning OCD might include: Feeling disgust or fear over particular objects or substances, including dirt, illness, germs, body secretion, trash, chemicals, or toxins.
The 4 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: Examining The Four Trauma Reactions. According to a research on the neurobiological consequences of psychological trauma, our bodies are designed to respond to perceived threats with a set of near-instantaneous, reflexive survival behaviors.
Clutter in the living room might suggest blockages in your social life, as well as your relationship with yourself, while a cluttered bedroom might relate to issues surrounding your sexual self, fears of intimacy or gender roles.
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
Instead, it usually is diagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder. The term "high-functioning anxiety" represents people who exhibit anxiety symptoms while maintaining a high level of functionality in various aspects of their lives.
Psychologically, a messy room can represent:
A disorganized mind. Feeling overwhelmed. Difficulty letting go (common for hoarding behaviors) Trouble focusing on a task. A “nothing matters” attitude (which can also include poor hygiene and a disheveled appearance)
OCD cleaning goes beyond a simple need to maintain an orderly, hygienic home. It is a symptom of one of the many subtypes of obsessive compulsive disorder. Sufferers of compulsive cleaning may have a pervasive feeling of contamination by dirt, germs environmental contaminants, or chemical toxins.
Some people with ADHD truly have difficulties in keeping a clutter-free space. However, it's not intentional. Symptoms of ADHD, like forgetfulness, getting easily distracted, and sometimes being disorganized can lead to struggle with clutter.
When things are not organized or clean, it can often bring vast amounts of anxiety. You may feel constantly stressed, worried, or afraid of more clutter accumulating. To allow our minds to find some peace, decluttering can lift that weight and help us to think clearer and feel calmer.
In addition to feeling less stressed, less overwhelmed, and more in control, sticking to an organizational system may lead to newfound feelings of capability and empowerment. “Conquering a procrastinated task like cleaning may remind a person that the anticipation is usually worse than the reality,” explains Dorfman.