Although I prefer the term “Lifelong Disorganization“, the established industry terms are “chronic disorganization” and “challenging disorganization” this is not intended to imply a medical condition, nor an “incurable” condition.

The intention of the terms are to distinguish an ”ongoing pattern of disorganization” from the ”short term situational disorganization” and clutter that is the normal result of grief, illness, having children, and other life events, transitions, and changes. That said, it is quite common for what started as “stituational disorganization” to evolve into “chronic” or “challenging disorganization”. 

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What is Situationally Disorganized?

When life throws you a curveball, most of us tend to accumulate clutter and become rather disorganized for a while. It’s happens to everyone. We become ill, a family member becomes ill, we are assigned a project at work that requires a lot of travel, or has a ridiculous deadline. Our lives change. We move, get married, have kids, or start a new job. During times of transition, a certain amount of chaos, clutter and disorganization is natural. This is what we call “Situationally Disorganized”: Disorganization that is a normal side effect of a life situation.

What makes “Chronic Disorganization” different?

Chronic Disorganization is different because when life transitions happen to you, instead of “recovering” and “restoring order” after a few months or so, the disorganization does not improve and may even continue to worsen over time. The clutter continues to accumulate. At a certain point, daily life becomes overwhelmingly stressful. The clutter itself starts affecting your emotional state so strongly, you may find yourself so drained and maybe even depressed that you no longer have the heart or the energy to dig out alone.

Help will most likely be needed to recover. And, in many cases, it may be that you will need ongoing help to maintain a reasonable level of organization. If your quality of life is suffering, and you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed much of the time, and you don’t feel like you can fix it yourself, you are likely to be “stuck” in a pattern of being “chronically” disorganized. If you find that you tend to YO-YO between extremes of getting organized and then becoming overwhelmed with clutter, this “pattern” may also be considered “chronically disorganized.”

One of the key differences between situational and chronic disorganization is that not only are you functionally challenged, I have found that every CD person I’ve ever met or worked with, including myself, has been emotionally traumatized by the experience. Many of us become almost numb to the situation so don’t even realize the chronic pain we are in. There tend to be acute flareups of extremely intense emotions like frustration, anger, overwhelming grief and sadness for what your life could have been like, or disgust, followed by episodes of other addictive or compulsive behaviors like shopping, eating, creative projects, self-isolation, workaholicism, TV watching or other kinds of “escape.”

What is Chronic Disorganization?

Chronic disorganization is a term coined by Judith Kolberg when she noticed that some of her clients had great difficulty maintaining traditional organizing methods. Seeing a lack of resources for helping people overcome chronic disorganization, she wrote the book “Conquering Chronic Disorganization.”

In 2001, she founded the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization (NSGCD). With over 900 members, the NSGCD became the Institute for Challenging Disorganization ICD and now includes psychologists, educators, coaches, and other professionals who work with people suffering from long term, severe clutter and disorganization.

The ICD defines chronic disorganization (now called challenging disorganization) as having all three of the following:

1. A history of disorganization in which efforts to get organized 
   have not been maintained.
2. An ongoing undermining of your current quality of life due
   to disorganization.
3. An expectation that you will continue to be disorganized.

The term “chronically disorganized” is NOT a “diagnosis” or an “illness”. It is a term used to indicate that conventional organizing methods designed by other people for the individual will probably not be maintained.   Healing and recovery will require custom designed organizing strategies and solutions tailored to the individual’s needs, learning style, and personality traits to become more organized. The individual may need:

• Educational opportunities to cultivate talents and aptitudes such as design thinking, improvisational trigger design, life design and 
• An improvisational design approach to organizing and time management
• Coaching to support redesign of habits and triggers 
• Emotional support to increase self-confidence, self-advocacy
• Hands-on support to establish a flexibly structured environment and develop criteria to support making effective adjustments on an as needed basis
• Develop an integrative, iterative lifestyle (Agile) approach to meaningful self-organizing on a daily basis, much like someone might need a personal trainer to establish a lifestyle approach to exercising.

If you are chronically disorganized, the standards for “being successfully organized” are different from what mainstream people perceive as well-organized and each individual will need to design their own standards and processes. For example, professional organizers often advise that  people open mail every day and process it immediately. For a chronically disorganized person, opening and processing mail once a week may be a more realistic, meaningful, and “good enough” standard. 

Causes of Chronic Disorganization

Chronic disorganization is NOT a disease. It is a behavioral pattern found in all kinds of people, at every income level. Chronically disorganized people usually have some kind of neurodiverse personality traits.  They are often highly functional, exceptionally creative, non-linear thinkers and /or highly technical, intelligent, empathic, or sensitive.  They are often sociable, likable, compassionate, humorous, inventive, accomplished, energetic, enthusiastic and fun to be around when they are in supportive contexts and do not feel threatened or anxious.

When stressed and feeling unsupported, they may exhibit impatient, controlling, perfectionistic behaviors as well as anxiety, angry outbursts, depression, grief and other expressions of deep disappointment, existential agony, and/or insecurity. Chronically disorganized people may be painfully shy or very extroverted.  

Other potential causes to consider include:

“Bricolage or Bricoleurs.” This group within the chronically disorganized community can be thought of as “inventive” types: People who experience an intense kind of joy when they invent or create something unique, whether it is a recipe, or a novel use for an ordinary item – a behavioral pattern called “bricolage” by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Bricoleurs tend to collect things because they can see uses for the objects that most people would not notice. This challenges the notion that the drive to collect or hoard is primarily caused by OCD or a fear of scarcity or poverty. At least in some instances of hoarding, there could actually be an intense pleasure factor driving an addictive relationship with objects.     

Addiction to Insight.  The term ”addicted to insight” was coined  in 2010 by Chris Fields, an extraordinary multidisciplinary scientist, researcher and synthesizer.  His work inspired me to create an experimental blog devoted to exploring how my life has been affected by being “addicted to insight.”

This group within the chronically disorganized population have an uncommonly profound and deep love of learning and researching: A drive to answer the questions of life and find meaning that is extraordinary.  When having an “aha” experience of deep understanding or insight, or when making a new connection or seeing a new pattern, insight addicts experience a rush of endorphins and a sense of euphoric well-being, energy and ecstasy that is similar to the kind of ecstasy that people describe from experiencing a “flow state,”  runner’s high, religious ecstasy, or even a shopping addict’s high.  This cognitive intensity can be source of social alienation and trauma because this trait is uncommon.  

Neurotypical people have many pejorative labels for people like this ranging from nerd to  info-maniac to egg head, know-it-all, absent-minded professor, and book worms. Medical labels such as hypomanic and asperger’s are often given to people with this trait.  

Situational Life Events and Circumstances. Chronic disorganization is sometimes triggered by situational disorganization that has not been recovered for over a period of years. Situations that may trigger ongoing chronic disorganization include:

• Traumatic emotional loss: divorce, death of a loved one – especially, parent, spouse, or child
• Life changes that make organizing significantly more complex: getting married, having children, home-schooling, getting promoted, moving to a larger or smaller home, starting a business
• A lifestyle with constantly changing needs such as moving frequently or having many children involved in lots of activities
• Having been raised in an environment where life skills were not taught because everything was done for you, or you grew up with parents who were chronically disorganized, or you grew up in an abusive environment
• Ongoing major chronic illness in your family

Personality Characteristics, Traits and Thinking Styles that tend to be associated with chronic disorganization include:

• High intelligence / giftedness
• High creativity / creative personality type
• Right-brain dominant information processing style
• A wide range of interests
• Difficulty understanding own needs objectively
• Strong emotional attachments to things
• The energy of another person helps them feel “focused and interested”
• Tendency to lose track of time
• Ability to focus and engage so intensely that they may forget to eat and / or attend to daily life maintenance like shopping, cleaning & organizing
• Difficulty focusing on things they don’t find fascinating
• Tend to get easily stressed and frustrated especially if things don’t come easily or they can’t do something “perfectly”
• “Global” thinking styles – tend to see everything at once
• Difficulty categorizing and making decisions because they can think of so many possibilities
• “Intuitive” and /or “Perceiving” preferences in their MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality type

Are You Chronically Disorganized?

Whatever the causes may be, the signs are similar.  You may be chronically disorganized if:

• Disorganization, clutter and poor time management are regularly disrupting your marriage, relationships, work and health
• You have great difficulty letting go of things even when you no longer need them
• Clutter is preventing you from using areas of home as you would like to
• You have tried to organize many times but nothing seems to stick
• You have purchased organizing books and organizing containers but not been able to apply them to your situation
• You feel there is something wrong with you because you can’t maintain organizing systems

Chronic disorganization does not have to be a life sentence for chronic pain. Even though the tendency to become disorganized will always be present, many chronically disorganized people can heal from the emotionally traumatic elements of this pattern, and design their lives to fit them and optimize their personal functioning.  They can learn how to use their unique traits and tendencies to design uniquely inventive approaches to self-organizing. They can redefine organizing as a self-cultivating and nurturing process that is deeply meaningful, and can be very inspirational and improvisational.  The Agile Life Design approach to custom designing improvisational organizing systems can been used as part of a holistic treatment strategy to heal the impact of chronic disorganization and dramatically improve the overall quality of life.

Getting Help

If you think you might be chronically disorganized, I highly recommend that you learn as much as you can about this pattern. Consider connecting with a group or working with someone who specializes in chronic disorganization and preferably has experienced it themselves.

If the thought of having someone enter your home stresses you out then working with an coach, social worker or psychologist who specializes in chronic disorganization over the phone or Skype may be a better first step for you to help you become ready to the get the most out of in-home support. 

If you wish to consider working with an organizing professional, please select your professional organizer carefully. Not all people who call themselves professional organizers have the education and coaching skills needed to help people create lasting change in their lives. Be prepared that, like dating, it may take several tries to find the right support for your unique situation. I recommend looking for a professional who specializes in Chronic Disorganization, ADHD, Autism or other neurodiversities.

One place to start is with the ICD www.ICD.org.    ICD is the only organization I know of that is devoted primarily to providing education and training specifically on helping people with Chronic Disorganization.

You might also check out these resources:

FREE PDFs

Simplifying Your Life: Agile Life Design Strategies for Doing What Matters Most  8 page Printable PDF 

 Myths, Facts and Agile Life Design Strategies for Thriving with Adult ADHD A 6 page Printable PDF  

Home Study Classes Programs and Books

• Agile Learning Center  Contains a few of my most popular classes that are now home study courses. 
• ADDClasses offers and extensive library of 1 hour audio programs.  Two of my ADD classes (Neat & Simple Organizing Strategies, and Quantum Productivity) are available there. 
• Neuro-Friendly Reading List  Features book suggestions which I feel offer empowerment rather than prescribing how you “should” do be or do things.

• Attention Deficit Disorder Association  ADDA
• Children and Adults with ADD CHADD 
• ADD Consults 
•  Institute for Challenging Disorganization ICD 
  

Compulsive Hoarding

• Compulsive Hoarding Service Provider Referral Directory on my blog
• Help for Hoarders, Clutterers & Compulsive Shoppers on my blog

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© 2009 Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed.

Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed, Agile Life Design Coach, ADHD Coach, Author and Speaker. She is the founder of the Agile Productivity program which provides resources to help people overcome lifelong issues with chronic disorganization, time management issues and more.  Ariane is dedicated to helping people with ADHD, highly creative personality types, and other neurodiversities design more success into their lives.