Disorder's Life #20 - Public speaking, & possible options for treatment?

Was asked to speak at a Hoarding Seminar about my experience as a hoarder, how it's affected my life etc. Thought it was going to be easy peasy, after all, this illness has affected my life so drastically & dramatically, it has pretty much destroyed my life. But instead, as the days drew nearer, I became more wrecked with nerves & couldn't finish writing the speech I was preparing for, so backed out.

On the day itself I was however persuaded & did speak in the end, along side another very nice lady who also suffers from compulsive hoarding. Building up to it I was so overly anxious that I started manifesting nervous ticks & twitches, which I couldn't fully control no matter how hard I tried. I have no idea if anyone noticed though.

The very nice lady & myself were asked questions by one of the ladies from the the charitable organisation who has often worked with me on decluttering my home. Now, I don't consider myself the owner of a vast vocabulary, articulate or eloquent in any way. So I didn't feel like I did/explained myself very well, but others said otherwise. So I hope my contribution did have some kind of positive impact.

Been thinking today about what could really help me increase my chances of fully recovering from this illness & achieving normality. Reading somewhere online that 50% of compulsive hoarders can make a mild to moderate improvement makes me think that there must be more that can be done to help increase the rate & process of recover.

I was reading up on cognitive functioning & found some interesting information about how cognitive training in dyslexics (eg; Jungle Memory: http://theconference.ca/technology-and-the-brain) can actually allow them to catch up with their peers. So I was thinking after reading this, that hoarders have problems in their frontal cortex with (among other things) working memory & processing etc, and seeing that cognitive functioning can be trained to work normally, then it should be possible for something like that (eg of cognitive training: http://www.cogmed.com/) to be available along side Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for hoarders.

I don't think those offering treatment always look deep or wide enough into how to treat chronic hoarders. They're possibly stuck in a box & this probably limits the success in treating this condition/illness. I think it's not just how a compulsive hoarder thinks about things (emotional attachments etc, which CBT deals with) that's the problem, but the deficits & disruption in our ability to think clearly in the first place, ie; forgetfulness, foggy thinking, difficulties making decisions etc. Cognitive Training should improve these, which in turn I'm assuming should result in possible improvements in other areas of hoarding behaviour? ie; if you're not so worried about forgetting, you're more liking to put things away instead of always where you can see them.

If I were making some kind of care package it would be:
1) Practical hands on help decluttering (with a signed agreement & the hoarding person is in charge/director. Remembering to always treat with respect & dignity).
2) Group therapy (speaking to others like our selves).
3) CBT & CT.
4) Anti anxiety meds along with antidepressants.

I also think what would work for me is to just empty (NOT Blitz Clean!) out a room at a time & then work on cleaning & putting back what I want to keep. Whatever is left then can follow the rules in use with the hoarding charity, Which is:

1) Keep - use, wash, clean, store, repair.
2) Sell - ebay, donate, charity etc.
3) Throw - compost, recycle.
4) Maybe - temporarily store, consider at a later date.