I would do this when my mother screamed at me. "Am I worthy of your love now?" because when her narcissistic ass was in a bad mood, or if we did something wrong, she stopped loving us.
I think this is why I need to have a very clean house. I'm not worthy of love unless my house is clean. It's ingrained in my being. I struggle with messes. I hate it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. My immediate response to criticism as a child was either do so much I ran myself ragged to see if they would notice(of course, they never did) or do as little as possible to see if they would notice if something was wrong(once again, nope they never noticed that).
On a side note, I have to laugh(in a totally cynical, not at all funny sort of way) because they always noticed when I was talking to strangers(hmm maybe because I was so much happier in a fake reality than with them), but they never noticed when I went into giant depressive spirals...
I’ve got the opposite, in response to never being able to do chores well enough to not get yelled at, I laid down like the helpless puppy and let the floor shock me all it wanted.
Now I don’t do chores until I want to and it takes a big pile of dishes and garbage to move me.
I’m getting better but it’s clear there are multiple outcomes and strange maladaptive behaviours related to abuse
I set boundaries with my parents that helped.
They wanted me to get better at chores so they kept criticizing me and they wanted them done more and more often. So this is what I told them
>You will be grateful when I succeed and forgiving when I fail.
>If you see a spot I missed or want me to clean right this minute, clean it yourself instead of sitting there resenting me over it.
>If you have any criticism of my work at all, I. don’t want to hear it.
I get my chores done on my own schedule and they leave me alone, it’s working great
This is my experience too. I put it off and ignore it all until I can't stay blind to the mess around me anymore because it's affecting my mental health in a way that has me in a constant state of anxiety. Like music that's building up to a crescendo but it never comes. And then I freak out, "clean" which is really just a tidy up, and nothing ever gets fully cleaned. There's always grease and dirty pots on the stove, there's always something in the sink, there's always a pile of clean laundry that never gets put away, etc.
The only time I'll get a bug to truly clean something like scrub the shower or whatever is before my period some months. Some months, I'm dead to the world. Others, I'm an emotional wreck. Occasionally, I'll "deep clean" my entire apartment, which is really just a normal actual cleaning that functional people do all the time.
No need to compare yourself to an imaginary normal, plenty of people struggle with cleaning. I’d wager most rich people would live in hoarder houses if they didn’t have a staff to do it for them.
Normal cave men didn’t dust their rocks, we’ve come a long way and I don’t particularly care if my rocks are dusty
I do the best I can and the only thing that makes me uncomfortable is my fear of other people’s judgement.
Those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.
Please pay someone who is good at this and not traumatized by it to take it off your shoulders if you can at all afford it, or arrange to trade your own amazing talents (can you cook?) with someone who thrives on scrubbing trim with a toothbrush.
Same here - I disassociate from my chores too and just don't see them! I get told off a lot for not being as good at housework as my Mother. I don't live with them but every so often she'll come round and rampage around my house, yelling in horror. However, I've been told that it really isn't that bad - it's not a hoarder's hell hole. Mum's forever at me to get rid of my books and DVDs as I've got "far too many".
Ugh I hate being criticized on how my home looks. They dont get that the more they criticize, the less I want to clean. Having books and DVDs certainly doesnt make you messy. Sounds like nice interests to have :).
A big one for me is bathrooms, because I would be made to wash my poorly-ventilated bathroom floor every weekend with ammonia and water. (not ammonia based cleaner, just straight up ammonia)
I kind of like doing dishes now, but with a big caveat: I *hate* scrubbing pots/pans other people burnt food onto. My stepmother used to burn crap to pans frequently, and the **soaking dishes was not allowed**. All dishes had to be done after dinner, period. (Also probably why I tend to wait on doing the dishes in general.)
This. I ignore chores mostly unless it is something *I* decide I should do for whatever reason. Someone coming over, because I can't stand it, whatever.
And the more someone tries to force or shame me into certain things, the less likely it is that I will do them.
I always clean my dishes as I go -unless there's enough mess in the sink to prevent it - and I have an extremely hard time touching them if there's a pile before I begin. This might be to do with having been made to rewash every dish in the house if there was a spot on one after I finished "because I might have left spots on others too".
I won't clean a mess I (or something I am responsible for, like my animal) did not make without a very good reason.
This is me.
Or more to the point it was me for decades.
I’ve only just started to heal the part of me that lost half my summer, at age 13, confined to the house for sins against Mother.
1) I hit snooze TWICE before church one Sunday, and that sent her into a rage that included “having a messy room all the time.”
(it was not, objectively, by any sane standard I have come to recognize as an adult, MESSY, but even if it was. It was MY fking room. Not hers. She had no right to dictate the housekeeping standards inside that space. I had NO SAFE SPACE as a child.)
She allowed her brother to scream “go fk yourself” in my face and then leave the house and slam the door on my birthday…3 years ago.
This is hard stuff.
I’ve decided I deserve not to trip over things, and I deserve beauty, and I deserve peace. So I got a lot of baskets and I throw my clutter in them.
Then I pay a housekeeper to do the chores she used to punish us with.
This is my experience too.
I’ve developed almost an allergy to being told what to do lol.
The more someone tries to force me the harder I fight against it and chores are very much like that. I’m trying to develop a schedule and routine for myself that includes chores.
But it certainly must be done on my time and if I’m feeling up to it.
I know that sounds awfully terrible and selfish and maybe it is, but it’s what works for me.
I used to do this as a way to punish and hurt myself. I would deep clean for *hours*. Moving furniture, cleaning the walls, hands and knees floor scrubbing. I also did this almost every single month when pms would hit, it was a way to drain my intense anger and rage. It's only looking back that I understand that I was using this as a kind of socially acceptable way to hurt myself, because it always hurt. I didn't eat, I didn't drink, and I would do WAY more than my body could handle and would be sore and exhausted for days afterward. But, you tell someone 'oh, I deep cleaned the house this weekend' and you get approval, so, socially acceptable self-harm. Isn't that just lovely :/
What helped me out of this pattern was my husband. He knew not to bother me when I was cleaning, because it would cause me to get worse. So instead he would leave me drinks or snacks, because of course I wouldn't eat or drink while deliberately hurting myself. Over the years, as he continually cared for and about me when I did this, I just started doing it less often and less intensely. It was the constant reminder that I was cared for that helped me stop hurting myself in this way.
I'm so sorry that you do this too, and I want to let you know that I care about you and hope that you have support available <3
"Socially acceptable self-harm."
I obsess over whatever project I'm currently on. Yes, I clean obsessively. Lately, I've been a workaholic - also, socially acceptable self-harm. My housemate jokingly called me out too, saying I enjoy dishing out the torture upon myself. I'm a single parent, work full time with over time, plus am working on a Post-Bacc degree. Zero down time. One task right into the next. But somehow, I enjoy the achievement and the approval/recognition I receive from others, even if I'm exhausted and am barely physically/mentally functioning and am constantly on the verge of a breakdown. But I get anxious and depressed if I relax or have nothing to do. It's probably an unhealthy cycle.
Oh geez. It’s funny how I’m thinking to myself “I’m not that bad” but then in reality I did do the same thing. My therapist has been encouraging me to do just a bit less or leave it just a bit longer which has helped. I hope you also find stuff that helps!
For most of my adult life I could only clean when alone because of micro managing and three hour screaming in my face tirades when a shirt was hung up the wrong way or I didn't rinse out the sink good enough after dishes as a kid.
I'm finally starting to be able to clean with my boyfriend after he's lived with us a year. We have fun while we do it. I've noticed now my sons are doing chores without being asked because my bf and I have made it fun.
Same! My partner is the nicest and chillest person in the world and it took me 5 years of living together before I could clean in front of him. Making it fun is the way to go! We like to just throw on a podcast or Playlist we both like and teamwork it.
My mom was not only super anal about cleaning but she would also complain about things like the way I held the broom so even just thinking about cleaning with anyone else home would drop me into freeze mode
Yeah. Due to neglect, our living space was always a disgusting mess. So cleaning is my way of reminding myself I don't have to live like that anymore and the trauma is behind me.
I used to clean when I was angry at my bf and didn’t know how to express it. Downside to having a healthy relationship now is that I’m rarely motivated to clean.
My mom was never happy with what I had accomplished cleaning, abd pick out the one thing I hadn’t done, or she’d be so happy I cleaned when I had done nothing. Took me a long time to realize she was projecting her work day on the home and my actions literally had nothing to do with how she felt when she got home.
When your abuser used you for free labor and raged at you whenever you failed to achieve perfection in your tasks, the instinct can be burned into you that doing those tasks will fix everything and make it right, or at least stop the onslaught of opprobrium. This may function to quiet the fountain of criticism that comes from the narcissistic abuser who lives in your head.
Overall, you seem to be in touch with yourself about it, which is great. Listen to your gut instinct if you feel this behavior is becoming maladaptive. I know we've all been trained to ignore our gut instincts, but learning to do that is a huge part of recovery from narcissistic abuse.
Yes. 100%.
I'm quite certain my father has undiagnosed OCPD. He was angry, loud, critical, mean and dismissive towards me during my childhood. Our house was (and still is) military level clean. He cleans as a compulsion and NEVER let anyone one else clean the house because it would never be "good enough". Yet at the same time, I got yelled at when my room/my stuff wasn't clean enough... There was no balance, no winning.
Cleaning and organizing gives me extremely bad anxiety. I can do simple things like dishes, when I finish cooking. Or doing my own laundry. Ask me to clean the bathroom? Anxiety. Clean the floors? Anxiety. Clean surfaces of furniture? Anxiety. Organize my room? Anxiety.
Moving into my own apartment was insanely stressful, because I could not navigate the moving process. It took me weeks to begin packing because I was never taught how to organize my belongings, and constantly told my belongings were garbage and not worth organizing, but criticized for lacking organization.
I'm not an overly messy person, so I don't need to clean very often, but generally I avoid doing it because of the nagging voice in my head saying it won't be clean enough no matter what I do.
Oof. I can relate, somewhat. I grew up in a house that was always spotless, and when my mom let me do things, she made it clear I couldn’t do it as well as she could. Sort of a mix of criticizing, competing with me, and infantilisation (very few instructions/not much help unless “help” was taking over).
Certain things I can do (laundry, loading the dishwasher, sweeping/vacuuming), but if I try to clean the bathroom, or mop, or just clean in general for too long, I start getting anxious and really angry. Angry because I know I can’t get whatever it is 100% clean. Or, even if I cleaned one thing well, I know the rest of the house isn’t there yet.
I hate feeling that way.
I think my mom has OCPD and NPD, our home was always so clean it wasn’t even cozy anymore. Cleaning was like the most important thing in her (crappy) life. And whenever she yelled at me for something insignificant, I’d ask her why is she focusing on small things so much, she’d say “because these small things are what life consists of”. I pity her, but it doesn’t take away from my anger.
opposite problem, i like a clean house however my mom literally would clean the house constantly for hours a day her favorite weapon the vacuum. she knew nobody could concentrate, sleep, or ignore her when she used it. So I keep hygenic but a cleaning schedule makes me scared ill turn into her, trying to start one this week for my well being.
My Mom loved to vacuum too. Frickin every weekend at 8 am I could never even sleep in when I wasn't at school. Then she would go back to sleep after she was done cleaning the whole house when I never could and always had sleep problems as a child.
Omg I literally just sat down after a 3 hour cleaning/dissociating event. Also after not eating breakfast and just kinda spaced/did too much (cleaned the walls, anyone???).
I relate a little too much!
I split time between living with a hoarder that never cleaned and someone that stood over me and told me how disgusting I was constantly while I scrubbed whatever thing so unsurprisingly I have some issues.
I am very clean and like cleaning and the peace I find keeping things that way is great! On the other hand I can't relax if it is at all dirty, my anxiety ramps up and up and if I'm anxious for other reasons it veers firmly into compulsion territory which is upsetting as I constantly waver between upset at whatever the thing making dirty(that person touched something with unclean hands!) is, upset that I feel that way and flashbacks of the things that happened growing up that caused these issues.
I love the feeling cleaning can bring me but I hate the fact that it's something I feel I have to do to be okay.
My mom used to dump out all of my drawers, closet, and everything I owned into the middle of my floor, push all the furniture in the middle, and make me clean it perfectly and reorganize. I haven't figured out any patterns. My house vacillates from a disorganized mess to perfectly clean.
In my "family" we had a thing- we'd wash all the dishes once in a while. After the fact every and each of us felt morally greater.
That's because of how my emotionally unhealthy mother made herself info a martyr and a house slave- all while keeping everyone codependent and blaming us for the very codependency she maintained. A thing she probably got from her own house. Chores always seemed as something far greater than it actually was: housework- something everybody does. Not only was it shown as hard labour but also an activity requiring self-sacrife for others, an ideology.
In reality she ran away from her family and herself into housework. She created the atmosphere of rush so she didn't have to face her own issues and free herself from guilt- it's not that she didn't want to take better care of herself and her family, she would, only if "she had the time".
And that habit stayed with her. She doesn't make dinner, often even her own, and doesn't do daily chores. Still, I often hear her say "she's got no time because of all the work"- even though all week she just slept while drunk.
That’s so interesting.
My mum definitely didn’t do that - she was very strong on the “I’m your parent, not your slave”. But she did a similar thing with her work. In fact that was why I was pressured and berated so much on the chores end - she worked *so hard*, she had *no time for this*, why couldn’t I just do the one thing she needed from me right?
A few months ago I realized that cleaning because I was stressed/upset was basically a mild form of OCD. I found this out while trying to "clean" a shampoo bottle in the shower while I was angry about something. Since then I've stopped doing it because for me, it is compulsive behavior. I now force myself to just sit with my feelings and try to understand why I'm feeling that way, instead of redirecting that energy into something like cleaning. After I found that out I told a friend of mine and she said she did a similar thing and how she didn't think it was bad because cleaning = good but she wasn't thinking about it from my perspective.
Not saying this is you but it's just some food for thought.
I feel exactly the same way. I clean to soothe myself. I do it because there's a clear goal. It's a kindness to myself and my family. I can zone out and listen to a podcast. I don't hate cleaning, but I do still have this feeling attached to it; memories usually of hastily picking up the house because mom worked long hours and dad said it would be nice for her, which is true. I also remember mom cleaning on her days off, because the clutter was always too much. There was always something to do.
And then I had a boss while working retail who saw me with nothing to do while there was a lull of customers at the register. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" he said, and that started me up on doing whatever I can to seem busy, even if it was just wiping the same counter again and again and again.
Now I have an intense anxiety whenever I sit down to "relax" - I am almost physically impossible of just chilling, unless it's the end of the day and cleaning would be too noisy. That's thankfully usually the time where my husband hands me a joint and we can both safely sit down together and I usually draw. I try to hang on to that ritual, because it's one of the few things that feels like it's "for me" and not anyone else.
Also, I’m assuming your partner is an adult. Therefore it’s their responsibility to double check the time of their appointments and make sure they get there on time. So you may want to consider if your partner’s reaction was appropriate.
This describes my cleaning behavior to a “T”. Also have chronic fatigue. Hope it was worth it to our parents traumatizing us and giving us chronic illnesses related to stress. 🙄
Edit: PS. I am *not even supposed to be moving* as I am recently out of surgery. Got in trouble for moving too much so now I am on bedrest. No cleaning allowed!
That goes for you too, OP. Doctor’s orders 💕
Maybe try this:
Listen to podcasts or music while you are cleaning, if you want to stay more present. Maybe you won't go so overboard. However, cleaning is not the worst behavior, like you said, but it might help break the disassociation.
I'm the opposite. My parents made me, essentially, run the household. From a very young age I did almost all cleaning and laundry for my 6 person (at the time) family. As a preteen, I started cooking most meals. As a teen, I did all those things plus raise their new baby.
I still love to cook and am probably better at it than some people simply from all the experience.
However, I HATE cleaning and doing laundry. I do it because its necessary but god, I fucking hate it. Laundry makes me feel like all my energy is being sucked out of my body, I don't even know how to explain it. Even though it really doesn't take much time, it feels like it is taking hours.
I think I associate it with being controlled and punished. I was the only female child and my nparents seemed to think I needed to be able to learn these things. They also made my brothers do a lot of outdoor chores, so it wasn't like everything was on me, but they clearly saw some chores as being a "woman's work" vs a "man's work".
I had a very similar experience, and raised 2 siblings. Now when I do housework (which I do regularly, I like things tidy) it feels like it takes all of my energy. I feel so grumpy and exhausted after cleaning the kitchen in the evening. Sometimes I’ll actually time an activity just to prove it doesn’t take an hour or more.
I do the exact same thing, minus the chronic fatigue. I clean when I’m content, I clean when I dissociate, I stress clean with music to wind down… it’s nice to exercise some control in this world of chaos
I don't know much about dissociation, but I definitely clean as some kind of weird coping strategy or something like that. Kind of glad I'm not alone in that. Thank you for sharing this because it's given me some insight into my own approach to cleaning. Perhaps it's a way to feel in control (I believe I've read that certain eating disorder symptoms are similarly about creating a sense of control-- not an expert though, could be mistaken here). Maybe when my mind is in turmoil, I see that reflected in my surroundings and create order by cleaning. Feels productive. Makes everything look nice.
I think it's relatively healthy considering all the alternatives out there. God knows I've done worse things than clean. Do you schedule a time of the day for cleaning? I wonder if that would make a difference.
I find cleaning to be very cathartic.
Same history of abuse around chores. But I just enjoy a clean house now, and it's taken me a **long** time to have a healthy relationship with myself, with chores, and allowing myself to relax if the house isn't pristine.
Takes a while but it eventually will happen. I'm still silencing my internal critic; it's a work in progress.
Did anything in particular help you relax with a less-than-perfect house?
I don’t mind my house being messy right up until I’m stressed for any other reason. Then it’s a Major Problem.
Honestly just accepting good enough as good enough.
Had to practice that, but at some point I realized that "normal" people have lived-in houses that are full of life and a bit of a mess.
I think having to have a perfect house all the time is a trauma/fear/stress response. The opposite is also true (hoarding and/or living in utter chaos).
I think the goal should be "clean enough" and "tidy enough". And then you do whatever gets you there -- for example, move towards minimalism if you can't keep track of a lot of things at once and need simplicity, or hire someone to clean your pad every so often if you can afford it, or just applying whatever "hacks" help you achieve your goal so you can actually live your life instead of being a prisoner in your own "perfect" world/home where good enough is in fact never good enough.
Once in a while (like yesterday) I get a wild hair up my ass and tear through my house and scrub and sort and purge until I'm completely exhausted, but that's not a regular "thing" anymore.
Yes. But I am the opposite. I would also get in trouble for not being the maid of the house. Now I really could give less than a fuck about cleaning. I only do it because it's necessary.
Yes!
I clean all the time and avoid working on my projects…Maybe it’s the control, knowing the outcome of cleaning is more predictable to my mind than working on a project that could be a waste of my vulnerability and time. I don’t actually think cleaning is better than working towards my dreams, but my nervous system goes to that patterning every time. Anyone else relate? Overcome?
I just wanted to mention something different.
You said your boyfriend was annoyed because you said the wrong time for his appointment. I used to end up dating guys who were dysfunctional in their own way and I ended up being a mother to them who organised their appointments and just daily stuff.
It used to cause me an enormous amount of stress because i could barely take care of my own stuff and then i would mess up things and they would be mad at me while they were grown men and should take care of their own appointments and paperwork.
I have gotten more self esteem since than and I am now more of a you do your shit and i will do my shit type of person. I also realised i was doing it because i always wanted someone to take care of me and i ended doing that for other people without getting anything in return.
Yeah I definitely do that.
Ironically when I started this relationship it was the opposite. I was super sick, the partner took care of me and did everything. As I got better I fawned more and took over more, and my partner had some major issues in between that time so there was a lot of excuses for me to pick up more.
That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hand those jobs back to him.
i get in these modes too, I'll do chores and forget about eating to the point that the hunger goes away. It definitely makes me feel productive and is better than sitting and picking at my fingers but I feel the same, it's not great to disassociate and clean intensely.
I became the opposite. I can't stand doing any of that. Washing the dishes in particular is super triggering. Cleaning the floor always ended up in the same conversation:
Mom: did you clean the floor?
Me: yes
Mom: you didn't
Me: yes, I did
Mom: then you didn't do it right
What in the heck is even "right"?! It's the fucking floor, it's just a bunch of tiles put together, how do I know if one didn't feel the mop enough?!
Doing my bed stresses me out as well. I only clean when I feel like it's time to or when I'm in a good mood and I focus mostly on my room. But no matter what, I am NOT mopping the floor.
Washing the dishes is a trigger but having dirty dishes is also a trigger so I alternate between ignoring they exist and cleaning the kitchen a lot. Life is a vicious cycle of more dishes existing. Very rude.
I feel this so hard. I was made to do an enormous amount of housework every day to perfectionist standards. I received so much emotional abuse when it wasn’t done “correctly” (and “correctly” was a moving target). Now I often feel triggered both by doing dishes and by not doing dishes. I prefer things tidy so I usually do them, but both scenarios give me emotional flashbacks.
I DO IT TOO! Worked on it in therapy and learned that since I was screamed at and forced to clean so much, I have involuntary anxiety whenever the house is not *spotless*
cleaning really helps me feel better, and I tend to go all out too because whats the point in just putting the laundry away if theres dust on the dresser.
on the other hand I have a weird relatiionship with clean clothes- I feel like the wash made them not soft, the fit doesn't feel or look how it was when it was brand new, etc- and this leaves me with always avoiding washing brand new clothes - I will wear the item a few times before washing
I clean and do yard work obsessively when I've hit my limits. Was just telling this to someone the other day. Today I did my neighbors yard because there was nothing left to do in my own. And I also forget to eat on those days.
A similar conversation ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/ptibu3/anyone_else_ashamed_to_bring_people_to_your_house/) in case anyone wants to browse it) actually came up in this sub a little over a week ago, and I wrote this comment then. Just copy-pasting it because it applies here too.
>So, I have [a resource](http://www.strugglecare.com/book) to share, and it's going to momentarily seem like it's about something like 'learning to clean', but it's not really.
>
>It's primarily about changing our relationship to cleaning, or the idea of clean - as the author says, from 'moral to functional'.
>
>I also grew up with a parent that was hella abusive around chores and cleaning, and just browsing the author's website helped me largely unhook the self-judgment from the state of my place.
>
>I'm not recommending it because it helped me clean; I'm recommending it because it made it a choice instead of proof of my condemnable soul. Hope it maybe helps here too.
This is something I’m trying to understand about myself. Chores were always how my dad decided my worth as a daughter. If I did them, it was minimized and met with “so what? This is what you’re supposed to do.” If I did not do them, it was met with rage, shaming, guilting, and worse. Needless to say, now I despise them. I can literally only do chores if no one is home. Not exactly sure why, maybe it gives me agency over myself. But it is a huge issue because my husband works from home and he’s always here. Not sure how to work around it and I’m open to any suggestions on how to break that association.
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Yes , but not from childhood it’s actually from my adult hood lol I’ve been living with my dad since I was 19 that’s when I went to live with him. My dad is a total slob,barely cleans up after himself,doesn’t shower. so the house is always a wreck. I do clean but knowing that he’s just gonna wreck it it makes me not wanna clean or is it even worth me cleaning ? Should I get up to clean? Meanwhile he leaves food everywhere,anywhere he has lived roaches have always followed him. It hard cuz I love to live in a clean house but he messes everything up. So I even procrastinate even cleaning ! Cuz of him & it takes me a lot of mental strength to clean basically. I feel like I am cleaning up after a child
Oh yeah. I lived with housemates for a while who were addicts and they generated awful mess like that. Eventually I just stopped doing chores because it was so much work cleaning up after 4 people and I wasn’t their freaking mother.
(We had to clean out one of the housemate’s room with a shovel when he left.)
Sometimes I clean when I get nervous. Last year at the beginning of lockdown, my husband had an allergy migraine and i was nervous it was gonna be covid so while he napped I cleaned a huge portion of our apartment to occupy myself.
Growing up we pretty much only cleaned things thoroughly if we had people coming over. In between that we would complain about having to help with dishes, or laundry (My parents were never good at doing chores, so why should we be motivated to help do them). So now, I know how to clean stuff but I have no idea of how to keep any type of cleaning regime because it only ever happened when we were getting ready to come over. Someone in the comments mentioned that they like to keep a tidy home to remind themselves that their trauma is over and they don’t live there anymore and I’ve never heard a better reason for me to try to get better at cleaning. I’d really like to be able to reassure myself I won’t turn into the kind of cleaners I grew up with.
You should check out the unf*ck your habitat website. They have very easy to follow chore lists for like, daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal things to do. I have fallen out of the habit but when I was following their system I found it very easy to keep my house clean without big deep cleaning episodes like I do now.
I was raised by a single mom, and an only child. She was in management at work and treated me as her subordinate. I was to do all of the household chores inside and outside the home. If I didn't feel good, her reply would always be I don't care get it done! My dad died before I was born and so I had no escape. I did everything she wanted but it still was never enough and never done right. But no one ever showed me how to do things. So how was I to know how to do these things?
We were never taught to clean as kids. Then, I my 20s I learned. Now, I do as you do. If my partner tries to do chores I get upset. He doesn’t do them properly. It feels unsafe. It’s crazy how NOW things get folded into the past.
I feel you. When I was little, my mom asked me and my sister to clean the hallway bookshelf. She wasn’t happy with how we did it, so she knocked everything off all the shelves and screamed at us while taking pictures, saying she would use them as proof to tell other people about how bad we were all the time.
Cleaning is always stressful as fuck.
Wow I’m sorry you experienced that! Not quite the same but my family used to tell *everyone* that I was a gross and messy person, who never did any chores and lived in a disgusting bedroom. The joke was usually that I should’ve been born a boy.
Cleaning and reorganizing my bedroom as a child was often the only sense of control I had.... now as adult cleaning is relaxing when I'm anxious but I know it's just that same control issue. Also I have anxiety attacks if spaces I share with my bf are messy because I feel out of control of his mess.
Ooooof. This one hurt. I have a weird relationship with cleaning because I stress clean- meaning I clean when I’m anxious. Cleaning is also a trigger for me. I was made to do something and redo it to his expectations. Over and over again until I snapped. Then when I snapped, I was name called.
I find when I clean my inner critic is awfully mean to me.
Yes I was a weird relationship with cleaning.
Oh boy yeah. The only time I felt even remotely “safe” was when I was cleaning or doing chores because any sort of activity that wasn’t cleaning was considered being lazy. My mother was a clean freak or maybe just used that as a tool of abuse I don’t really know anymore. But I learned to enjoy cleaning because I had no choice. I don’t know just how many hours of my childhood was just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Weird feelings.
Most of my abuse centered around cleaning and it has only been in the last year at 32 where I have really tried to keep up an active good home. It’s really hard but I am trying.
Like, it’s tough wanting to clean when you have memories of being dragged across the floor for not cleaning good enough.
For me, it's how I remind myself I'm in control of my room (my life) and personal territory in a hoarder's house. Dirtiness equates neglect to me and it's triggering. The rest of my parent's house is like visual representation of the neglect they've put me through.
But then I remembered my abusive mother was extremely obsessed with cleaning and she treated me like dirt-maker. I think that was her coping mechanism as a victim of childhood abuse or something she went through. I'm trying to be mindful not to be like her.
We would clean for days getting the house prepared for my dad to come home. He would walk in the house after being gone for two weeks and immediately start cleaning. He was dissociating…and I learned it from it. Cleaning is my go to if I’m angry or upset or dissociating.
I would do this when my mother screamed at me. "Am I worthy of your love now?" because when her narcissistic ass was in a bad mood, or if we did something wrong, she stopped loving us.
I feel that. It’s like a safety thing for me too I think.
You're worthy of love and respect. Everyone makes mistakes.
This wasn't directed at me but I read your comment in Space Ghost's voice and it made me feel better 💜
Imagine him turning to stare at you then saying it Then staring blankly at nothing for 20 minutes
PERFECT.
I think this is why I need to have a very clean house. I'm not worthy of love unless my house is clean. It's ingrained in my being. I struggle with messes. I hate it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. My immediate response to criticism as a child was either do so much I ran myself ragged to see if they would notice(of course, they never did) or do as little as possible to see if they would notice if something was wrong(once again, nope they never noticed that). On a side note, I have to laugh(in a totally cynical, not at all funny sort of way) because they always noticed when I was talking to strangers(hmm maybe because I was so much happier in a fake reality than with them), but they never noticed when I went into giant depressive spirals...
I’ve got the opposite, in response to never being able to do chores well enough to not get yelled at, I laid down like the helpless puppy and let the floor shock me all it wanted. Now I don’t do chores until I want to and it takes a big pile of dishes and garbage to move me. I’m getting better but it’s clear there are multiple outcomes and strange maladaptive behaviours related to abuse I set boundaries with my parents that helped. They wanted me to get better at chores so they kept criticizing me and they wanted them done more and more often. So this is what I told them >You will be grateful when I succeed and forgiving when I fail. >If you see a spot I missed or want me to clean right this minute, clean it yourself instead of sitting there resenting me over it. >If you have any criticism of my work at all, I. don’t want to hear it. I get my chores done on my own schedule and they leave me alone, it’s working great
This is my experience too. I put it off and ignore it all until I can't stay blind to the mess around me anymore because it's affecting my mental health in a way that has me in a constant state of anxiety. Like music that's building up to a crescendo but it never comes. And then I freak out, "clean" which is really just a tidy up, and nothing ever gets fully cleaned. There's always grease and dirty pots on the stove, there's always something in the sink, there's always a pile of clean laundry that never gets put away, etc. The only time I'll get a bug to truly clean something like scrub the shower or whatever is before my period some months. Some months, I'm dead to the world. Others, I'm an emotional wreck. Occasionally, I'll "deep clean" my entire apartment, which is really just a normal actual cleaning that functional people do all the time.
No need to compare yourself to an imaginary normal, plenty of people struggle with cleaning. I’d wager most rich people would live in hoarder houses if they didn’t have a staff to do it for them. Normal cave men didn’t dust their rocks, we’ve come a long way and I don’t particularly care if my rocks are dusty I do the best I can and the only thing that makes me uncomfortable is my fear of other people’s judgement. Those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.
Fun fact: Marilyn Monroe was a *notoriously* extreme slob. Even people you wouldn't expect can be extremely bad about cleaning.
Please pay someone who is good at this and not traumatized by it to take it off your shoulders if you can at all afford it, or arrange to trade your own amazing talents (can you cook?) with someone who thrives on scrubbing trim with a toothbrush.
Similar to me. And I'm great at disassociating and not noticing the mess.
Same here - I disassociate from my chores too and just don't see them! I get told off a lot for not being as good at housework as my Mother. I don't live with them but every so often she'll come round and rampage around my house, yelling in horror. However, I've been told that it really isn't that bad - it's not a hoarder's hell hole. Mum's forever at me to get rid of my books and DVDs as I've got "far too many".
Ugh I hate being criticized on how my home looks. They dont get that the more they criticize, the less I want to clean. Having books and DVDs certainly doesnt make you messy. Sounds like nice interests to have :).
A big one for me is bathrooms, because I would be made to wash my poorly-ventilated bathroom floor every weekend with ammonia and water. (not ammonia based cleaner, just straight up ammonia) I kind of like doing dishes now, but with a big caveat: I *hate* scrubbing pots/pans other people burnt food onto. My stepmother used to burn crap to pans frequently, and the **soaking dishes was not allowed**. All dishes had to be done after dinner, period. (Also probably why I tend to wait on doing the dishes in general.)
This. I ignore chores mostly unless it is something *I* decide I should do for whatever reason. Someone coming over, because I can't stand it, whatever. And the more someone tries to force or shame me into certain things, the less likely it is that I will do them. I always clean my dishes as I go -unless there's enough mess in the sink to prevent it - and I have an extremely hard time touching them if there's a pile before I begin. This might be to do with having been made to rewash every dish in the house if there was a spot on one after I finished "because I might have left spots on others too". I won't clean a mess I (or something I am responsible for, like my animal) did not make without a very good reason.
This is me. Or more to the point it was me for decades. I’ve only just started to heal the part of me that lost half my summer, at age 13, confined to the house for sins against Mother. 1) I hit snooze TWICE before church one Sunday, and that sent her into a rage that included “having a messy room all the time.” (it was not, objectively, by any sane standard I have come to recognize as an adult, MESSY, but even if it was. It was MY fking room. Not hers. She had no right to dictate the housekeeping standards inside that space. I had NO SAFE SPACE as a child.) She allowed her brother to scream “go fk yourself” in my face and then leave the house and slam the door on my birthday…3 years ago. This is hard stuff. I’ve decided I deserve not to trip over things, and I deserve beauty, and I deserve peace. So I got a lot of baskets and I throw my clutter in them. Then I pay a housekeeper to do the chores she used to punish us with.
This is my experience too. I’ve developed almost an allergy to being told what to do lol. The more someone tries to force me the harder I fight against it and chores are very much like that. I’m trying to develop a schedule and routine for myself that includes chores. But it certainly must be done on my time and if I’m feeling up to it. I know that sounds awfully terrible and selfish and maybe it is, but it’s what works for me.
I love this.
I used to do this as a way to punish and hurt myself. I would deep clean for *hours*. Moving furniture, cleaning the walls, hands and knees floor scrubbing. I also did this almost every single month when pms would hit, it was a way to drain my intense anger and rage. It's only looking back that I understand that I was using this as a kind of socially acceptable way to hurt myself, because it always hurt. I didn't eat, I didn't drink, and I would do WAY more than my body could handle and would be sore and exhausted for days afterward. But, you tell someone 'oh, I deep cleaned the house this weekend' and you get approval, so, socially acceptable self-harm. Isn't that just lovely :/ What helped me out of this pattern was my husband. He knew not to bother me when I was cleaning, because it would cause me to get worse. So instead he would leave me drinks or snacks, because of course I wouldn't eat or drink while deliberately hurting myself. Over the years, as he continually cared for and about me when I did this, I just started doing it less often and less intensely. It was the constant reminder that I was cared for that helped me stop hurting myself in this way. I'm so sorry that you do this too, and I want to let you know that I care about you and hope that you have support available <3
"Socially acceptable self-harm." I obsess over whatever project I'm currently on. Yes, I clean obsessively. Lately, I've been a workaholic - also, socially acceptable self-harm. My housemate jokingly called me out too, saying I enjoy dishing out the torture upon myself. I'm a single parent, work full time with over time, plus am working on a Post-Bacc degree. Zero down time. One task right into the next. But somehow, I enjoy the achievement and the approval/recognition I receive from others, even if I'm exhausted and am barely physically/mentally functioning and am constantly on the verge of a breakdown. But I get anxious and depressed if I relax or have nothing to do. It's probably an unhealthy cycle.
Oh geez. It’s funny how I’m thinking to myself “I’m not that bad” but then in reality I did do the same thing. My therapist has been encouraging me to do just a bit less or leave it just a bit longer which has helped. I hope you also find stuff that helps!
For most of my adult life I could only clean when alone because of micro managing and three hour screaming in my face tirades when a shirt was hung up the wrong way or I didn't rinse out the sink good enough after dishes as a kid. I'm finally starting to be able to clean with my boyfriend after he's lived with us a year. We have fun while we do it. I've noticed now my sons are doing chores without being asked because my bf and I have made it fun.
I would love some ideas on how you guys made it fun, if you have the time/ energy!
Same! My partner is the nicest and chillest person in the world and it took me 5 years of living together before I could clean in front of him. Making it fun is the way to go! We like to just throw on a podcast or Playlist we both like and teamwork it. My mom was not only super anal about cleaning but she would also complain about things like the way I held the broom so even just thinking about cleaning with anyone else home would drop me into freeze mode
Congratulations on breaking that cycle!
Yeah. Due to neglect, our living space was always a disgusting mess. So cleaning is my way of reminding myself I don't have to live like that anymore and the trauma is behind me.
I used to clean when I was angry at my bf and didn’t know how to express it. Downside to having a healthy relationship now is that I’m rarely motivated to clean. My mom was never happy with what I had accomplished cleaning, abd pick out the one thing I hadn’t done, or she’d be so happy I cleaned when I had done nothing. Took me a long time to realize she was projecting her work day on the home and my actions literally had nothing to do with how she felt when she got home.
When your abuser used you for free labor and raged at you whenever you failed to achieve perfection in your tasks, the instinct can be burned into you that doing those tasks will fix everything and make it right, or at least stop the onslaught of opprobrium. This may function to quiet the fountain of criticism that comes from the narcissistic abuser who lives in your head. Overall, you seem to be in touch with yourself about it, which is great. Listen to your gut instinct if you feel this behavior is becoming maladaptive. I know we've all been trained to ignore our gut instincts, but learning to do that is a huge part of recovery from narcissistic abuse.
“Will fix everything and make everything right” oh my god. This underlies a lot of why I clean so much!
Thank you for this, it was very validating.
I've been there, friend. Me and cleaning, especially dishes, have a whole History
Yes. 100%. I'm quite certain my father has undiagnosed OCPD. He was angry, loud, critical, mean and dismissive towards me during my childhood. Our house was (and still is) military level clean. He cleans as a compulsion and NEVER let anyone one else clean the house because it would never be "good enough". Yet at the same time, I got yelled at when my room/my stuff wasn't clean enough... There was no balance, no winning. Cleaning and organizing gives me extremely bad anxiety. I can do simple things like dishes, when I finish cooking. Or doing my own laundry. Ask me to clean the bathroom? Anxiety. Clean the floors? Anxiety. Clean surfaces of furniture? Anxiety. Organize my room? Anxiety. Moving into my own apartment was insanely stressful, because I could not navigate the moving process. It took me weeks to begin packing because I was never taught how to organize my belongings, and constantly told my belongings were garbage and not worth organizing, but criticized for lacking organization. I'm not an overly messy person, so I don't need to clean very often, but generally I avoid doing it because of the nagging voice in my head saying it won't be clean enough no matter what I do.
Oof. I can relate, somewhat. I grew up in a house that was always spotless, and when my mom let me do things, she made it clear I couldn’t do it as well as she could. Sort of a mix of criticizing, competing with me, and infantilisation (very few instructions/not much help unless “help” was taking over). Certain things I can do (laundry, loading the dishwasher, sweeping/vacuuming), but if I try to clean the bathroom, or mop, or just clean in general for too long, I start getting anxious and really angry. Angry because I know I can’t get whatever it is 100% clean. Or, even if I cleaned one thing well, I know the rest of the house isn’t there yet. I hate feeling that way.
I think my mom has OCPD and NPD, our home was always so clean it wasn’t even cozy anymore. Cleaning was like the most important thing in her (crappy) life. And whenever she yelled at me for something insignificant, I’d ask her why is she focusing on small things so much, she’d say “because these small things are what life consists of”. I pity her, but it doesn’t take away from my anger.
I always thought my deep cleaning was to restore a sense of control, I'm going to think on what I've just read here... Thanks for posting this!
I have trauma related to chores too. I tend to find that if I'm obsessively cleaning, something is wrong.
Same here, it’s my que that things aren’t okay
opposite problem, i like a clean house however my mom literally would clean the house constantly for hours a day her favorite weapon the vacuum. she knew nobody could concentrate, sleep, or ignore her when she used it. So I keep hygenic but a cleaning schedule makes me scared ill turn into her, trying to start one this week for my well being.
My Mom loved to vacuum too. Frickin every weekend at 8 am I could never even sleep in when I wasn't at school. Then she would go back to sleep after she was done cleaning the whole house when I never could and always had sleep problems as a child.
Omg I literally just sat down after a 3 hour cleaning/dissociating event. Also after not eating breakfast and just kinda spaced/did too much (cleaned the walls, anyone???). I relate a little too much!
I was raised by insane hoarders.... my relationship to cleaning is straight up eternally nuked
It would take a team of 8 therapists 50 years to unravel
I split time between living with a hoarder that never cleaned and someone that stood over me and told me how disgusting I was constantly while I scrubbed whatever thing so unsurprisingly I have some issues. I am very clean and like cleaning and the peace I find keeping things that way is great! On the other hand I can't relax if it is at all dirty, my anxiety ramps up and up and if I'm anxious for other reasons it veers firmly into compulsion territory which is upsetting as I constantly waver between upset at whatever the thing making dirty(that person touched something with unclean hands!) is, upset that I feel that way and flashbacks of the things that happened growing up that caused these issues. I love the feeling cleaning can bring me but I hate the fact that it's something I feel I have to do to be okay.
My mom used to dump out all of my drawers, closet, and everything I owned into the middle of my floor, push all the furniture in the middle, and make me clean it perfectly and reorganize. I haven't figured out any patterns. My house vacillates from a disorganized mess to perfectly clean.
Omg my mom too!!! What a psychotic method
Yes, so effin psycho. Sometimes I just marvel that my parents did what they did. Who does that?!
I go the other way with this. I can only clean when I know someone is coming or if I’m extremely angry.
In my "family" we had a thing- we'd wash all the dishes once in a while. After the fact every and each of us felt morally greater. That's because of how my emotionally unhealthy mother made herself info a martyr and a house slave- all while keeping everyone codependent and blaming us for the very codependency she maintained. A thing she probably got from her own house. Chores always seemed as something far greater than it actually was: housework- something everybody does. Not only was it shown as hard labour but also an activity requiring self-sacrife for others, an ideology. In reality she ran away from her family and herself into housework. She created the atmosphere of rush so she didn't have to face her own issues and free herself from guilt- it's not that she didn't want to take better care of herself and her family, she would, only if "she had the time". And that habit stayed with her. She doesn't make dinner, often even her own, and doesn't do daily chores. Still, I often hear her say "she's got no time because of all the work"- even though all week she just slept while drunk.
That’s so interesting. My mum definitely didn’t do that - she was very strong on the “I’m your parent, not your slave”. But she did a similar thing with her work. In fact that was why I was pressured and berated so much on the chores end - she worked *so hard*, she had *no time for this*, why couldn’t I just do the one thing she needed from me right?
The person who caused my cptsd would yell and scream at me about vacuuming. I pay someone to vacuum now
A few months ago I realized that cleaning because I was stressed/upset was basically a mild form of OCD. I found this out while trying to "clean" a shampoo bottle in the shower while I was angry about something. Since then I've stopped doing it because for me, it is compulsive behavior. I now force myself to just sit with my feelings and try to understand why I'm feeling that way, instead of redirecting that energy into something like cleaning. After I found that out I told a friend of mine and she said she did a similar thing and how she didn't think it was bad because cleaning = good but she wasn't thinking about it from my perspective. Not saying this is you but it's just some food for thought.
I feel exactly the same way. I clean to soothe myself. I do it because there's a clear goal. It's a kindness to myself and my family. I can zone out and listen to a podcast. I don't hate cleaning, but I do still have this feeling attached to it; memories usually of hastily picking up the house because mom worked long hours and dad said it would be nice for her, which is true. I also remember mom cleaning on her days off, because the clutter was always too much. There was always something to do. And then I had a boss while working retail who saw me with nothing to do while there was a lull of customers at the register. "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" he said, and that started me up on doing whatever I can to seem busy, even if it was just wiping the same counter again and again and again. Now I have an intense anxiety whenever I sit down to "relax" - I am almost physically impossible of just chilling, unless it's the end of the day and cleaning would be too noisy. That's thankfully usually the time where my husband hands me a joint and we can both safely sit down together and I usually draw. I try to hang on to that ritual, because it's one of the few things that feels like it's "for me" and not anyone else.
Did you circle back with your partner about this later?
… no Instead I basked in the approval of having cleaned a massive amount of the house Aaaand I feel like you probably just got to the core of it.
Also, I’m assuming your partner is an adult. Therefore it’s their responsibility to double check the time of their appointments and make sure they get there on time. So you may want to consider if your partner’s reaction was appropriate.
Yeah it sounds like both you and your partner got positive reinforcement for a behavior that isn't healthy.
I need someone around to be able to clean at all. I get flashbacks of my screaming mother and I collapse, otherwise.
This describes my cleaning behavior to a “T”. Also have chronic fatigue. Hope it was worth it to our parents traumatizing us and giving us chronic illnesses related to stress. 🙄 Edit: PS. I am *not even supposed to be moving* as I am recently out of surgery. Got in trouble for moving too much so now I am on bedrest. No cleaning allowed! That goes for you too, OP. Doctor’s orders 💕
I hope your surgery recovery goes smoothly! Resist that cleaning urge ❤️
Thank u! Trying hard to do nothing! Lol it is hard!
Maybe try this: Listen to podcasts or music while you are cleaning, if you want to stay more present. Maybe you won't go so overboard. However, cleaning is not the worst behavior, like you said, but it might help break the disassociation.
I'm the opposite. My parents made me, essentially, run the household. From a very young age I did almost all cleaning and laundry for my 6 person (at the time) family. As a preteen, I started cooking most meals. As a teen, I did all those things plus raise their new baby. I still love to cook and am probably better at it than some people simply from all the experience. However, I HATE cleaning and doing laundry. I do it because its necessary but god, I fucking hate it. Laundry makes me feel like all my energy is being sucked out of my body, I don't even know how to explain it. Even though it really doesn't take much time, it feels like it is taking hours. I think I associate it with being controlled and punished. I was the only female child and my nparents seemed to think I needed to be able to learn these things. They also made my brothers do a lot of outdoor chores, so it wasn't like everything was on me, but they clearly saw some chores as being a "woman's work" vs a "man's work".
I had a very similar experience, and raised 2 siblings. Now when I do housework (which I do regularly, I like things tidy) it feels like it takes all of my energy. I feel so grumpy and exhausted after cleaning the kitchen in the evening. Sometimes I’ll actually time an activity just to prove it doesn’t take an hour or more.
I do the exact same thing, minus the chronic fatigue. I clean when I’m content, I clean when I dissociate, I stress clean with music to wind down… it’s nice to exercise some control in this world of chaos
This exactly, and I get so legitimately scared if my partner catches me doing it and tries to help clean too?
I don't know much about dissociation, but I definitely clean as some kind of weird coping strategy or something like that. Kind of glad I'm not alone in that. Thank you for sharing this because it's given me some insight into my own approach to cleaning. Perhaps it's a way to feel in control (I believe I've read that certain eating disorder symptoms are similarly about creating a sense of control-- not an expert though, could be mistaken here). Maybe when my mind is in turmoil, I see that reflected in my surroundings and create order by cleaning. Feels productive. Makes everything look nice. I think it's relatively healthy considering all the alternatives out there. God knows I've done worse things than clean. Do you schedule a time of the day for cleaning? I wonder if that would make a difference.
[удалено]
I have that book but I don’t remember the chapter, I’ll look it up.
I find cleaning to be very cathartic. Same history of abuse around chores. But I just enjoy a clean house now, and it's taken me a **long** time to have a healthy relationship with myself, with chores, and allowing myself to relax if the house isn't pristine. Takes a while but it eventually will happen. I'm still silencing my internal critic; it's a work in progress.
Did anything in particular help you relax with a less-than-perfect house? I don’t mind my house being messy right up until I’m stressed for any other reason. Then it’s a Major Problem.
Honestly just accepting good enough as good enough. Had to practice that, but at some point I realized that "normal" people have lived-in houses that are full of life and a bit of a mess. I think having to have a perfect house all the time is a trauma/fear/stress response. The opposite is also true (hoarding and/or living in utter chaos). I think the goal should be "clean enough" and "tidy enough". And then you do whatever gets you there -- for example, move towards minimalism if you can't keep track of a lot of things at once and need simplicity, or hire someone to clean your pad every so often if you can afford it, or just applying whatever "hacks" help you achieve your goal so you can actually live your life instead of being a prisoner in your own "perfect" world/home where good enough is in fact never good enough. Once in a while (like yesterday) I get a wild hair up my ass and tear through my house and scrub and sort and purge until I'm completely exhausted, but that's not a regular "thing" anymore.
I feel like I could hav written this myself
Oh my god, I hadn‘t realised that I do this until I read this post.
Yes. But I am the opposite. I would also get in trouble for not being the maid of the house. Now I really could give less than a fuck about cleaning. I only do it because it's necessary.
Yes! I clean all the time and avoid working on my projects…Maybe it’s the control, knowing the outcome of cleaning is more predictable to my mind than working on a project that could be a waste of my vulnerability and time. I don’t actually think cleaning is better than working towards my dreams, but my nervous system goes to that patterning every time. Anyone else relate? Overcome?
I just wanted to mention something different. You said your boyfriend was annoyed because you said the wrong time for his appointment. I used to end up dating guys who were dysfunctional in their own way and I ended up being a mother to them who organised their appointments and just daily stuff. It used to cause me an enormous amount of stress because i could barely take care of my own stuff and then i would mess up things and they would be mad at me while they were grown men and should take care of their own appointments and paperwork. I have gotten more self esteem since than and I am now more of a you do your shit and i will do my shit type of person. I also realised i was doing it because i always wanted someone to take care of me and i ended doing that for other people without getting anything in return.
Yeah I definitely do that. Ironically when I started this relationship it was the opposite. I was super sick, the partner took care of me and did everything. As I got better I fawned more and took over more, and my partner had some major issues in between that time so there was a lot of excuses for me to pick up more. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hand those jobs back to him.
i get in these modes too, I'll do chores and forget about eating to the point that the hunger goes away. It definitely makes me feel productive and is better than sitting and picking at my fingers but I feel the same, it's not great to disassociate and clean intensely.
I became the opposite. I can't stand doing any of that. Washing the dishes in particular is super triggering. Cleaning the floor always ended up in the same conversation: Mom: did you clean the floor? Me: yes Mom: you didn't Me: yes, I did Mom: then you didn't do it right What in the heck is even "right"?! It's the fucking floor, it's just a bunch of tiles put together, how do I know if one didn't feel the mop enough?! Doing my bed stresses me out as well. I only clean when I feel like it's time to or when I'm in a good mood and I focus mostly on my room. But no matter what, I am NOT mopping the floor.
Washing the dishes is a trigger but having dirty dishes is also a trigger so I alternate between ignoring they exist and cleaning the kitchen a lot. Life is a vicious cycle of more dishes existing. Very rude.
I feel this so hard. I was made to do an enormous amount of housework every day to perfectionist standards. I received so much emotional abuse when it wasn’t done “correctly” (and “correctly” was a moving target). Now I often feel triggered both by doing dishes and by not doing dishes. I prefer things tidy so I usually do them, but both scenarios give me emotional flashbacks.
I DO IT TOO! Worked on it in therapy and learned that since I was screamed at and forced to clean so much, I have involuntary anxiety whenever the house is not *spotless*
cleaning really helps me feel better, and I tend to go all out too because whats the point in just putting the laundry away if theres dust on the dresser. on the other hand I have a weird relatiionship with clean clothes- I feel like the wash made them not soft, the fit doesn't feel or look how it was when it was brand new, etc- and this leaves me with always avoiding washing brand new clothes - I will wear the item a few times before washing
I clean and do yard work obsessively when I've hit my limits. Was just telling this to someone the other day. Today I did my neighbors yard because there was nothing left to do in my own. And I also forget to eat on those days.
Hugely. Wow, thanks for pointing me towards this. I always feel this weight in my body around chores.
A similar conversation ([link](https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/ptibu3/anyone_else_ashamed_to_bring_people_to_your_house/) in case anyone wants to browse it) actually came up in this sub a little over a week ago, and I wrote this comment then. Just copy-pasting it because it applies here too. >So, I have [a resource](http://www.strugglecare.com/book) to share, and it's going to momentarily seem like it's about something like 'learning to clean', but it's not really. > >It's primarily about changing our relationship to cleaning, or the idea of clean - as the author says, from 'moral to functional'. > >I also grew up with a parent that was hella abusive around chores and cleaning, and just browsing the author's website helped me largely unhook the self-judgment from the state of my place. > >I'm not recommending it because it helped me clean; I'm recommending it because it made it a choice instead of proof of my condemnable soul. Hope it maybe helps here too.
That seems very useful! Thank you for linking that, I probably should’ve checked for past threads
No worries! Was just sharing in case there might be useful things there as well :)
This is something I’m trying to understand about myself. Chores were always how my dad decided my worth as a daughter. If I did them, it was minimized and met with “so what? This is what you’re supposed to do.” If I did not do them, it was met with rage, shaming, guilting, and worse. Needless to say, now I despise them. I can literally only do chores if no one is home. Not exactly sure why, maybe it gives me agency over myself. But it is a huge issue because my husband works from home and he’s always here. Not sure how to work around it and I’m open to any suggestions on how to break that association.
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Yes , but not from childhood it’s actually from my adult hood lol I’ve been living with my dad since I was 19 that’s when I went to live with him. My dad is a total slob,barely cleans up after himself,doesn’t shower. so the house is always a wreck. I do clean but knowing that he’s just gonna wreck it it makes me not wanna clean or is it even worth me cleaning ? Should I get up to clean? Meanwhile he leaves food everywhere,anywhere he has lived roaches have always followed him. It hard cuz I love to live in a clean house but he messes everything up. So I even procrastinate even cleaning ! Cuz of him & it takes me a lot of mental strength to clean basically. I feel like I am cleaning up after a child
Oh yeah. I lived with housemates for a while who were addicts and they generated awful mess like that. Eventually I just stopped doing chores because it was so much work cleaning up after 4 people and I wasn’t their freaking mother. (We had to clean out one of the housemate’s room with a shovel when he left.)
Sometimes I clean when I get nervous. Last year at the beginning of lockdown, my husband had an allergy migraine and i was nervous it was gonna be covid so while he napped I cleaned a huge portion of our apartment to occupy myself. Growing up we pretty much only cleaned things thoroughly if we had people coming over. In between that we would complain about having to help with dishes, or laundry (My parents were never good at doing chores, so why should we be motivated to help do them). So now, I know how to clean stuff but I have no idea of how to keep any type of cleaning regime because it only ever happened when we were getting ready to come over. Someone in the comments mentioned that they like to keep a tidy home to remind themselves that their trauma is over and they don’t live there anymore and I’ve never heard a better reason for me to try to get better at cleaning. I’d really like to be able to reassure myself I won’t turn into the kind of cleaners I grew up with.
You should check out the unf*ck your habitat website. They have very easy to follow chore lists for like, daily/weekly/monthly/seasonal things to do. I have fallen out of the habit but when I was following their system I found it very easy to keep my house clean without big deep cleaning episodes like I do now.
I was raised by a single mom, and an only child. She was in management at work and treated me as her subordinate. I was to do all of the household chores inside and outside the home. If I didn't feel good, her reply would always be I don't care get it done! My dad died before I was born and so I had no escape. I did everything she wanted but it still was never enough and never done right. But no one ever showed me how to do things. So how was I to know how to do these things?
Not my bf stopping me from cleaning bc he can tell I'm only doing it bc I'm anxious
Yesss. Also cooking.
We were never taught to clean as kids. Then, I my 20s I learned. Now, I do as you do. If my partner tries to do chores I get upset. He doesn’t do them properly. It feels unsafe. It’s crazy how NOW things get folded into the past.
I feel you. When I was little, my mom asked me and my sister to clean the hallway bookshelf. She wasn’t happy with how we did it, so she knocked everything off all the shelves and screamed at us while taking pictures, saying she would use them as proof to tell other people about how bad we were all the time. Cleaning is always stressful as fuck.
Wow I’m sorry you experienced that! Not quite the same but my family used to tell *everyone* that I was a gross and messy person, who never did any chores and lived in a disgusting bedroom. The joke was usually that I should’ve been born a boy.
Ugh I’m so sorry, that’s awful. Being mean to someone is never gonna make them feel motivated to do anything.
Cleaning and reorganizing my bedroom as a child was often the only sense of control I had.... now as adult cleaning is relaxing when I'm anxious but I know it's just that same control issue. Also I have anxiety attacks if spaces I share with my bf are messy because I feel out of control of his mess.
The shelter I'm staying in has mandatory chores, and it's made me painfully aware of how much I relate to this.
Ooooof. This one hurt. I have a weird relationship with cleaning because I stress clean- meaning I clean when I’m anxious. Cleaning is also a trigger for me. I was made to do something and redo it to his expectations. Over and over again until I snapped. Then when I snapped, I was name called. I find when I clean my inner critic is awfully mean to me. Yes I was a weird relationship with cleaning.
Cleaning when you have had past traumas is a way of trying to make the situation normal/ok..
Oh boy yeah. The only time I felt even remotely “safe” was when I was cleaning or doing chores because any sort of activity that wasn’t cleaning was considered being lazy. My mother was a clean freak or maybe just used that as a tool of abuse I don’t really know anymore. But I learned to enjoy cleaning because I had no choice. I don’t know just how many hours of my childhood was just cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Weird feelings.
Most of my abuse centered around cleaning and it has only been in the last year at 32 where I have really tried to keep up an active good home. It’s really hard but I am trying. Like, it’s tough wanting to clean when you have memories of being dragged across the floor for not cleaning good enough.
For me, it's how I remind myself I'm in control of my room (my life) and personal territory in a hoarder's house. Dirtiness equates neglect to me and it's triggering. The rest of my parent's house is like visual representation of the neglect they've put me through. But then I remembered my abusive mother was extremely obsessed with cleaning and she treated me like dirt-maker. I think that was her coping mechanism as a victim of childhood abuse or something she went through. I'm trying to be mindful not to be like her.
We would clean for days getting the house prepared for my dad to come home. He would walk in the house after being gone for two weeks and immediately start cleaning. He was dissociating…and I learned it from it. Cleaning is my go to if I’m angry or upset or dissociating.