It’s been awhile since I covered the topic of compulsive hoarding, because the last time I did I posted photos of my nut collection and book pile, and the next thing I know I was contacted by Discovery Disney to be fixed on some hoarding special show. Seems like that’s kind of a pattern, now that I think about it. I go public with my stuff … I get invited onto shows!

Well, anyway, I was reading an article in the Fall 2007 issue of The Johns Hopkins Depression & Anxiety Bulletin — an interview with Gerald Nestadt, M.D., M.P.H, Director of the Johns Hopkins Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic and Jack Samuels, Ph.D., an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Department of Mental Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. Wow. That’s a lot of school.

I found out that, even though most folks lump compulsive hoarding into the same illness umbrella as obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarders actually have different brains. The brain-imaging research shows that people with compulsive hoarding have distinct abnormalities in brain function compared to people with non-hoarding OCD and those with no psychiatric problem.

Ruminating is like a record that’s stuck and keeps repeating the same lyrics. It’s replaying an argument with a friend in your mind. It’s retracing past mistakes.

When people ruminate, they over-think or obsess about situations or life events, such as work or relationships.

Research has shown that rumination is associated with a variety of negative consequences, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, binge-drinking and binge-eating.

Why does rumination lead to such harmful results?

Professional organizer Debbie Jordan Kravitz was a perfectionist through and through.

“I’ve struggled with perfectionism all my life. Between having parents with perfectionistic tendencies and my own people-pleasing and competitive nature, it’s been a part of me for as long as I can remember,” she said.

As a wife and mom of two young kids, her perfectionism seeped into everything, no matter how big or small. She dwelled on her flaws and failures — defined essentially as “anything less than perfect.” But as any perfectionist truly knows, perfectionism is unreachable. It sabotages your self-image, squashes your satisfaction and turns life into a series of disappointments.

In the book The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, researcher Brené Brown says that perfectionism is a shield, a self-created safety net that we think will shut out the bad stuff. (It doesn’t.)

“Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame,” Brown writes.

Although it can lead to imperfect — or even damaging — consequences, many of us strive for perfection anyway.

Procrastination, ironically enough, is one of those unfortunate consequences.

“In our pursuit of unreachable standards, we endlessly spin our wheels rather than move forward. In some cases, we never even start. The quest for perfection can be so intimidating that our productivity screeches to a halt,” said Debbie Jordan Kravitz, professional organizer and author of Everything I Know About Perfectionism I Learned from My Breasts. For some people, perfectionism can become all-consuming, so “reaching perfection is all they can see, feel, want or even need,” she said.

Fear of failure is part of perfectionism.

We talk a lot about the different types of research conducted in psychology that measure the effectiveness of various treatment methods. In fact, we publish daily news stories that cover a lot of new research findings every week. Some of the treatment research has to do with medications, some with psychotherapy, and some with other methods of treatment.

But it’s all confusing and can be more than a little overwhelming. Take, for instance, the contradictory findings and results surrounding antidepressant medications. Some research says they are no better than sugar pills — placebos. Other research says they can be effective, but you just need to find the right one at the right dose. It’s hard to know what the research really says as a whole.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a central database or clearinghouse where you could find such information?

Well, at least in the world of psychotherapy and interventions for children and teenagers, now there is.

Imagine a GPS navigational system that said something like this: “In approximately 30 minutes, you will run into your old boss, who will want to make you feel like a worthless pile of feces. Erect personal boundaries immediately…. I said, Get in your bubble, Woman … Are you listening? She’s approaching you on your left. Lock up all childhood tapes now (the ones that convinced you that were weak, ugly, and pathetic) and DO NOT, I said DO NOT play them for her. Remember, their messages are no longer valid. Proceed carefully. You will speak to her in approximately 3, no 2, no 1 second.”

Me? I would like one of those.

So I made one. In book form.

Like many others, I’ve never been a big fan of surgery as a solution for mental disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or depression. A medical …

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Perfectionism. It’s the enemy of creativity, productivity, and, well, sanity. In “The Artist’s Way,” author Julia Cameron writes: “Perfectionism is a refusal …

Picture the little kid crying in front of Mom. She’s wagging a finger at him saying, “I’ll give you something …

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“The hardest part of all this is my loss of security and my lack of control over my own finances and future. I feel vulnerable …