for the crowded house
for the crowded house
 

Supporting

people with anxiety disorders,

hoarding and OCD



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This podcast is all about what hoarding is, and isn’t, myths and best practice with respect and expertise. Recorded late 2022 in Naarm/Melbourne.

 
 

Mission

For the Crowded House was started by Tania Reid in 2003. We provide holistic support for those affected by anxiety disorders. We specialise in supporting people with hoarding disorder, OCD and agoraphobia and we provide therapeutic behaviour support for challenging behaviours without the use of restrictive practices. We work with all sorts of people, including NDIS participants.

We offer these service

  1. secondary consultations and training for coordinators- inquire here

  2. For improving the health and wellbeing of individuals, we offer in home therapeutic and practical support and art therapy -refer here


We are based in Naarm/Melbourne and do provide telehealth Australia wide.

 
 
 

Sick of feeling the fear?

We provide therapeutic support for people with agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is much more than fear of leaving the home

Most people have figured out how to protect themselves from a panic attack, the only problem is that it means they can’t do things they’d like to do, by themselves. Typically, people with agoraphobia restrict themselves to a zone of safety that may include only the home or the immediate neighbourhood. Any movement beyond this area creates increasing anxiety.

We will work with you to reclaim your independence and interests using CBT or art therapy or exposure techniques or a combination. Whatever works.

 

I want my
home, and life
back

 
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Hoarding disorder

“But what if I need it someday?” This is probably the most frequent question I hear from people. This is hoarding - any room over a 5 on the Clutter Image rating scale. Too much stuff can be stressful, embarrassing and overwhelming. We help with the ‘head’ stuff (the psychological difficulties with attachment and anxiety) and the practical – reducing the acquiring, organising, sorting and discarding! 

  1. Quick clean ups don’t work! The stuff is a symptom of the illness and removing items only increases anxiety because it’s not dealing with the cause. Often people are so distressed after an industrial clean, they don’t want to let anyone in again.

  2. Hoarding is a mental illness = therapist, not a professional organiser.

  3. .Hoarding is a chronic and degenerative illness.

  4. We prioritise the safety of people in the home, then look at the causes of the acquiring, sorting and discarding of items.

    For the Crowded House provide individual counselling to support people to reduce their anxiety about acquiring and discarding. home. Clutter and hoarding that creates too much acquiring, and also difficulties sorting and discarding. Professor Randy Frost (the hoarding guru and author) says “Clearing things out isn’t going to solve that. The clutter will come back unless something is done to change the person’s behaviour”.

 
 
 
 
 
 

OCD (Obessessive Compulsive Disorder)

 

OCD is a debilitating anxiety that ends up controlling our lives. OCD’s gives us endless intrusive thoughts, over and over, again and again and then desperate to make then stop, we do a thought or behavior (compulsion) in order to get some temporary relief.

The trouble is that rituals only provide brief relief before the thoughts return. For the Crowded House provides evidence based client centred therapeutic and practical support to address this illness. It involves not getting looked into the thoughts, creating some space and delaying/making new behaviors that don’t reinforce them. We use mindfulness and some CBT strategies, and ERP (exposure response prevention).