Is hoarding / compulsive buying common in ASD?

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I don't know if hoarding and shopping are typical of AS, but they are typical of me. That would explain so much!

I have mostly cured myself of hoarding - my stuff was not in piles but on shelves, sorted. It did get out of control and I would around like a whiz, shelving things and making labels. Now I don't hoard any more, although I do have small piles of things that never seem to get cleaned up.

But shopping! Heaven help me! It's only recently that I've realized I'm a shopoholic and taken steps to deal with it. I would be very curious to know if it's part of AS.

It can be. "Stuff" can fill up an emotional hole (we still get lonely, after all).

Sometimes, special interests can be wholly satisfied by buying stuff that pertains to it. I have to be careful about this (a five-year special interest in religion resulted in me accumulating more books on the religions of the world than your average small-town library-- seriously I probably had between fifty and eighty books-- imagine what I could have done if I hadn't been a college student with a kid and a limited budget)! !!

Sometimes it's "retail therapy" run amok. It's not so much feeding a special interest in that case as massaging pain or assuaging anxiety. NTs do it too. One of my best friends is pretty hard-up and terrified of being poor, or more accurately terrified of being stereotypically poor. So, natch, she hoards housewares and expensive-brand-name clothing (from thrift stores-- and when she's not working as a teachers' aide, she works in one). It's pretty bad in her house-- whole rooms that can't be used because they're full of Pyrex mixing bowls and service for 8 and tubs upon tubs upon tubs of boys' and women's clothes with labels like Prada and Kate Spade and Gap and Children's Place.

I have to watch that too-- I picked up a really terrible special interest. Self-reliance, survivalism, and preparedness. There is a fine line between a prepper and a hoarder anyway. Never mind how easy it is for an anxious Aspie with a pack of young kids to pole-vault over it. I have to constantly question-- Can we use it?? In a reasonable length of time?? Why do I want to buy this?? How much do I already have?? Have I already built up three ways to meet this need?? Does this actually serve my documented agenda, or am I reacting to generalized anxiety or a momentary fear?? On and on and on.

You've got a pretty good handle, I think, on what's going on in his head. Now as to how to address it and straighten it out...

That is a head-scratcher. I can wish you luck and send you prayers.

I don't enjoy shopping, I don't enjoy not having space.

I'm not a neat freak at all; but I just don't like too much STUFF, period.

If he was pretty normal until teenage years, then he doesn't have ASD.

Im a hoarder, and if my dad let me, if probably be an Animal hoarder too.

i hoard for security reasons, i dont ever want to go without an object, most of the time i feel an immense amount of guilt for an object when i throw it away; the object must feel so bad and rejected for being thrown in the garbage. I almost cry thinking about it.

maybe its because people have thrown me away like garbage before, and never really known tat i can be useful

I collected as many different versions of the 1812 overture as I could find on CD and on LP. I have several thousand recordings in my collection. I collected many different bits of software devoted to the digital reconstruction/repair/restoration of old audio recordings.

I can relate. I have a room in my parent's house that is overflowing with Lego and even more tucked away here and there. I have all the original cardboard boxes the sets came in filling a closet and the better part of a shed out back. I have half dismantled computers and monitors all over the place and most of my board games are stacked on top of the piano to the ceiling and even that doesn't fit all of them. I have one bookcase filled with comic books and another with books on theology and dogmatics. I'm starting to amass a collection of books on autism and Aspergers as well. So yeah. When I'm struck with a special interest I go all out.

I can also relate a bit to what you said, ZombieBrideXD. I remember shopping for new clothes as a kid with my mom and having to decide between two different pairs of pants. I felt guilty and almost "sorry for" the pants I didn't pick because couldn't get both. I've always looked back at that as an odd thought so it's kinda nice to hear that someone else sympathized with an inanimate object.

I'm not a "hoarder" in the sense that I have mountains of stuff like the people you see on T.V. , but I do collect objects pertaining to my special interest (which is security systems & not just the electronic ones that react to a door being open, but things like firearms, landmines and anti-virus software too) and as such have a lot of old military & police gear mixed inwith some pieces of equipment that look like they belong in fallout 3, so much that when my probation officer searched my place for the first time, the first thing he said was "You're really into survival," to which I replied "Not really, but it's nicer than the alternative".

It's important to note that all of this stuff gets used sometimes even if it's only for airsoft, camping and those rare days when I just want to lay on a hill in a ghillie suit and see how long it takes for someone to spot me. I also have a lot of field & technical manuals that I don't really use, but they're .pdf files and take up no physical space. Sometimes, I do reference them if only for maneuvering and concealment tips.

The point is, I don't think hoarding to the point where it's a detriment is a symptom of ASD.

I actually eliminated my hoarder side. Or at least, I eliminated my physical hoarder side. I spent years living out of suitcases due to a job I had, and simultaneously patted myself on the back for overruling a natural instinct I had for holding onto things. I became really quite proud of myself for learning to throw / give away unneeded stuff. Having almost no possessions at all and honestly being able to say that in the event of a fire I wouldn't care if I left it all behind is amazing for feeling free/in control, much better than piles of crap which of course is done to also keep control of your life.

It's definitely there though. Thankfully we have things like cloud content/hard drives so I get to indulge my inner hoarder without it being a physical problem. I have a massive ebook /mp3 / movie/ bookmark/ computer game collection and it takes up virtually no space.

"Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions."

Hmmm. I have that hoarder/collector gene (or whatever it is), and it was also mostly toy related. It was something I had to learn to deal with by letting go and selling off most of it. It was a friction point in my marriage but not financially as I did manage to keep it within a budget and very neatly organized. But there was just so much that it took up too much space, and it kind of freaked out my wife that I could spend so much time on it. She knows I'm high functioning Aspie but it makes her uncomfortable or annoyed when I act out what she sees as unusual behaviors too often. Figuring out I was Aspie helped me realize when it was typical me in control and when it was Aspie me, which helped me be willing to make changes.

Your brother may well be on the spectrum, and he can take self tests to start and then see a medical professional. That at least will let him know if there is some basic difference in how his mind works/processes things. What happens from there is up to him. Its not curable at the moment and likely will never be as it a difference in how the brain developed and functions, but much can be done to learn how to integrate oneself into society and relate to NTs.