Is Stacking Therapeutic?

Over at Bullion Stacker recently, an individual made the following post:

Does anyone else find stacking therapeutic?

Not to get too personal but last year my wife told me she no longer wanted to be married, needless to say I was distraught and still struggle with it daily. In the past year I have spent a significant amount of my income and saving on PM’s and have over doubled my stack. I spend the majority of my time now looking for deals and collecting PM’s and other items I enjoy collecting. It took me a while to figure out that I was acting like a hoarder, the only thing that made me feel better was accumulating “stuff.” Most studies on hoarding show that hoarders tend to use their “stuff” as a safety net, almost a surrogate for human affection.

Does anyone else find stacking/collecting therapeutic, or use it to take your mind off the tough times?

Is buying gold and silver behavioral therapy? I am hardpressed to find an episteme that would lead me to believe that by buying gold and silver one could be achieving some sort of self-improvement in the eastern sense. Hoarding and behavioral therapy are two separate things, and I do not believe that the former can be used to achieve the latter.  Although an individual may take to hoarding items in the aftermath of a traumatic event, that does not necessarily make the behavior a positive one.

Facing trauma, especially the loss of a loved one, entails rebuilding one’s trust and sense of hope in the world. A reason to go on not only for one’s own sake, but for the sake of friends, families and the future.  Accumulating stuff is not the primary way of achieving this, no not by a long shot.  Not even if that stuff is value like silver. Instead, rehabilitating relationships that might have gone on the wayside during the busyness of marriage or making new friends can go further to helping one return to their prior ways than collecting inanimate objects.  A loyal pet, such as a dog, can go a long way towards bridging that gap.

There can be different reasons for feeling compulsion to collect excessively. In terms of tangible monetary assets, like gold and silver, one can feel inclined to buy, buy, buy in anticipation of preserved assets. However, one can also feel inclined to collect excessively in anticipation of emotional gain and security. The latter behavior is a dangerous behavior, and could lead to reclusive behavior and a depreciation of one’s social life. Diversity is the key to life, and there are myriad more ways than one by which to achieve happiness and equanimity.

Compulsively buying precious metals for emotional stability can predispose one to health risks. If one gets stressed if they have not accumulated gold and silver within a certain amount of time, what happens when that person runs into financial problems and can no longer afford to buy gold and silver? This will put a lot of stress onto the individual and can lead to the accumulation of precious metals as an economic burden, taking away from one’s liquid cash position as it does.

The move from saving, preserving wealth or collecting precious metals to hoarding precious metals entail detachment from one’s behavior. The PM hoarder might have trouble deducing the reason  they buy precious metals so feverishly in the first place.

On Bullion Stacker, another user chimes in with his feelings, using “fetish” literature for comparison:

I’m more familiar with the “fetish” literature, which suggests a motive for “conquest” and a desire to be “different”. Lanning (2012), for example, says that a fetish group (a) develops its own slang; (b) organizes its own support group; (c) attaches to certain industry products; and (d) worships a distinct body of literature. Sure, could describe any group. My own research (** 2001) reviewed five general categories of fetishes:
(1) Object — attraction to the form, shape, constitution, or components of something
(2) Material — attraction to the media hype or need to accumulate something
(3) People — attraction to the body, its skin, body parts, or bodily products
(4) Fantasy — attraction to mind games, role playing, undoable things
(5) Other — attraction to fantastic or neologistic things that haven’t been invented yet

If precious metals were considered “material” under the above list, the forces which drive one to precious metals hoarding could be intense focus on a) Armageddon b) Apocalypse c) financial holocaust d) economic depression d) state terrorism e) inflation and/or  the need to accumulate. On the other end of the spectrum, the hoarder could be considered “Other;” that meaning that he or she is attracted to “fantastic or neologistic things that haven’t been invented yet” like free markets and free people.

Either way, it is important first and foremost to strive for an inner calm and collectedness that allows you to experience your days-and-nights as they pass, instead of off in gaga land groping for other times and places, real or imagined.  Equanimity oils the human mind like dinosaurs do jet engines, and such dispositions can be the space between greatness and slavishness.

Being anxious with your stack is the not the key to finding a comfort zone. Your stack, more or less, is meant to ensure the perpetuation of your comfort zone , assuming the avoidance of bloodletting,  and your ability to enjoy this wave of life so that you can commune with the natural world and examine what human relationships are made of and why.