A Place in the Sun's Jasmine Harman has recalled the “powerful and traumatic” moment her hoarding secret was revealed on a date, leaving her in tears.
The telly personality got candid with her fans as she shared a deeply personal memory with them on her social media on Wednesday.
The 47-year-old has previously told of her experiences growing up with her mum who struggled with hoarding.
The disorder is where someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter.
According to the NHS, the items can be of little or no monetary value and the disorder can be challenging to treat because many people who hoard frequently do not see it as a problem, or have little awareness of how it's affecting their life or the lives of others.
Jasmine told her fans that if she addressed the hoarding with her mum that she would only “inflame the situation" and leave her "upset and angry".
She’s now recalled the mortifying moment she was forced to reveal her mum’s hoarding secret when she was being dropped home from a date as a teenager.
Jasmine recounted to fans on Instagram this week, writing: "One of my most powerful and traumatic memories from the time when I was living at home, was in my late teens, after a night out, my date offered to drop me back home.
"It was very late, so I accepted. This was extremely unusual as I almost always drove everywhere, to avoid anyone coming to my house."
She recalled how her date asked the "the dreaded question" to use the toilet when he dropped her off, leaving her "squirming" as she tried to think of an excuse.
"I cried when I realised that one way or another, I was going to have to reveal my secret," she continued.
"I went inside and cleared a path to the toilet. I moved some of the junk from the WC to make a bit more space.
"I went back out and told him he could use the bathroom. He was tactful enough never to mention it again, but my shame was complete."
She previously opened up about her mum’s health condition on the Hoarders support website: “Having lived with my Mum’s chronic hoarding problems through much of my life, I felt ashamed and isolated.
“When Mum bravely agreed to appear in the BBC1 documentaries My Hoarder Mum and Me and Britain’s Biggest Hoarders, thousands of people reached out to me, and all of a sudden we were no longer alone.”
Fans flooded Jasmine's comment section with sympathy and support.
One wrote: "Good friends will accept you no matter what, never be ashamed of what you have no control over."
A second said: "You are one brave lady and such a blessing to your mum the way that you support her."
"So sorry that you went through this," said a third.
A fourth commented with her own similar experience in solidarity, writing: “Yes. Every day when I lived at home and the doorbell would ring with unexpected guests or my friends would want to come over…
“Even now when family visits my parent's house and they ask me to come too… I feel it…My Dad has the problem and my Mum puts up with it.” [sic]
Another reassured her, commenting: "He was so lucky to be on a date with a gorgeous woman like you Jasmine nothing else should matter."
