A Place In The Sun presenter Jasmine Harman broke down in tears on This Morning on Wednesday as she opened up about her mum’s hoarding struggles.
The long-time host and property expert on the Channel 4 programme, which helps house-hunters find their dream home abroad, has spoken on numerous occasions about the disorder her mum Vasoulla has.
The NHS describes a hoarding disorder as when “someone acquires an excessive number of items and stores them in a chaotic manner, usually resulting in unmanageable amounts of clutter”, adding that it can be a result of mental health problems or social factors like someone’s upbringing.
Appearing on ITV daytime show alongside her mother, Jasmine told host Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary that she’s learned to “concentrate more on having a loving relationship” with her mum, and “not focusing on the hoarding”.
She then became visibly emotional, before Alison comforted her by adding: “She’s not a bad person because she hoards”.
Jasmine went on: “I’m so grateful to her, because she’s helped me to become a much more compassionate person”.
Jasmine, who founded the online community Hoarding Support, went on: “I’m so grateful to her, because she’s helped me to become a much more compassionate person”.
The host then looked at her mum and said: “We used to fight, didn’t we? We used to argue about it all the time. But now, we have a relationship outside that’s not focused on the hoarding.”
During the interview, Vasoulla shared that the loss of her father, who was murdered in Cyprus when she was young, along with lots of upheaval as a child was part of the reason she started to hold onto possessions.
Jasmine has previously appeared in documentaries with her mum, including My Hoarder Mum & Me.
She also opened up about her experience growing up on the Hoarding Support website, writing: “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.”
A Place In The Sun airs weekdays at 4pm on Channel 4, while This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV1.