Shopping makes a person feel good. While an occasional good shopping experience is a great way to reward yourself from time to time, shopping addiction may be destructive if it becomes compulsive.
Knowing when a shopping spree is problematic is essential to stop people from harming their relationships and careers.
What is Shopping Addiction?
Compulsive buying disorder is the uncontrollable, compulsive spending of shopping goods through a brick-and-mortar store or online shopping despite the person being unable to afford them. They might sacrifice the money that was intended for monthly bills. It’s also common for people who have problems with shopping to rack up high amounts of debt.
It’s reported that the age range of people who have problems with shopping is 18 to 30.
The condition might be present or reoccurring with other mental health problems such as anxiety disorders, personality disorders, or eating disorders.
Four stages of compulsive shopping
Compulsive buying starts with anticipation. This is when the person feels the urge to buy something. Most of the time, the items they want to buy are unnecessary. The joy they get is in the shopping itself, and not so much in the item they will get.
The second stage is preparation. This is where the person prepares the money or starts to think about what to wear in the shopping center. It is also when the person thinks about where to shop.
The third stage is in the act of shopping itself. This is when the person roams around the center to pick and choose the item they want.
Lastly, this is when the person spends money. This is usually followed by a sense of guilt over their compulsive shopping, which may worsen the urge to shop even more.
How Is Shopping Addiction Diagnosed?
The labeling of compulsive shopping as a mental disorder is debated today among experts. As of today, it’s not an official diagnosis under protocol. Despite the argument, what’s clear to everyone is that compulsive spending harms a person’s social and occupational functioning.
Causes of Shopping Addiction or Compulsive Buying
Escapism
Those who compulsively spend often use shopping as an escape from life’s problems. Shopping releases feel-good neurotransmitters that can help a person alleviate or outright escape their problems. It does actually work, but only in the short term. That spending is usually followed by a feeling of guilt and low esteem, which may worsen the urge to shop even more.
Advertising
Since the 1920s, advertisers have been aware that consumers buy with emotions and justify it logically. If you study advertising today, you will be taught how to target a person’s ‘pain points,’ add salt to those wounds, and then offer the solution.
If you pay attention to modern advertising, you will notice that businesses are selling not the products themselves but the mental constructs behind them. They might be selling consumers a certain identity or a way of thinking.
For example, a man’s body wash will be littered with imagery of masculinity, or a woman’s beauty product will be glossed with feminine colors. While that may not produce problems for the majority of consumers, a certain demographic who’s insecure about their masculinity or femininity will stick to these products as a way to mask or cover up their lack of confidence in themselves. And covering those up will usually make the insecurities even worse.
In the 1920s, when American women were winning their fight to get the right to vote, advertisers from a particular tobacco company conjured up advertising campaigns that glorified smoking women. During this time, women who smoked were frowned upon by the general public because smoking was seen as a masculine act.
Knowing that this would generate insecurity in women, a particular, well-known advertiser organized a parade in New York where women would smoke in public. In the campaign, it was said that the cigarettes were ‘torches of freedom.’
It was sold as a demonstration of women’s ability to assert their independence from patriarchy. Women started smoking, and the company revenue went up. But so does the rate of lung cancer.
This is an example of clever advertising at work. It can exploit people’s good intentions and insecurity and turn them into favorable business prospects.
Women didn’t have to smoke to assert themselves. But clever advertising says otherwise.
Most advertisers today intuitively know the boundaries between ethical and unethical advertisements. However, some have no regard for ethics and fully exploit the person’s insecurity.
These practices might worsen the consumer’s insecurities, self-esteem, and spending habits, which can cause and exacerbate a person’s shopping addiction.
Symptoms of Shopping Addiction
Preoccupation with shopping
People may be unable to focus at work because they keep thinking of what or where they will shop and spend their money. A common hallmark of these preoccupations is that they’re senseless, intrusive, and irresistible.
It’s senseless because most of the items that they think of are not needed. It’s common for people with shopping problems to rack up things that they don’t need. That’s because the fun they get is in the shopping itself, not necessarily what they bought.
It’s intrusive and irresistible because the person might try to get shopping out of their mind, but it keeps returning. The more they try to resist it, the stronger the urge.
Spending more of what can be afforded
It’s also common for people with spending problems to live beyond their means. A spending urge usually doesn’t fix itself after the person has finished shopping. So, the person will still feel the urge to shop even more.
Shopping addiction may result in the person living paycheck to paycheck or racking up high amounts of debt that they have difficulties paying.
Spending habits interfere with career
Because people are preoccupied with shopping, it can affect their performance at work. A job requires focus to perform fully. Reviewing past mistakes and improving them also requires mental power. If people are preoccupied with shopping, they don’t have the mental energy to do those things, which usually results in low performance.
Buying is NOT a cause of hypomania or mania
Hypomania is basically when a person is mentally hyper. They have high energy levels that can make a person spend compulsively. That’s usually because they feel so happy and indestructible that they stop paying attention to the consequences of their action.
When that is the case, the poor spending habit is just the symptom, not the cause. Meaning, that if a professional would treat the person, they would focus more on hypomania.
This is important because shopping addiction, even though it is problematic, is not the main issue. Treating shopping addiction while ignoring hypomania will not end well. On the flip side, if hypomania is treated, the shopping spree will naturally end by itself. An official diagnosis from an expert is necessary.
Effects of Compulsive Shopping
The effects of compulsive shopping range from feeling guilty over one’s compulsive shopping habits, to financial strain, and relationship problems.
Most compulsive shoppers understand that they have a problematic behavior. This is evident because of the harm that it had done to their lives.
Because of this, a sense of guilt would start to manifest. Despite this, the compulsivity is usually strong enough that can make the person continue their poor spending habits. Shopping addiction may lead to problems at work or in their relationships.
At work, the compulsive shopper is usually preoccupied with the thoughts of shopping. That steals away quality time and energy that could have been used to improve their performance at work. This can lead to poor work performance that may lead to warnings from superiors or outright termination.
For relationships, especially for those who have a financial responsibility towards their family, the compulsive shopper would usually sacrifice the money intended for bills and food towards shopping.
Compulsive shopping may create tension over the happiness and longevity of the relationship. In fact, the number one cause of divorce is financial misunderstanding.
As we’ve said, the compulsive shopper understands this and might try to control their habits. However, since it’s an addiction, the person would have multiple failed attempts at stopping, which can lead to low self-esteem and other mood disorders.
Shopping Addiction Treatment Options
It’s reported that, when it comes to treating shopping addiction, women are more open to treatment than men. The most effective treatment options for shopping addictions are cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), cue exposure (CE), and Debtors Anonymous (DA).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
CBT relies on the inference that a person’s behaviors are rooted in their core beliefs and assumptions about the world. In the specific case of shopping addiction, the person may have beliefs that the best way to alleviate difficult emotions is through forcing happiness, thus the shopping behavior.
The therapist will kindly challenge those kinds of beliefs and redirect the person to a more healthy way of coping with unwanted negative emotions.
There are usually other multiple beliefs and core assumptions that drive the shopping behavior and it will be revealed, challenged, and corrected throughout the session with the client’s cooperation.
Cue exposure
Receiving a certain kind of stimulus from the environment triggers a person to do something or engage in certain behaviors. In the case of shopping addiction, cues such as sale posters, brand logos, and other relevant images make the person feel the urge to buy.
The goal of CE is to allow the person to see the cue and get triggered, without necessarily succumbing to the compulsive behavior. Given enough time, the cue will no longer have an effect on the person, thus removing the addiction altogether.
Debtors Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous is a 12-step program that aims to help people who have spending problems. The program is more of a spiritual practice rather than a scientific one, and it has proven its effectiveness.
In the 12 steps, the first three invite the person with spending habits that they have no control over their compulsivity and encourage them to surrender to a higher power. The aim is to stop the person from fighting the addiction – which makes it worse – and let a higher power or higher parts of themselves deal with it.
The second part of the program encourages the person to review past mistakes and make amends to those they have wronged. The goal is to get rid of any subconscious burden that may have been fueling the addictive behavior in the first place.
The last part is to invite the person to help those who are currently struggling with addiction that has made them rack up high amounts of debt.
Learn More About What Causes Shopping Addiction and How to Stop It
Learning the cause of shopping addiction is important to know where the person had taken their misstep, and help themselves from committing the same thing again. You can learn more about the causes of shopping addiction and other related symptoms and treatment on Luxe Recovery.
