Trust Yourself with Shopping Again
Holistic Financial Coaching for Shopping Addiction
"How do I know if I'm addicted to shopping?"
If you need help with an addiction, help is available at 1-800-662-4357
You catch yourself doubting everything you do
You’ve told yourself a million times you’re going to stop shopping so much right after the holidays.
Maybe you’ve even asked a friend to hold you accountable, and that worked, for a little while, until it didn’t.
It’s hard not to feel like a failure. It’s hard not to feel isolated. And it’s hard not to feel ashamed.
The conventional tools to "kill" your shopping addiction may be making it worse
One of the first things I see my clients try is restriction. And this makes a little sense…
“I’m spending too much” or “I can’t stop spending” so the next logical step is:
“I’LL JUST STOP SPENDING!”
But restriction of any kind does horrible things to our decision making, and it makes us feel like failures no matter what we do. Often restriction can result in feeling rebellious and resentful, even if we were the ones who put those restrictions on ourselves.
The cycle is pervasive: we try to restrict ourselves, we’re successful for a bit, but then it get’s to be too much and we buckle, proving to ourselves over and over again that there’s a reason to feel shame.
So if that’s the case, fuck it, who cares? We cave and go back to spending like we used to until that too, is intolerable.
More shame, more pressure, more failure.
Addiction can happen to the best of us
Addiction, addictive tendencies, and reliance or dependence on shopping can be easily interprepted as a personality defect, but it’s absolutely not. Still the stigma persists.
Shopping addiction often slides under the radar, though. After all, spending money is something we must do to live.
Money is THE resource in our world. Everything you need to survive, even time off from work, you need money for.
We can get by just fine without ever using heroin or cocaine, but we can’t go more than a few days without spending money. It’s like food in this way. We need food to survive and we need to spend money to survive.
Understanding what's underneath shopping addiction is the first step
There are many things that add up to shopping addiction. We’re going to talk about just three.
Loss aversion
Loss aversion is our brain’s sensitivity to not just actual losses, but even the potential for loss. We will typically way a potential loss as “heavier” than an equivelant gain.
Being loss averse makes a lot of sense according to our survival-obsessed brains. Our brains developed in a world of extreme scarcity, so always being on guard to not just find new resources, but not lose the ones we have makes sense.
In our modern, complex, and extremly plentiful world, however, loss aversion can lead us to make decisions that might negatively impact us, and may make it difficult to determine if (or how) a choice or course of action may be of service to us.
Loss aversion shows up in shopping addiction indirectly.
Restriction
Restriction is an easy tool to deploy, but it is also deeply emotional and reactive.
It seems so simple, right? I have difficulty with controlling my shopping, so I just need to stop shopping!
Directly or indirectly, you’ve probably gotten messages like:
“Stop spending money on stupid things.”
“Spend only on your needs, not your wants.”
“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”
Can you feel my eyes rolling right now?
If all it took was restriction to be financiall healthy you’d be fine right now, we all would.
More than anything, restriction will trigger our sense of loss, our rebellion, and our resentment. Which, again, reinforces that you are doing something wrong, and that you cannot, in fact be trusted with your money.
Feeling out of control
When we feel like our control or choices have been removed, we will exact control in any way we can. And shopping is a socially acceptable way to take control. It can be a balance of novelty, some choice (but not too much), and distraction.
Spending in general, and shopping specifically is a socially acceptable form of controlling our environment.
The more out of control we feel, the more likely we are to fall prey to the illusion of control.
Imagine a scale from 0 to 10. At the 0 end of the scale are things that you have literally no control over, like the weather. On the 10 end of the scale are things that you have a god-like level of control over.
When we fall sway to the illusion of control, it means that we will spend much of our time and effort in the 0-5 range. And there is a certain messed-up kind of logic here. Just because we have a low level of control over something doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact our lives. And control= safety to our threat-obsessed brain, so the 0-5 end of the scale is just a whole bunch of things we have low control over but can hurt us. So our brains automatically want to grab for control there.
And because we are exhausting ourselves, we have no capacity to exert control in the 6-10 range, where we have a higher level of control. And there isn’t much in the 6-10 range, but learning to focus there can be incredibly powerful.
So what are the things in the 6-10 range of our control? Our own behaviors, actions, reactions, attitudes, mindset, etc.
What would your life look like without shopping addiction?
If you were truly able to trust yourself with money again how would that change your life?
Here’s what some of our clients say after they are on the other side of shopping addiction:
“I can finally make AND KEEP a budget!”
“As I was shopping the other day I was shocked to realize that I was no longer panicked… I can’t even remember the last time I felt that cold sweat when I walked in the door of a store.”
“When we started this process I was so concerned that I’d have some short-term success and then backslide like crazy. But now I know the steps I can take if that does happen, and having those tools calms me down, which I think makes it less likely that I will even backslide, if that makes sense.”
How holistic financial coaching can help
Holistic financial coaching means that every part of your life touches your finances, and your finances touch every part of your life.
This is both good and bad. While I’m sure you’re experienceing the effects of having money touch every part of your life (bad), it also means that we can practice behavior change tools on the non-financial parts of your life and they’ll impact your finances! (good!)
Holistic financial coaching is NOT advice, and it’s not shame, judgment, punishment, or being told what to do.
If shame, punishment and judgment worked, we’d all be just fine.
Financial coaching that meets you where you are and respects your intelligence means that you can gain the tools you need to trust yourself with money again!
You are so much closer than you think?
What would your life look like without shopping addiction? Fill out the form below and let me know!