What Causes Shopping Addiction?
A shopping addiction is a behavioral addiction that causes someone to excessively make purchases. To someone with a shopping addiction, the desire to buy things can be overwhelming.
Shopping can provide intense feelings of excitement and enjoyment, but these feelings are only temporary. Soon after making a purchase, someone may feel guilty and regretful. These negative feelings cause someone to make more purchases to feel better.
Shopping addictions can have serious consequences to someone's finances, relationships, and mental health. Despite these issues, people with this addiction continue to make purchases to cope with how they’re feeling. Understanding how shopping addictions form can help someone gain self awareness and eventually recover from their compulsive shopping.
Let’s take a look at the symptoms of shopping addiction, how it forms, and how someone can recover from it.
Symptoms of Shopping Addiction
Shopping addiction is more than just being bad with money. Like other addictions, shopping addiction is a compulsive behavior used to relieve negative feelings. Someone may be addicted to making purchases if they:
- Spend a lot of time and money on shopping
- Feel euphoric when they make purchases
- Continually shop despite negative consequences
- Neglect responsibilities by excessively shopping
Someone who is addicted to shopping will often try to hide how much they are spending. Not only does shopping cause a financial burden, but it can be strenuous on someone’s relationships too. Someone facing a shopping addiction will often find themselves in an addiction cycle that is hard to break free from.
Read our article about the differences in habits vs. addictions to learn more about how these unhealthy behaviors are related.
The Cycle of Shopping Addiction
Similar to other addictions, shopping addiction can be characterized by a cycle of negative feelings and negative coping mechanisms. There are five main steps in an addiction cycle, with each step leadinging into the next like cause and effect.
Emotional Trigger
Something that triggers a negative emotional response is what starts the addiction cycle. When someone encounters an emotional trigger, they may feel frustrated, upset, or guilty. These negative triggers can be life events, a relapse, and even withdrawal. To someone with a shopping addiction, emotional triggers are what sparks the need to relieve the negative feelings by making a purchase.
Seeking Relief
People will use their addiction to relieve the internal discomfort that was caused by an emotional trigger. This is a negative coping mechanism in response to distress, and it's the primary reason why someone may become addicted.
The relief that shopping addiction provides is only temporary. As time goes on, someone may feel withdrawal symptoms to creep in, causing them to want to make another purchase. Also, emotional triggers are normally unavoidable. This is why positive coping mechanisms are important to deal with emotional triggers, rather than taking part in an addiction.
Addiction Obsession
It’s common for someone to obsess about the object of their addiction. This obsession leads to ritual behaviors that lead up to taking part in the addiction. For someone with a shopping addiction, this can be frequently browsing online stores or constantly thinking about things they want to buy. The obsession intensifies cravings and worsens withdrawal symptoms.
Acting on the Addiction
The next step is when someone finally acts on their addiction. This will provide relief from their withdrawal symptoms, and may cause intense excitement or euphoria. The relief from the internal negative feelings is used to justify irrational shopping sprees and unnecessary purchases.
Guilt and Regret
After the feelings of euphoria are over, guilt starts to set in. The relief provided by making a purchase is over quickly, and this may cause a shopping addict to want to make another purchase. The negative feelings associated with this stage can cause the addiction cycle to restart.
Read our related article about the addiction cycle to learn more about how it forms.
Where Does Shopping Addiction Come From?
In some ways, shopping addiction takes root in an individual similarly to other addictions. It can be prompted from negative emotions like fear, guilt, stress, and anger. Compulsive shopping is used as a negative coping mechanism to mask these unwanted feelings. Also, it can simply be an unhealthy cure for boredom.
Certain mental health factors can contribute to the development of a shopping addiction too. It can be used to relieve anxiety and depression, or be a symptom of a personality disorder. Shopping addiction can also be a means to make up for someone’s low self esteem. If someone’s family member suffers from personality disorders or substance abuse disorders, then they are also more likely to develop a shopping addiction.
A variety of social factors can influence someone to compulsively buy things. Someone is more likely to develop a shopping addiction if they are prone to materialism, the appearance of status, and even hoarding possessions. Those with a shopping addiction may fantasize about how material possessions can benefit their life.
Breaking Free from Shopping Addictions
With the right amount of self awareness and therapy, someone can free themselves from their shopping addiction. Much like other behavioral addictions, someone can see significant relief from their shopping addiction with behavioral addiction therapy. Behavioral addiction therapy is designed to promote healthy habits and positive coping mechanisms to emotional triggers.
Read our related article, Stopping a Shopping Addiction, for a more in-depth guide on breaking free from compulsive shopping.
If you or someone you know may be suffering from a shopping addiction, it is important to know that help is available. Talk with one of our mental health professionals that are experts in providing relief from your addiction and teaching you the skills you need to live a healthier lifestyle. Reach out to Sequoia Behavioral Health today.