Although the best way to know if you’re suffering under a spending or shopping addiction is to seek out the support of a qualified therapist, we can use six questions to get a broad understanding of how spending may be impacting your life.
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, it may be time to get help.
6 Questions to Ask Yourself If You Think You Might Be Addicted to Spending
Is your spending negatively affecting one or more of your relationships?
Has your work performance or living situation suffered because of your spending?
Have you ever stolen anything to keep spending or lied about your spending?
Have you experienced adverse physical outcomes due to your spending (headaches, sleepless nights, etc.)?
Is spending a part of your daily routine?
Do you think about spending when you cannot shop?
Addiction Can Happen to the Best of Us
Addiction and addictive tendencies have long been seen as a personality defect. There has been a stigma against drug users and alcohol abusers, in particular, for much of our history.
But spending often slides under the radar. After all, spending money is something we must do to live. 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.
Reasons for Spending Addiction
There are about as many reasons for spending addiction as there are people suffering under it. In my holistic financial coaching practice, I’ve seen spending addictions break into a few very general categories:
Rebellion
Often rebellion is a result of financial abuse, even at a low level. If we feel like we’re being obligated or forced, one of our natural tendencies is to be rebellious and resentful. I know this can look like a personality defect, but rebellion and resentment are actually protective strategies. If someone (or some situation) is forcing or obligating you and controlling your money, of course you’re going to secretly, rebelliously take back control and spend!
Control
When we feel like our control or choices have been removed, we will exact control in any way we can. And spending is a socially acceptable way to take control. It can be a balance of novelty, some choice (but not too much), and distraction.
Restriction
It might seem counterintuitive, but restriction generates the rebellious mindset we talked about above. If we feel like we have to lock down our spending, stop spending on “unnecessary” things, and tighten our belts, eventually we will respond with reactive spending. And then very often we pile shame, regret and remorse on ourselves, vow that next time it’ll be different, make our apologies and promises and start the cycle all over again.
It makes no difference to your brain whether you are restricting yourself or someone else is restricting you, eventually we all lose that fleeting motivation and “fail.”
Recovering from Spending Addiction
The first thing you can do to begin undermining a spending addiction is actually pretty simple. Instead of correcting yourself, denying yourself, or shaming yourself, you can simply start with one question:
“What is the purpose of this spending?”
One of the practices I ask my clients to do is to reflect on the purpose of their spending AS they spend. Let’s say Judy is buying groceries, as she swipes her card she reminds herself of the purpose of the groceries, “Dinner for the family tonight, lunch for tomorrow.”
Not only does this practice make that spending real to us, but it also helps us understand the purpose behind our behavior.
Occasionally, as people begin this practice, they may feel that they are justifying purchases to themselves. But because the purpose of this practice is to be aware of spending, that sense of justification typically fades.
We are practicing awareness of your spending without judgment here, but we’re also slowing down decision making. If you find patterns like you are spending to take control, or spending to relieve the pressure of a long day your brain may automatically look for other ways to do the same thing whereas before when your brain was just reacting you might have even told yourself, “this is the only way I can feel better.”
Going Deeper into Your Spending Addiction
Before we talk about a big strategy for undermining a spending addiction, I need to make a clear distinction between restriction and abstinence.
When I’m coaching with my clients I rail against restrictions. But if there is an actual addiction at play, a thoughtful, planned abstinence may be called for.
Restriction is an emotional reaction. It shuts us down and can often lead to a spiral of resentment, shame, and pressure.
Abstinence is intentional and typically planned for. It can even be thought of as a kind of experiment. If you are considering abstaining from spending it will likely take some time and thoughtfulness.
How to Abstain from Spending
Again, I recommend seeking out the care of a therapist who’s experienced in addiction therapy prior to starting any attempt at tackling your spending addiction.
This is not easy. We’re not talking about a few days, but more like four weeks. Some people may see a change in two or three weeks, others will have to abstain for six or more. And abstaining from spending can be tricky. If you have a particular store or website (looking at you, Amazon) that is part of your spending addiction, can someone else do spending for you during this time?
Spending is not a drug, not really, but withdrawals can still be intense. I’ve heard my clients say they have an increase in anxiety, sleeplessness, distracted thoughts and headaches.
If you are at all concerned about your mental or physical health before or while you fast or abstain from spending, seek care before you begin.
Abstinence is doing nothing less than resetting your brain’s pain-pleasure balance, and that means for a time at least, this is likely going to be extremely unpleasant. The good news is that on the other side of this abstinence, I’ve seen my clients consistently have less stress, feel more comfortable and confident in their decisions (financial and otherwise) and are able to build and rebuild relationships.
If you’re considering abstaining from spending (or a certain kind of spending), here are a few prompts you might think about before and during your period of abstinence:
What do you think you might notice as you fast or abstain from spending?
What kinds of outcomes would you like to see?
What do you think will be the hardest about this time?
What do you think will be the easiest aspect of this spending fast?
What do you need to be successful in this?
Quick tip:
If I can offer you one piece of advice to make this spending abstinence easier, it is to be patient with yourself.
In Conclusion
Spending addiction is an easily available and socially acceptable kind of addiction that has the potential to disrupt and harm relationships and financial resilience. But you can undermine your spending addiction and learn to trust yourself again without punishing yourself, restriction, or shame.
Finally, if you need help with an addiction, it is available at:
USA: 1-800-662-4357
Canada: 1-855-499-9446
UK: 0808-163-9632
For other countries, type “help with shopping addiction [country]” in your search engine.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Has spending turned into a pastime? Would you be able to live without buying things for a period of time? Have you noticed an addiction toward spending? What do you usually purchase that you later realize you didn’t really need? What do you do with such purchases?