How to Stop Shopping Addiction

Causes of Shopping Addiction

Compulsive buying disorder is a multi-pronged condition caused by various factors. Understanding the developmental, neurobiological, and cultural influences of shopping addiction can guide treatment efforts.

Psychological Factors

The Diamond Rehab in Thailand details the prevalence of co-occurring conditions that can precede and worsen compulsive spending behaviors³, forming a complex and chaotic concoction. These conditions often involve impulse control and emotional regulation, specifically obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and other avoidant personality disorders. 

Impulsive spending acts as a coping mechanism to manage negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem, using shopping to solve the negative feelings temporarily. Shopping addiction can be both a product of and the cause for mental health concerns, necessitating personalized treatment when unraveling these conditions.

Environmental Influences

In a world consumed and fueled by media, people are taught that material possessions equate to happiness, success, and social status. Advertisements are designed to create desire, often exploiting emotional triggers to encourage impulsive purchases. This is especially true nowadays, with social platforms using targeted ads based on internet history.

For example, if you search for winter jackets on Google, you may encounter ads for trench coats on your social media platforms.

Consumerism is deeply ingrained in many cultures, with immense pressure to keep up with fashion, technology, and lifestyle societal norms. Social media amplifies this pressure by showcasing small, curated portions of people’s lives, often filled with luxury items and experiences, leading to anxiety and a desire to conform to these perceived standards⁴.

The internet also provides easy access to spending with online shopping. The convenience of being able to shop anytime, anywhere, has removed many of the barriers that previously limited impulsive purchases. Individuals may feel less inhibited and guilty for spending money as they have fewer in-person interactions, like handing money to a cashier, creating a false illusion of security behind a screen.

Biological Factors

Neurobiological theories credit compulsive buying disorder to abnormal neurotransmission¹, particularly in the serotonergic, dopaminergic, or opioid systems. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, reward, and reinforcement⁵, is a key player in “reward dependence.” Dopamine is released when spending, creating a sense of euphoria. This reinforcement can lead to repeated behaviors in an attempt to experience that pleasurable feeling again, contributing to the cycle of addiction.

Irregular serotonin levels, a neurotransmitter responsible for emotional regulation and impulse control, are connected with various impulse control disorders, including compulsive shopping. Low levels of serotonin disrupt the ability to manage urges, leading to compulsive shopping behaviors as a way to temporarily alleviate negative emotions.

There is also evidence that individuals with a family history of addictive behaviors, such as substance use or gambling addiction, may be more genetically predisposed to developing other types of compulsive behaviors, including shopping addiction⁶.

Strategies to Overcome Shopping Addiction: Professional Treatment Options

Navigating compulsive buying disorder recovery requires a comprehensive approach that often demands outside professional help. Building an extensive toolkit of skills to manage negative feelings and impulses tied to shopping behaviors can empower you to save and spend your money confidently. 

Therapy and Counseling

Individual, group, and family therapy each offer a unique approach to help manage compulsive behaviors. Individual counseling, often through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), creates a personalized setting where you and your therapist collaborate to identify the specific emotional and psychological issues driving the addiction. You can learn tailored coping mechanisms and practice using them when in stressful or triggering situations. 

Group therapy provides a supportive environment to share experiences and challenges with others facing similar issues. A group setting can help you feel less isolated and gain insight from peers’ experiences. You’ll practice accountability, build connections, and develop healthier social interactions, which can be a crucial part of the recovery process.

Family therapy is another important option, especially when shopping addiction negatively affects relationships and family dynamics. Your family unit can improve communication, address underlying family conflicts, and learn more on how to support you in recovery. Loved ones can learn how to set healthy boundaries and avoid enabling compulsive shopping behaviors.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Shopping Addiction

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one of the most effective forms of therapy to navigate compulsive buying disorder⁷. CBT helps individuals identify and address the underlying thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that trigger compulsive shopping. By recognizing these patterns, you can learn healthier thought processes, coping mechanisms, and strategies to manage impulses. 

CBT helps individuals recognize the triggers and irrational thoughts that lead to their compulsive shopping behavior, such as stress or low self-esteem, as well as external factors like social pressure. You can learn to critically examine these thoughts and replace them with more rational, balanced perspectives. For example, you might learn to question whether buying an item will improve your mood or help you gain social approval, leading to a more realistic assessment of your needs. 

Medication

Sometimes, medication is necessary to manage the impulsive urges as well as the co-occurring mental health conditions like OCD and anxiety. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Fluoxetine, Fluvoxamine, and Sertraline can treat compulsive buying disorder¹ due to the similarities in neurotransmission and behaviors with other compulsive disorders. 

A comprehensive evaluation can guide medication usage for shopping addiction. Your professional care team can help you navigate your needs to find the appropriate medication and dosage. 

Financial Counseling

In many cases, financial counseling helps individuals regain control over their monetary struggles, especially if the person is in debt or battling legal issues. The proper counselor or mentor can help you manage finances, develop better money management skills, and repair the financial damage caused by compulsive spending. You may benefit from creating a debt repayment plan, learning budgeting skills, and developing a healthier relationship with money. 

Financial counseling skills can serve as a strong foundation for lifelong budgeting methods. You and your counselor may set savings goals for major life events, such as buying a home, funding education, or preparing for retirement. Developing realistic savings plans and making investment decisions can help you align your long-term financial goals.

Support Groups 

Joining support groups like Spenders Anonymous provides a sense of community, understanding, and accountability in your recovery. They offer a safe space to share experiences, learn from others, and receive ongoing support.

Developing Healthy Shopping Habits

Overcoming shopping addiction requires a combination of self-awareness, discipline, and practical strategies. Recovery stories are built on everyday habits that support a sustainable, healthy mindset.

Creating a Budget

Adopt a strict budget that you and your financial counselor create for discretionary spending, limiting the amount of money available for shopping. By tracking your spending and sticking to this budget, you can prevent impulsive purchases and stay within your means. Apps and websites like YNAB and Goodbudget keep users on track with time-tested budgeting methods, as well.

You may motivate yourself to adhere to your budget by giving yourself a small reward, such as going for ice cream if you do not overspend each week. A day of recovery is a day worth being celebrated! The effort to choose your health and well-being every day is a great feat, so continue to reflect and pride yourself on your hard work.

Mindful Shopping

When shopping for necessities, ask yourself whether you truly need the item, how it aligns with your values, and what the long-term consequences of the purchase will be. Mindfulness can help you stay grounded and make more intentional decisions.

Consider using cash instead of credit cards to make purchases, as this can help you directly feel the impact of spending. You could remove saved payment information from online shopping accounts, making it less convenient to make impulsive purchases, too.

You can also practice delayed gratification. By implementing a “cooling-off” period—waiting 24+ hours before making a purchase—you give yourself time to evaluate whether the item is truly necessary, which can help reduce impulsive buying.

Lifestyle Changes

Occasionally deleting social media apps can offer solace from advertisements and convincing influencers who tell you to try the newest product. You can also try unsubscribing from marketing emails or limiting time spent on shopping sites with website controls to reduce the urge to shop.

Real dopamine from healthy activities is the best kind of dopamine. Rediscover and reignite your passions by reading, painting, taking walks, and volunteering to keep you occupied and fulfilled.

Preventing Relapse

Relapse prevention planning aims to recognize and address warning signals before they escalate to the physical stage—compulsive spending. It takes a cognitive behavioral approach to preventing relapse and provides appropriate skills for what to do if a relapse does occur. It blends education, coping strategy development, trigger identification, building support networks, and lifestyle changes.

Identifying Triggers

You and your care team can begin to build your relapse prevention plan by reflecting on 3 key recovery components: 

1. Reflect on your recovery history. In treatment, what worked and what didn’t work? If you’ve relapsed before, what led to it? What were your triggers before you got treatment? Learn from mistakes of the past to make a realistic relapse prevention plan.
2. Write down personal, relationship, and employment goals to highlight situations you want to be in and people you want to be around. 
3. Identify your triggers—all the people, places, and things that could cause stress. Developing coping strategies for each trigger can empower you to live life without fear.

One of the most essential parts of a relapse prevention plan is building skills to navigate uncomfortable feelings and situations. You may practice coping techniques such as breathing exercises, regulating emotions through journaling, and saying “no” to situations that do not serve your recovery. This can help you walk into any situation with confidence. 

Ongoing Support

Attending outpatient care or talk therapy sessions can help you navigate foreign situations and continue skill-building. During individual therapy sessions, you’ll likely engage in various therapeutic methods like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). 

What Real People are Doing

A user on Reddit shares their practical and realistic lifestyle changes that helped them overcome shopping addiction⁸, serving as an inspiring example for others facing similar struggles. They walk through the importance of decluttering, adopting mindful shopping practices, and creating a monthly budget to track their spending. 

By focusing on delayed gratification and shifting their mindset from impulsive buying to intentional purchasing, they successfully broke free from compulsive shopping. Their experience highlights how small, sustainable changes in daily habits and financial awareness can make a significant impact on their physical, mental, and financial well-being.