Shopping can be a fun pastime that gets you away from it all while providing an opportunity to look for something that satisfy a need of the moment. But what happens when shopping becomes the need in itself? For a sizable number of people, the need to shop fills a void that exists on many levels in our everyday lives as the video below illustrates.
Ours is a consumer society and often to keep the ball rolling advertising helps create a need where none existed. Advertising provides a steady diet that if we use this type of toothpaste everyone will like us and we will be the hit of the party. When you add to the mix our sense of isolation and a need to add meaning to our lives, it is easy to see why many people use shopping as a salve for a multitude of ills.
Generally s
peaking, there are two types of excessive shopping behavior: impulsive and emotional. The impulse buyer has trouble resisting the “must have” of the moment. They see something that a famous person has and then rush out to buy one as well; or they run into an item and with little forethought make an on the spot purchase. These are people who like the pleasure of saying they have bagged an item and it provides a momentary uplift that they become conditioned to keep chasing by making more purchases, sometimes at great financial cost.
The emotional shopper is a lot more complex in that there can be a multitude of feelings and emotions that are being dealt with by shopping. You will frequently hear them say “I went shopping to feel better.” Some are even more forthcoming and call their trips “shopping therapy”. Shopping is much like medication that masks the unsettling emotions and allows them to cover over how they are really feeling.
Both of these “types” can reach a tipping point where acquiring becomes hoarding. For example, the impulse buyer so intent upon acquiring that the shower stall in one of their bathrooms is now filled to the brim with “bargains” (an actual scene from “wife Swap”) is an example of how thing can slide into the danger zone. These people are quite different from some of the extreme couponers you have seen on TV. Generally the couponers are organized and proud of their stash even if it appears to be over kill. A telltale sign that a line has been crossed is when there is now a sense of shame surrounding all the things they have acquired.
The emotional shopper cannot part with items because of the pleasurable memories associated with the pile of items that are clearly eating them alive. There is a feeling of comfort they derive from having these things around them. Each thing, however is ever really enough to make the emotion they are avoiding go away and something new will be acquired. And thus begins a vicious cycle of acquisition and inability to let go, followed by more acquisitions and more holding on. If you have seen videos of people who hoard animals, the first things they mention is that the animals provide them with love and support that they cannot seem to get from people they encounter.
Let’s be clear, everyone who has indulged in shopping therapy will not become a hoarder. However, when acquiring is continually used as a coping tonic, it can become the gateway into the world of hoarding.