Retail therapy fallout

"what you buy can become a burden"

“Going shopping” has turned from a necessity to replace worn out clothes into a fully-fledged leisure activity. In itself, this is not a bad thing: in our free time we like to do things we enjoy and if this is what you enjoy, why not? However, shopping can be a slippery slope when it becomes more than a necessity or a pastime you share with friends.

More and more people go shopping for more problematic reasons, and it can easily turn into retail therapy, i.e., shopping to make oneself feel more cheerful or to distract from sometimes serious problems. Then it’s no longer all about finding that special thing, but running away from issues in real life that need dealing with.

The trouble doesn’t stop with the avoidance of real issues, but retail therapy can easily lead to a shopping addiction because it provides an endorphin boost that takes away the worries. Unfortunately, this boost is short-lived and – just like other addictions – needs to be repeated ever more often to keep giving the positive sensations.

There are a couple of seriously negative effects of shopping addiction that I have come across in some of my clients in the past. Of course, they didn’t call me in because of shopping addiction, but we homed in to that consideration when we started dealing with an overload of things.

A big sign of this addictive behaviour was the arrival of multiple deliveries during decluttering sessions. Online shopping has added another dimension to shopping behaviour: it’s so easy to click that “buy now” button and have things delivered. Sometimes, the same item arrives in multiple sizes, with the intention of returning those that don’t fit – and then they never are sent back. Those unreturned items then gradually pile up, creating an extra level of clutter in the client’s home.

All these practical considerations don’t even take into account how much money is spent in those transactions. It’s easy to go into debt, especially when you end up using systems that allow you to pay things in instalments – making it easy to lose sight of what you actually owe in total. It all seems like such a simple way to buy stuff, but it’s hard to remember that returning items takes effort and time, so things quickly start to pile up.

This is when people start to get overwhelmed by the need to manage all those things: not only is the pile gradually getting taller, but it also become more difficult to assess what you actually own, let alone find anything you know you have. At this point you may start buying things to replace the ones that have been lost in the piles. And the cycle continues.

I know: this is a worst-case scenario, but you’d be surprised how many people experience this and don’t dare speak about it, or even ask for help with this.