I’m worried I’m a shopping addict (and you might be too)

Hi, my name is Olivia and I think I have a shopping problem

It’s 11pm on a Wednesday evening and I’ve been staring at the Reformation website for around 20 minutes, trying to decide whether or not to pull the trigger – the trigger being clicking the “pay and place order” button. You see, this is my favourite brand and today, they’re on sale because of Black Friday, which means that all of the gorgeous dresses, shoes and skirts I spend hours agonising over are now 25 per cent off.

The trouble is that I’ve been checking the website for the past week, waiting for the sale to start. And now that it’s here – and the trousers I’ve been eyeing up for two months are £60 cheaper – I feel utterly paralysed. So I leave the page open and go to sleep, only to reopen it again in the morning and stare for another 15 minutes while my coffee is brewing in the kitchen.

Hi, my name is Olivia and I think I have a shopping problem. This week, I wrote a piece about emotional spending – ie when you buy things on impulse in the hope of fulfilling some sort of internal void. Having now spoken to several psychologists about this particular affliction, I believe that I am an emotional spender. In fact, I might be even worse than that.

It’s not that I can’t stop buying things – my budget would not quite allow for that. It’s that I can’t stop thinking about buying things. A new top to wear to a party I’m going to that night. A new pair of shoes to make my legs look longer for a date that weekend. Literally anything from Ganni, for any occasion.

I lose hours to this stuff. Not just from browsing websites online, but more recently from wandering around shops whenever I happen to be in central London, wasting time just to be around some new, shiny, pretty things I probably won’t ever buy.

It’s a thought pattern that is always particularly prevalent at this time of year when, thanks to Black Friday, my entire inbox is clogged up with brands telling me about their “amazing” discounts and “limited” sales, successfully tapping into some sort of deep-rooted anxiety that tells me I must spend money, and I must spend it now. 

Why? Well, because it will make me happy! Having that particular dress, those particular trousers, or that particular coat will be the key to solving all my problems! All I need to do is tap my debit card and boom! Except, when that item arrives, any euphoric feeling I have is inevitably short-lived. A fleeting moment of happiness that is quickly replaced with the gaping sense of emptiness I had before. And so begins the hunt for my next fix.

Having written the piece, I now know that these are not to be written off as neurotic quirks, but are in fact all signs of having a deeply unhealthy relationship with shopping. It’s something I’ve tried to curb recently by putting myself on a strict no-spending diet for the past two months. But if anything, this has only made the temptation that much greater. Because now, I feel like I almost “deserve” to indulge myself by buying something, particularly if everything is being so heavily discounted.

Like some of the emotional spenders I interviewed, I’ve become fully aware of my problem and am taking steps to resolve it. Unfollowing some of the brands I love on Instagram, for example, so I won’t see their sale prices being advertised. Unsubscribing to emails from them helps, too.

But like with all addictive behaviours, the most important thing is finding a healthier (and ideally cheaper) way of getting my fix. So far, going for a walk in my local park is working wonders.

Let’s hope I can keep that up until the Boxing Day sales.