Your Christmas shopping list lays before you. Family, friends, and coworkers names and the gifts you think are perfect are lined up adjacent to each other. You’ve budgeted for each individual this year and have pre-checked the sales and it looks like you may come in under budget. You plan your route to each of the stores that have the gifts on your list. Everything’s coming together in your head and on paper. What could go wrong?

Well, what if you had a compulsive shopping disorder? What if instead of sticking to your well-ordered plan, you couldn’t control yourself and limited out your cards or spent the entire month’s food budget at the beginning of the month.  What are the clues and possible treatments for this disorder?

What is Compulsive Shopping Disorder

The disorder, also known as shopping addiction, is the compulsion to spend money, whether you have it or not, without concern for financial means. Shopping is usually to support an identified need, but desire overwhelms demand leading to purchases and more purchases. Compulsive Shopping is a disorder that may result in significantly negative results.

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Unlike chemical, alcohol, or sexual addictions, the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize the legitimacy of the disorder.

How it works

Shopping addiction affected individuals get high off the purchase of items. In many ways, it is the same high as sex or one who is using stimulants. Pleasure is derived from each purchase, and the brain begins to seek the high more and more. The shopper could get the feeling from a particular item or from purchases as diverse as cars or houses.

Identifying the disorder

The addicted individual may not have any visible indicators, to begin with. One of the components often a part of the disorder is their ability to hide their compulsion. Hiding purchases, hiding receipts, and hiding bills all become part of the process of denial. Eventually, though unpaid bills, unaccounted for items for sale, shortages in funds for essential items and an abundance of new things will give away the shopper.

The affected individual may not have any other signs of the disorder. They may seem to be financially secure, even wealthy. Their obsession will drive them to shop as a coping mechanism, for the euphoria, to steal or lie, and to eventually bankruptcy.

Treatment

Unlike alcohol and drug addiction, which have treatment facilities, programs, and significant financial support, shopping habits are significantly less supported. Recovery from this addiction is typically a self-directed affair. Twelve step programs will help deal with many of the components of addiction and can provide community support. Physicians can prescribe meds to deal with the obsessive component of the disorder. Families can provide strategies to place controls and checks as the shopper enters back into situations where purchasing is unavoidable.

Though not seen as a real disorder, the results are very genuine and debilitating to families and individuals. Should you possess the risk factors or recognize some of the behaviors in your life, don’t be afraid to assess yourself or be evaluated by others for signs of this disorder.