Compulsive Spending

There are chemical couriers called neurotransmitters that convey communication from your brain to throughout your body. When you’re nervous, nervous, or feeling concerned (like when self-critical ideas begin sneaking in), you receive a flood of panic-inducing epinephrine that may feel like undiluted jet fuel. When something occurs that makes you feel particularly great (like when you purchase something!), you receive a rush of unbelievably satisfying neurotransmitters known as serotonins that feels dandy. You’ve gotten inebriated by your own conduct. The only thing that feels crucial is to be able to carry on spending--because shopping for and getting fresh stuff makes you feel so great about yourself, about your life story, about everything! Just like the definition for addiction states, you've surrendered yourself to a behavior that’s chronic, obsessive, and impairs your critical functioning. Spending dependency is a symptom—or blinking warning light--that there are deep-seated feelings you’re attempting to prevent facing. Indulging yourself in buying helps dull those disquieting feelings—for a while.

Each time you attempt to stop the practice of compulsive spending, you discover you have to deal with the disturbing feelings ―cold turkey,‖ and the terror and fear that crops up is nearly unspeakable. Even though you might have called yourself you were going to truly conquer your spending, in an endeavor to feel better quickly, you go on still a different shopping binge.