Psychotherapy Can Help Stress-Shoppers Face Their Anxieties

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While shopping has been shown to act as a stress reliever, it is not always the best way to handle what is bugging you. More commonly it is a way to avoid the cause of anxiety altogether. This can result in issues that are pushed to the side and left to fester until they boil over into a much larger problem in the long run.

An online survey conducted by the Huffington Post discovered that 1 in 3 Americans turn to stress shopping to deal with their anxieties. Understandably, retail therapy has become an optimal choice that can help you forget about your problems with the lure of new clothes and other items. With the easy access to online shopping, it is a quick way out of dealing with what's causing the stress.

Other than ignoring what is causing the underlying issue to stress-shop, the survey which polled 1,000 adults, brought to light other troubling revelations. It turns out that stress-shoppers are more likely than those who do not stress-shop to seek out other temporary fixes to ease their stress.

In order to deal with their problems, stress-shoppers are 46% more likely to also be stress-exerciser and 86% more likely to be stress-eaters. Because people who have these coping mechanisms would rather eat their stress away than deal with the root of the problem, they are also 76% more likely to worry about their weight.

Not only does stress-shopping create negative coping mechanisms, it is also a way to form an addicting behavior that can lead to piles of unnecessary debt. With online shopping available at our fingertips, those prone to stress-shopping can easily pull out their laptops, tablets, or even phones to enable them at any time. It can get so addictive that stress-shoppers can easily lose track of their spending, and the damage they do to their credit cards can put them in even more stress than before they started spending.

It was really no surprise that the survey also found that those who tend to turn to shopping as a stress-coping mechanism are also more stressed financially. Stress-shoppers are 11% more likely to be stressed out by unexpected expenses and 25% more likely to be worried about how they would pay their bills each month.

There are steps you can take to ensure you can participate in your stress-relieving activity without it causing further harm. One: set aside a cash fund that can be used anytime you need to stress-spend without giving you unlimited funds. When the funds are gone, the shopping is done until it is replenished once more. Two: if you are unsure how to face what is causing your stress, schedule an appointment with a psychotherapist. They can help you work through the underlying causes of your spending and help you come up with tools to face your problems head on.

Resources:
Huffington Post - Retail Therapy: One in Three Americans Shop to Deal with Anxieties
Health Central - Retail Therapy - Pros and Cons of Using Shopping to Relieve Stress

Posted in Counseling, Mental Health on Feb 25, 2016

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