Shopping: My Addiction, Breaking the habit soon!

 Hey all,

I post often about decluttering and decluttering tips. I am not a minimalist by any means. In fact, a lot of my life, especially as an adult, I have had a shopping addiction, which often makes me broke. I am finally trying my darndest after talking to my family and my support worker to make a budget and actually stick to it. Past budgets have failed because I have not stuck to them, often forgetting to budget or getting kind of overwhelmed and giving up. Plus having a long time of a shopping addiction can be a hard thing to break the habit of because it is an addiction. I am not saying never shop again, but to stop the cycle of endlessly shopping and spending compulsively, because my shopping addiction is a compulsion.

I have had a lot of bad things happen in my life, a lot of traumatic things. Shopping makes me happy, but I spend a lot if I'm happy, if I'm sad, if I'm upset, etc. Shopping doesn't need to be a crutch for trauma. There are many things I can do that do not cost money or need additional spending that make me happy, such as reading books from the library, doing art (I have lots of supplies) playing video games (i own a bunch) and writing stories/ poetry. My shopping addiction has been particularly bad in the last 5 years, and especially the last 2. I want to be able to save money, because having money saved would feel better long term than the short term rush from buying things.

I am particularly addicted to buying groceries, which I proceed to eat lots of. I also tend to have a love of Dollarama, but I am making great efforts to only go twice a week to curb the itch to go. Dollarama is my fave store because of all the neat things in there, but it is so easy to go overboard in there, as other Dollarama superfans will admit on the Facebook Group.

It is retail therapy, shopping, but it's only a bandaid solution and spending all your money only leads you to feel 10x worse than when you started to treat the underlying feeling with shopping. I feel like I can truly try and live a life where I don't have to worry about money, which is a problem I created and I am owning up to it.

I am going to stick to my budget this time, esp. in the way of groceries, which is one of my main expenditures. I'm also going to have money on hand so I don't just debit, debit, debit everything.

Change is on the horizon, and change doesn't have to be a bad thing. People fear change. This is a change I am going to make stick long term.

curlyalicia