Retail Therapy
Today’s topic that we’ll discuss is the act of retail therapy. This is a relatively new concept that revolves around the “therapeutic” act of shopping. For some people, shopping is a form of therapy. No matter the issues that they are enduring in their world, nothing excites them more than the Amazon package waiting for them at home. This action is accompanied by a sense of bliss as we search for items we don’t necessarily need at the moment. I can honestly say I never needed a Funko Pop toy of Squirtle and Mr. Mime, however it felt great as I purchased it. However, purchases like this have always led me to wonder, why do we buy things just to make ourselves feel better? Well, we are going to try to explain it today.
Retail therapy, a term first coined in the 1980s according to Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia…I know), in the Chicago Tribune in reference to the Christmas season. “We've become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy”. Even back then, we would disregard our mental status and use compulsive purchases to make us feel better. But are we actually feeling better or is it a mental façade in order to trick us into thinking we feel better? According to a 2013 study, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, one of the symptoms of depression is the feeling of powerlessness. With retail therapy, we gain a sense of control over our purchases which leads us to feel good in the long run. Even so, we have to be wary that we don’t go out of control with our purchases. Like everything else, it is good in moderation. Retail therapy is often used as a coping mechanism during times of depressive episodes and stress. However, better coping methods would be recommended due to the possible adverse effects of this type of therapy. Long-term use of this coping strategy could lead to sinking into levels of debt that are far from ideal. Healthline provides some strategies to combat these possible issues.
- Creating a budget – If you know that you cope with shopping, create a budget that can be used solely during this time. Instead of spending until you have no money left, you already have money set aside to use so that you can purchase without the fear of going broke in the process
- Shop for things you need – At any given point and time, there are things that we always need to buy. For example, I need to buy a coffee pot and I’ve been saying this for a couple of months. However, we opt to buy things that we want more frequently. With buying things we need, we have the same effect of the therapeutic effects of buying items as well as getting the things we have already planned to buy in the future.
- Window shop – We’ve all done this at some point in our lives. Walked past a storefront and looked into the store and imagined what we could buy in the store. Maybe even walked in, browsed a bit, tried some clothes on, and left without making a purchase. Even online, we’d go to a website and add things to our cart, only to exit out of the website a few minutes later. With window shopping, we could go through all the motions of shopping but stop at the last moment so that we don’t make that purchase.
Information found on Wikipedia and Healthline