Depressions of a Shopaholic
Retail therapy is something most of us are familiar with, but what happens when your innocent evening ASOS scroll becomes more sinister?
A look at mental health, the search for temporary relief, and fast fashion guilt ….
“When I say I used to be obsessed with shopping, I mean it.
It wasn’t just a hobby. It was a compulsion. I shopped with a frenzy and a fervour that wasn’t motivated by a love of fashion. It was caused by something much more sinister, my depression.
Let me set the scene.
I had just started uni. With each day, my mental health was getting worse. I was struggling to deal with the change. I couldn’t cope with how uni necessitated me to negotiate my identity. I didn’t know who I was. Whatever parts I did discover, I immediately hated. I constantly compared myself to the other students around me, who embodied everything I wanted to be. Cool, pretty, clever, popular – everything I told myself I wasn’t.
Slowly but surely, depression was engulfing me. I lived in a fog, clouded in self-hatred and loneliness. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t have the strength to tackle it. I didn’t even have the strength to address I had a problem.
Like most people with mental health issues, I latched on to whatever I could to make it more bearable. I formed a plethora of coping strategies. Most were unhealthy, I didn’t care. As long as they offered some temporary relief, I ignored the long-term consequences. At that point, I couldn’t even see a long-term for myself.
Shopping was one of these coping strategies. It became one before I realised it had, before I could stop it spiralling into something much worse.
I shopped most days. I would be walking home from a lecture, my brain buzzing with self-hating thoughts rather than the amazing things I was learning. I would hardly notice I was heading into a shop before I was staring at racks of garish items, my feet having taken control and led me inside.
I would browse painstakingly. I would look through every rail, stoop to look at each earring, turn over every shoe on display. It offered me a distraction - the colours, the music, the lights. It was a visceral sensory overload. My brain would be still be busy criticising me, but at least I had something else to focus on
“Each garment offered me a chance of reinvention. If I dressed cool, maybe I would become cool. I’d finally become the person I always wanted to be. I could finally get rid of the me I hated.”
Then I would buy something. There would be a flare of excitement, which pierced through the fog of depression. Even momentarily, it meant everything after weeks of feeling the same stagnant level of sad. I had to do it again. And I did. I bought and bought and bought, driven to it because I just wanted to feel something. If it could produce a fleeting spark of joy, it was worth it. Prices be damned.
But looking back, I wasn’t just drawn to shopping because it offered temporary relief to my depression. I was drawn to clothing shops, specifically, because of my self-loathing.
Each garment offered me a chance of reinvention. If I dressed cool, maybe I would become cool. I’d finally become the person I always wanted to be. I could finally get rid of the me I hated. It seems almost laughable now, that I believed this. But I am reflecting on this with years of therapy under my belt. Back then, it made perfect sense. It’s all I had.
Now, I can also see it made me feel worse. It compounded my depression and my self-loathing. It stopped me from addressing my issues. It just drew them further into my daily routine.
It was a coping technique, yes. But it was an unhealthy one.
Deep down, I think I knew it. I knew it wasn’t helping. I was still smothered by the weight of my depression. Shopping was making it worse. I was spending money recklessly, which I was acutely aware of. It provided a new thing for my anxiety to obsess over. It gave me a new reason to hate myself.
But this was all part of the fun. The destructive thrill of knowing you are pushing yourself closer to the tipping point, edging closer to the inevitable mental breakdown.
It took years of therapy for me to first come to terms with the underlying problems. I reached a place of stability with my depression. I felt okay with myself for what felt like the first time in forever. I had new healthy coping techniques; I was ready to dismantle the unhealthy ones.
Shopping wasn’t easy to deal with. It’s a normal behaviour, that wasn’t feasible to cut out entirely.
Instead, I turned it into something more positive.
I made a resolution to stop shopping in fast-fashion retailers. I re-framed shopping as a moral and environmental issue. I could only shop at independent or second-hand venues, which didn’t really permit the obsessive shopping I usually did. They necessitated a more mindful approach. I couldn’t walk into a charity shop and know that there would be something that I could buy on the spot. I had to search through racks of things that I didn’t like, that didn’t fit me, that I simply didn’t want. I had to learn to be comfortable leaving a shop without buying anything.
I dismantled my old routine of shopping, remodelling it into something much more positive that fit my more stable mindset.
Sometimes, something as frivolous as shopping can become insidious. It can seem unimportant but it can be detrimental. Stay reflective on what you are doing and, more importantly, why.
You may need to challenge it. It can be uncomfortable and painful but, with help, you can do it.
Just as I did with shopping.”
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You can read more posts from Lucy on her blog thoughtsandthat.com.