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Money
may be a more taboo subject than sex. Think about
it: most of us talk more openly with family and
friends about our love lives and its specifics
than we do about the details of our financial
lives. We may know who's sleeping with whom but do
you know how much your family members or
friends earn per year? How much their house
or car cost? How much they have in the bank or
invested? Despite the blossoming number of books,
magazines, radio and TV shows devoted to wealth
and financial topics, we're still a little
sheepish on divulging details, lest we seem
to be boasting or failing to measure
up.
In
my work with "theft addicts" over the last decade,
it was crystal clear that most had deeply
conflicted relationships with money, wealth,
spending, and consumerism in general. I've worked
with many clients who grew up in both financially
and emotionally deprived families who felt owed
"something for nothing" to make up for it. I've
worked with clients with obsessive-compulsive
disorders who couldn't seem to bring themselves to
spend certain amounts of money on things due to a
deep fear that they would go broke or feel guilty
of sinful extravagence; thus, they'd steal things
or change price tags or embezzle a bit from work
to offset their required and more unavoidable
expenditures. I've worked with clients who'd go on
spending binges and then stealing binges. And I've
worked with clients who had, at best, a juvenile
relationship to money: no sense of reality about
income, savings and expenditure.
Indeed,
I was like this myself until I got into recovery
in 1990. I stole with no real sense of
accountability to my income and my need to save,
invest, and plan for the future. Why should I
have? As long as I was stealing, I had a false
sense of security that no matter how hard times
got, I could always steal as a survival skill.
I
am grateful times have a-changed. My recovery
forced me to get real about money and goals. While
I still lean more toward scarcity consciousness
and frugality rather than excessive spending or
shopping, I have been learning more and more about
how our relationship to money, wealth, spending
and shopping is a source of wounds--and potential
healing--that permeates our lives individually and
in relationships. I even have a family member who
we have been worried may be a compulsive shopper.
He's even begun to consider this
himself.
In
the U.S. we often hear that the divorce rate has
consistently hovered around 50%. Recent studies
have shown that the primary reasons couples argue
and split is related to money and spending issues.
A friend or mine who is a divorce attorney
informed me that January is the busiest month for
divorce filings. Maybe it's the New Year syndrome;
maybe it's partly due to the stress of the
Holidays just past--much of which is due to
overspending.
A
recent Stanford University study estimates that
nearly 6% of the U.S. population (that's about 17
Million people) suffers from "compulsive shopping
disorder." Perhaps surprisingly, men apparently
have CSD at about the same rate as woman. CSD is
much like other addictive-compulsive disorders (be
it gambling, shoplifting, etc.) in that there is a
recurrent behavior that is out of control,
progressive and detrimental. For those with CSD,
increased debt and financial troubles, lost time,
relationship conflicts, lying or hiding purchases,
and highs followed by depression, shame and
anxiety typically are present.
And
yet, as with most new research, it will take a
while for compulsive shopping (or spending)
disorder to be treated seriously by most persons.
The tendency remains to treat money or shopping
issues as just that:--money or shopping issues
rather than as mental health issues--where, at
most, it would be advised to merely cut up one's
credit cards, stay out of stores or off the
computer, and seek out recipes for better
budgeting or financial advisors. All of these may
be of some help but, often, without viewing these
problems through the eyes of addiction and
recovery, relapse is likely and the opportunity
for further insight and healing is lost. Clinical
therapeutic issues such as deprivation, grief and
loss, repressed anger, depression, anxiety, and
low self-esteem are often at the core of
CSD.
We
also live in a very consumer-oriented society. It
is hard to avoid temptations at every turn to
spend or keep up with the Joneses. After 9/11, the
President essentially told the country "don't
worry, go shopping." It is unfortunate that our
political leaders, CEO's, and even our own parents
often don't model good budgeting and healthy
relationships with money. For many, it seems that
a cycle of overspending as income dwindles has
become the rule rather than the exception. We have
a whole genre of "chick lit" (young
female-oriented literature) that chronicles the
joys of consumption shopping and has as its model
a series of tongue-in-cheek books on shopaholism,
most notably "Confessions of a Shopaholic"--soon
to be released as a major movie.
I
stumbled recently upon a couple of ads that stood
as further evidence of the joking manner in which
we as a culture push "retail therapy." One, an
Annie Sez national chain clothing store, has this
tag line: "more than a store, it's an obsession."
Another ad was in the December 2006 local Detroit
area monthly magazine Hour Detroit: a two-page
centerfold ad of various stores for a particularly
trendy town had the banner "O Come All Ye
Shopaholics!" Can you imagine a series of taverns,
bars and saloons running an ad that read "O Come
All Ye Alcoholics!"? How about a consortium of
casinos running an ad stating "O Come All Ye
Pathological Gamblers!"? You get the
picture.
I
encourage each of us to think about our own
relationship with money, shopping, and spending
and also consider those around us as well as the
culture we live in and the messages--subtle to
glaring--that bombard us each day. Take the
Valencia Compulsive Shopping Scale test found our
our website www.shopaholicsanonymous.org to
learn more about this growing issue. Education and
prevention are keys. Research, books, and articles
are increasingly providing us with
knowledge and wisdom that can transform our
relationship to money, shopping, and spending for
the better. Some of us will experience deep
healing and growth and also be able to pass on
better modeling to those around us.
We
can turn life around one step at a time toward a
more stable, healthy, and joyous relationship to
money and things. Let it begin with each of
us.
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