“I keep getting into more and more debt, but I can’t seem to stop. I do great for a while, and then I just have to go shopping and buy stuff. This is going to ruin my life if I don’t stop, but how do I stop?” Mary Beth is addicted to spending. What does this mean and how can she stop? Mary Beth’s compulsive spending does not come out of nowhere. It is rooted in her fear of feel feelings that she believes she cannot handle. In her mind, it is easier to handle the anxiety of debt than to feel the deeper feelings – the painful feelings of life – that she believes she has to avoid. Here is what happened that triggered Mary Beth’s last spending spree. “I went home for Christmas and it was awful. I guess it’s always been awful, but this time seemed even worse. There was nothing I could do right in my mother’s eyes, and my father was, as usual, completely emotionally absent. At one point my mother screamed at me that I am hopeless. I thought I managed it all at the time, trying to not take it personally as she treats others this way too, but when I got home I went on the spending spree. I thought I did a really great job of not reacting to her and taking care of myself, so I don’t understand the spending.” Mary Beth is missing a major aspect of taking loving care of oneself in the face of another’s unloving behavior. She is bypassing the core feelings of loneliness and heartbreak she feels when her mother yells at her and criticizes her. Since Mary Beth’s mother has always been like this, Mary Beth had to learn as a child to not feel the deep pain of her mother’s unloving behavior. As a small child, she could not feel that much loneliness and heartbreak and survive. So she learned various ways of not feeling these feelings

Original Source of Addiction to Spending