Fashion Shopping Therapy – just a name or a real way to deal with stress?

You have surely seen the recognizable image of a girl with packages of famous brands in the movies, who went shopping after she was fired from her job or broke up with her boyfriend. This firmly convinced us that shopping can help cope with stress. Thus the term “shopping therapy” was born. But does it have any real effect on psychotherapy?

Clinical psychologist Alexandra Menshikova is sure that this is an exclusively philistine and pop-cultural term: “Psychotherapy aims to solve a person’s problems, it has a long-term effect, while shopping can only be a short-term way to distract from it. “However, it is not worth writing it off completely. According to Alexandra, this method is still in progress: when shopping, the so-called happiness hormone dopamine can be released, the release of which really helps to forget about problems for a short time. And the point here is often not only and not so much the acquisition of a product. In this case, our mood is influenced by the aesthetically pleasing interior of the store, communication with a polite consultant or simply the fact of contact with beautiful things.

However, this pleasant process has a dark side. Alexandra warns of cases where the abuse of shopping can become dangerous: “There is a high risk that shopping will turn into a form of compulsive behavior, when a person’s threshold for receiving positive emotions drops and he wants to buy more and more. Shopping itself then becomes a source of anxiety and stress.”

What can be done to prevent this and generally minimize the risks? First of all, do not go shopping in a state of extreme stress and emotional destruction: there is a possibility of hasty purchases. Secondly, it pays to set the frequency of “therapeutic” purchases, say once a week or once a month. Third, it makes sense to tie such shopping to certain circumstances in your life, such as buying clothes for an interview or an upcoming date. Alexandra also advises to stick to the so-called 48-hour rule: take a timeout before buying something to think it through and consult with friends or family. Then you minimize the risk of purchasing unnecessary things and sudden inappropriate spending. In general, in shopping, as in everything, it is important to set the right goals, it will not bring disappointment, but an exceptionally positive experience.

Anton Gulevsky

Photo: Getty images, Shutterstock