Weird Sentence

[walkitout]

I just had two conversations that led me to ask a question I really should have asked (and answered) sometime in the mid-1990s: why do some people shop and buy things they neither need nor even particularly want and/or build their lives around collections of ... things without any real introspection about limits or themes of those collections, etc. that is, why are some people totally out of control and destructive with stores and credit cards?

I was married to one of these people. A friend and co-worker at the time was (may still be) married to one. I was (briefly) friends with one of these, who after her divorce hooked up with one of my exes and tried to sleep with one of my then-current lovers. This _might_ have been okay, if any of them had bothered to read, say, _The Ethical Slut_, however, they couldn't be convinced to do so or do any of the necessary communication to make that kind of relationship work out well.

Messy.

Anyway. Conversation #1 involved someone telling me about their impending divorce (not necessarily shopping related, altho I would not be surprised to discover there was a major shopping issue there, either). Conversation #2 involved me telling someone else entirely that this was further support for my theory that too-separate lives don't work out great in 21st century marriages. R. (not my husband or my sister) asked for further evidence and as we hashed out some examples, it occurred to me that this shopping thing kept popping up and I wondered if it was associated with a diagnosis ... which led me back to DSM V and the hoarding disorder proposal.

Then I thought, self, take yourself off to Amazon (where I would have a shopping problem, only I can apparently afford it) and see if anyone has a book out. I downloaded April Lane Benson's book, in part because reviews indicated that compulsive shopping was a way of enacting need-to-feel-good, conflict avoidance and anger, all of which sounded like a brilliant description of every instance I'd ever encountered. Me, I don't avoid conflict and I don't have much of a problem with expressing anger (the consequences can get a bit rough, but I'm not shy).

It looks promising -- to the degree that reading a self-help book for a problem you don't have but are attempting to understand can be considered promising. That is, repurposing a tool introduces unpredictability. But never mind that. I'm here for the weird sentence.

"There's pain underneath your overshopping habit, and kicking the habit involves exploring that pain: acknowledging it, identifying it, and then learning to tolerate it until it eventually subsides."

I was _right with_ the author through tolerate it. "until it eventually subsides" sounds like overpromising to me. We'll see what she has to offer.

Comments

I'd take that re-word

[walkitout]

And in fact, I think that's where Benson is headed with this.

The book is quite the eye-opener. I knew that I was raised with a lot of ideas, messages, examples etc. that led to me being inclined to rampant skinflintery (<-- hyperbole, made up word) that, like the control freakiness surrounding a clean house I have worked aggressively and relentlessly to counter (hey, if you're a control freak, you work with what you've got). But until going through the lists of examples of pro- and anti- shopping messages, it had not actually occurred to me that my upbringing sort of defined one end of a continuum -- I assumed I was somewhere in the middle. Ha! Strong explanatory power, so that's something.

The other issue is an issue I have with self-help books in general. It's like there isn't sort of some objective measure of having a problem. Like with drinking: it's a problem if it causes problems in your life, NOT if you're having more than x drinks in y time frame with z consistency over the course of a typical week. But any amount of drinking that messes with your relationships, job, etc. IS a problem. So I don't have a problem, according to the opening bits in the book, but you could definitely argue that I have a bunch of the same triggers that a person with a problem has -- I just can afford the level of shopping that I engage in.

I'm sure this is just my literalness and pattern-matching talking. Once I "get" it, I'll understand why what I just said was a bunch of foolishness, just like once you've seen a few rounds of "real" substance abuse, chippers no longer seem like a very big deal.

Re: I'd take that re-word

[rolandgo.livejournal.com]

1. JW: no birthday, xmas gifts. You start out with a LOW baseline. Add your parents & of course you are 3 sigmas off of normal.

2. I think you'll get to a point where the author points out that buying is the thrill & having is the regret. And hording more closely resembles over eating and compulsive gambling than substance abuse.

3. You keep saying that G. drank because of the angst of being bisexual. The weird sentence suggest to me to addressing underlying angst whatever & getting out of the broken hoarding comping mechanism. Perhaps there will be some CNI therapy suggestions.

Re: I'd take that re-word

[walkitout]

Of course rolandgo is right. The author _does_ point out that buying as the thrill and having it being painful (sometimes immediately, sometimes later, sometimes inherently sometimes because of other consequences like a pissed off spouse one is financially dependent upon) is part of the pattern. And the author also says this -- like other abuse patterns -- usually is covering up some older pain that you've been avoiding and that you won't get better until you acknowledge and deal with that older pain.

So, yup, as you suspected. When rolandgo says CNI, he probably means cognitive behavior therapy and the author is indeed using a bunch of cognitive therapy strategies, many highly recognizable from solution focused therapy approaches.