The profile of the addict to the purchases: how to put the brake
Christmas is a time of great consumption and the final culmination is the sales with apparently very advantageous prices. A very difficult temptation to resist taking into account that the possibilities of online shopping make it easy to hit with a single click the desire to buy any type of product.
We are in a moment where purchases are the protagonists. Christmas shopping and, above all, the legendary sales "before and after the Three Wise Men", are a moment of alertness to be aware of the dangers that these days of great consumption entail for the pocket.
In addition, the online shopping facilities that exist today and, according to recent studies, has multiplied by 4 its sale, compared to previous studies, can aggravate the problem of addiction to purchases.
Shopping addiction is a pathology suffered by many people framed in a society where the consumption and variety in the offer is very broad and very common. Multitude of brands, thousands of options, ways of selling, through in-store purchases, or internet, by order, payment facilities ... today everything is within reach and in many cases, we can leave the hands.
The profile of compulsive shopping addict
Shopping addiction is a pathology difficult to detect as such because we live in a society where consumption is considered normal and depends a lot on the economy of each one. The psychologist Jorge López Vallejo analyzes the profile of the addict to the purchases to facilitate identification.
- The addiction to purchases affects people of varied condition
- Appears at younger and younger ages
- Shopping addicts show extreme anxiety and agitation in their daily behavior
- They usually ask for help at a very advanced stage of the problem: the help they or their family members ask, desperately, to solve their compulsion in the purchase through Internet of all kinds of products, more and more varied.
- Dilapidan his salary and leave the current account of the family to zero
- Obviously there are important conflicts with their environment that are unable to stop their irresistible temptation.
- They are profiles with the typical style of the gambler, they speak with ease of their own problem, almost as if what is happening does not depend on them; They define their mania as a kind of uncontrollable rapture that leads inexorably to buy.
- The attempts of the family or friends instead of reducing their desire, get to exalt these people.
- The pleasure of facing the challenge is a normal phenomenon in these people.
How to stop the addiction to shopping?
For the treatment of "compulsive purchases" to be effective, the person must be truly willing to work to solve their problem, "says psychologist Jorge López Vallejo, expert in Brief Strategic Therapy. become cooterapetuas.
What should the family do?
1. He must interrupt all the sermons in the family regarding the problem, explaining that this dynamic ends up exacerbating the problem instead of reducing it.
2. Cease any repressive action in relation to the person with the problem, keeping the control of the use of money as the only restriction.
3. They must dose, progressively, the money available for purchases.
Jorge López Vallejo. Psychologist
