Q&A: Healing Shopping Addiction

Hi Ashwita, sometimes we all waste something or the other. We buy items which we never use at all. I have experienced so many times, I ended up spending so much and stuffs get expired without using or either damaged and non-usable. How do I overcome this habit of unwanted expenditure + wastage.
Every time I tell myself – I shouldn’t buy more than required, I end up buying more!
Any pointers would help.

This is nothing but out-of-senses behaviour – you’re talking about going out of control and buying redundant things, but it is the same motivation for other reckless behaviour too, including getting angry and shouting at people, or saying/ doing things that shouldn’t have been said or done.

So what causes reckless behaviour? It is lack of grounding combined with the potential of happiness. I know this sounds strange wrt feeling anger, but when one is so angry, releasing it through shouting or doing something does bring a sort of relief that can be compared. Of course, most people are not ‘present’ enough to notice the relief because they are then too busy worrying about the consequences of their words/ actions. When you are in a store, your system is excited because you have been programmed to believe that ‘things’ bring you happiness. So obviously, the more things you get, the more happy you will be, right? That is how the mind works. And the potential to ‘buy’ that extra happiness causes further lack of grounding and you make all the wrong choices. Your desire to ‘control’ yourself stresses you out, and stress causes further ungrounding, thereby the pattern of buying even more, because your system is thinking, hey I’m so stressed, so I need even more things to combat this stress and be happy. It is very similar in the case of addiction to smoking also.

If you make shopping a process of love, where you pick up an object, look at it with love, and check if it feels good, and enjoy the whole process, taking joy in the process itself, it will drastically bring down your desire to own things, because you have already gotten the joy from the process, and the buying becomes redundant. Also, if you check for every object to see whether you are feeling the connection, then as such you will tend to buy lesser things, and tend t stick with what you need.

But ultimately, you have to work on just being a happier person. If you are naturally happy inside, you will not have to fill your void with things. For that, a sincere Reiki practice along with sincerely practicing deep listening will be of great use.

Ashwita Goel

Author of ‘Healing Through Reiki’, Ashwita learned Reiki in 1997, and started teaching it in 2006. She now incorporates other forms of energy healing, as well as hypnotherapy and past life therapy in her work. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, crafts, reading and painting.

Buy her book at

amazon.com/dp/B01442HDZE/