If you're interested in online shopping, you're definitely familiar with a special day——November 11th or the Single’s Day. Singles’ Day is also known as ‘chopping-hand Day’, because people are crazy and impulsive shopper online.
Hands-chopping people indulge in the network shopping, almost femals included. These people are wandering around the big shopping websites every day, searching for prices, price ratio, and shopping. They enjoy themselves. At the beginning,they want to buy something cheaper, however, it seems that they buy a large amount of the goods without practical value, resulting in a great deal of waste of time and money. This kind of people will be aware of the problem when they calm down, and even as a warning for the future hand chop impulse. However, when shopping addiction crowds in, they will forget what they said before.
In psychology, the "chop hand party" can be described as "Compulsive Buying". Compulsive shopping is a dysfunctional consumer behavior, making the shoppers lose control of shopping and do online shopping too much. In daily life, compulsive shoppers, on the one hand, desperately want to shop, on the other hand, regret their impulsive shopping behavior, and then continue shopping more strongly. Usually they have a lot of unhappy tension before shopping. When they shop, they get instant relief. They are comfortable, relaxed and happy at that moment, but they feel sad and regretful afterwards. Their spending on shopping often exceeds their economic ability and budget, which has a great negative impact on themselves and family life. At the same time, compulsive shoppers suffer most from emotional disorders, and are eager to reduce the frequency of uncontrollable shopping behavior.
For compulsive shopping, it is necessary to understand the situation and the inner world of the shopper. By helping them improve their psychological status, they fundamentally reduce their dependence on shopping. Here are some psychological situations that require paying attention to:
Are they lack of recognition?
Compulsive shopping can actually beregarded as a pursuit of self-worth and identity. Those with lower self-esteem often feel that there is a big gap between "ideal self", accordingly,they desire to be respected and recognized by others, but in reality they tendto backfire. Therefore, we ought to try to create opportunities and environment for them to realize self-worth, affirm their growth and contribution in a timely manner, let them slowly raise the sense of self-worth, and make them feel the recognition from others and the society.
Are they alone and unhappy?
Loneliness is a powerful catalyst for addictive behavior. Relationships are what human beings pursue all their lives. When people can't get satisfaction through relationships with others, they can only turn to matter and establish relationships with matter. So compulsive shopping is very common in those otaku who spend most of their time at home and rarely get in touch with other people, as well as the elderly living alone without having their children by their sides, turning to the online shopping to fill the loneliness. Therefore, for compulsive shoppers, we should give them more care and warmth to help them integrate into the group and experience the emotional communication between people.
Are they anxious and worried?
Under the circumstance of high pressure andstress level, anxiety, tension or even anger cannot be expressed through appropriate channels. Sometimes people will buy things in order to distract theirattention, release the pressure, and comfort themselves. But the effect of temporary relief is fading, the pressure cannot be released. What’s worse,people can avoid the original source of anxiety, so some people fall into a vicious spiral of anxiety and remorse inthe shopping frenzy.
Therefore, for this part of compulsive shoppers, we can help them improve the ability of recognizing and dealing with the negative emotions, relieve their anxiety through some positive ways like sports, talking with friends. Furthermore, it is important to support them, help them better deal with the current stress event.
