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| Treatment Options | As with nearly all other addictive, impulse control, or compulsive disorders, there is a large range of effectual treatment options: drug treatment, individual, group, and couples therapy, counseling for compulsive buying, Debtors Anonymous, and Simplicity Circles can all be effective. The decision of what form or forms of treatment to use with a certain person is a complex choice that goes well beyond the span of this overview.
Psychotropic medications, together with antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and opiod antagonists have been used to cure compulsive buying, with varying efficiency.
Individual therapy for people addicted with shopping runs the range from traditional psychodynamic psychotherapy, with an almost elite focus on the underlying dynamics within a historical background, to a very strict focal point on the here and now of the problem, with little concentration on underlying dynamics. Most compulsive buyers need the addition of other specific tools for changing the behavior, including a shopping diary and a spending plan.
Group therapy for compulsive buyers has been appeared since the late 1980s. At least five different forms of group therapy have been used with this population. As a rule such groups’ treatment model is an amalgam of three things: useful techniques from existing models; didactic and experiential material used in group treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder; and material they’ve found effective in their clinical practice.
Couples therapy for compulsive buyers is a very essential treatment modality, for the reason that couples proceed as a financial unit and as a rule combine income as well as spending. Money issues are an inherent part of marriage and are often a cause of intense and enveloping friction that can leak into other aspects of the relationship. Couples therapy is determined when the compulsive shopping problem can't be dealt with sufficiently on an individual basis.
Counseling for compulsive buying as a goal has the exact problem and creates an action plan to impede the behavior. Targeted counseling for this problem changes the negative actions of compulsive buying and concomitantly works toward healing the fundamental emotions, though less emphasis is put on investigating the emotional meaning of compulsive buying than in traditional individual psychotherapy. The major principle of counseling for shopping addicts is the idea that insight alone will not stop the behavior. All steps in the compulsive buying cycle must be recognized: the goals, the feelings, the dysfunctional thoughts, the behaviors, the consequences of the behavior, as well as the meaning of the compulsive buying.
Debtors Anonymous (D.A.) can be a powerful tool in healing from compulsive buying, particularly for compulsive buyers who have problems with debt. D.A. recognizes debting as a disease analogous to alcoholism that can be cured with solvency, which means abstinence from any new debt. As individuals are trying to manage their lives with addictive debting, D.A. presents a strictly controlled program of surrender and recovery, a program with a spiritual emphasis.
Simplicity circles can be a helpful support to compulsive buyers. Simplicity circles offer forum – it is a place to gather with others to talk about personal transformation and the satisfactions of living a simpler life. The caring atmosphere and the discussion of how to construct a more fulfilling life is a healthy method to meet some of the principal needs that a compulsive buyer tries to meet in shopping.
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