This story is an example of how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helped Cheryl stop spending too much for her budget. While the characters and the story are fictitious, the characteristics and circumstances described are often seen in people who come for treatment for overspending. Cheryl’s story is presented for illustrative purposes, to help readers understand how CBT can help people stop overspending. Click here to share your own CBT story.
Cheryl was a shopaholic, who overspent in regular stores and online, mostly on shoes. Cheryl owned over 100 pairs of shoes, many of them hidden around the house, and worn only a few times each. She had spent thousands of dollars on shoes, and was starting to have money problems as a result.
.Lucy, Cheryl's cognitive behavioral therapist, guided Cheryl in recording the thoughts and feelings she experienced before, during and after shopping. By analyzing the thoughts and feelings Cheryl had around her shoe shopping, they came to understand that Cheryl had become addicted to shopping because of her rigid, perfectionist attitude towards herself and others. Every thought that Cheryl wrote down contained the words “should” or “must.” Cheryl was placing too much pressure on herself to live up to her own unattainable standards of perfection, and overspending became both a way of trying to live up to those standards, and a way of relieving the feelings of disappointment she felt whenever she did not live up to them.
Lucy explained to Cheryl that her perfectionism was self-sabotaging, and would always lead to disappointment, because her own standards were so impossible to live up to. For example, every time Cheryl scuffed one of her shoes, or noticed any wear on a shoe that was visible, she became obsessed with the idea of buying a new pair. She also suffered from backache as she carried so much tension in her body by walking in a way to avoid scuffing her shoes. With practice, Cheryl was able to gradually replace the feeling of disappointment with acceptance that with use, her shoes will become worn, and that it is OK to have imperfect shoes.
Cheryl also started noticing that many other people had shoes that were at different levels of wear, and they seemed quite content and unconcerned about it. As she gradually overcame her need to have perfect shoes, her backache subsided, and she started to feel better in her body. She also found a way of dealing with her occasional relapses and impulse buys -- whenever she purchased a new pair of shoes, she would check whether she already had a pair that was almost identical, and would return the new pair. After six months of therapy, Lucy had helped Cheryl to make a spending plan, and Cheryl was able to stop spending more than her shoe budget of $50 per month, and to limit her shoe purchases to one new pair per season.
- Does this sound like your story? What was your experience of cognitive behavioral therapy?
