As systematic reviews have been conducted for psychotherapy for Shopping Addiction/ Compulsive buying, the evidence base is more credible and established compared to that for Pharmacological interventions which are more commonly based on single case studies. For instance, a systematic review of multiple treatments for Compulsive buying has found that the most effective Psychotherapy is the 12 session group therapy CBT (Leite, Pereira, Nardi, & Silva, 2014). This 12-session CBT, encompasses thought restructuring, self-esteem, stress management, relapse prevention, and more. The goal of this particular CBT is to control excessive buying behavior through the development of healthy shopping patterns, and not total abstinence from shopping, since this would not be possible. Other goals also include the identification and restructuring of unhealthy thought patterns and negative emotions associated with buying.
However, there are some rules that clients must abide by when they enroll in this 12-session CBT (Astrid & Mitchell, 2011). The three rules include (1) destroying all credit cards from their possession and using other payment modes instead, (2) having a 24-hour rule in which clients must wait for at least 24 hours before purchasing something that they want to purchase but did not plan on buying before their shopping trip, (3) shopping rules such as formulating a shopping list in advance before heading out to shop.
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During CBT, clients would be taught various cues to better understand the triggers that lead them to shop compulsively and to develop effective strategies to avoid acting on these cues and ending up spending excessively. For instance, (1) social cues that trigger excessive buying include social isolation and boredom, (2) situational cues include watching advertisements of desired items, (3) physiological cues include bodily fatigue or stress, and (4) mental cues include mental images of buying desired items.
Clients are also taught about the consequences of their shopping addiction, to help them bring these consequences to mind to control their shopping urges (Astrid & Mitchell, 2011). While compulsive buying can give rise to short-lived positive consequences, long-term negative consequences can set in after that. Positive consequences tend to be short-lived and some examples are a distraction from aversive tasks and feeling more attractive, whereas negative consequences tend to be more long-term and some examples include financial problems, negative self-evaluation, and guilt (Astrid & Mitchell, 2011).
During CBT, clients are also taught some alternative behaviors that they could adopt besides shopping compulsively, and these include short-term measures such as listening to music, and long-term measures such as planning to go to a movie with a friend (Astrid & Mitchell, 2011). Additionally, before the end of the treatment, clients are encouraged to view lapses as opportunities to learn and as such, to not feel overly discouraged. They are also taught some strategies to prevent lapses from occurring.
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