Urge to Spend Money Can Lead to Ruin, Therapy
It’s a problem not much understood and rarely studied. But, for perhaps millions of Americans, the problem is as real as any physical illness. It’s compulsive overspending, and it can be found almost everywhere.
To those trapped by the powerful urge to spend more than they can possibly afford, the results at best are often personal embarrassment and shame. At worst, it can mean financial ruin that may take years to overcome.
Like alcoholics and drug addicts, people caught in binges of overspending may want to stop but feel they can’t. That’s part of what Dr. Jan Bruner wants to know more about. Bruner, a clinical psychologist with Scripps Memorial Hospital’s Center for Executive Health, has treated compulsive spenders among her clientele for four years.
Now she is embarking on an ambitious research project on the disorder, seeking 100 additional compulsive spenders from a diverse segment of the population.
Before launching the study, Bruner looked at what other researchers had discovered about the disorder. In a computer scan of related library abstracts published during the past 10 years, she found only one scientific piece on the subject.
So far, Bruner’s research has revealed that people suffering from overspending often show signs of other excessive behavior, such as overeating, alcoholism and drug abuse. Many are second-generation abusers, she said.
“Just about everyone (I treat) who has an eating disorder--bulimia, bulimarexia or just plain overeating, or who has a drug problem--also has the spending disorder,” Bruner said.
Most suffer from low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority, she said, and indulge in excessive behavior as a way of exerting some control over those feelings.
Linda and Joe (not their real names) both show symptoms of spending disorders:
During a three-month shopping spree that ended in January, Linda spent $35,000 on Christmas gifts and house decorations, a binge that quickly put her deep in debt and caused problems both at work and home.
To pay for part of her spending, she embezzled more than $20,000 from her employer. Although she no longer works for the company, she’s still trying to work out a repayment plan to avoid criminal prosecution.
The other $15,000 Linda needed to finance her shopping spree came from earnings, savings and credit cards, a fact kept hidden from her husband until he found out a few weeks ago, she said.
“He felt very betrayed and stunned,” she said. “He was frozen.”
Linda, now 32, said she began her spending sprees about 11 years ago by writing checks for clothes and other items she didn’t have the money for.
“Later, I took my parents’ American Express card and charged a trip to Europe with it,” she said. “It came to $4,000.”
After that, she used shopping to compensate for a 3 1/2-year relationship with a physically abusive boyfriend.
“When I felt bad, I would shop,” she said. “I bought people gifts, never knowing that I was covering up, that I was trying to make my hurt feel better.”
Still later, she said, she shopped to get her husband’s attention and then to help her deal with mounting health problems.
Last September, she underwent surgery to remove a lump on her breast. In January, she had another operation, this time to undergo a bilateral mastectomy. Her fears were compounded by the fact that her mother died of breast cancer and that her sister also has the disease.
From September to shortly after Christmas, when her physical health was in question, Linda and her pocketbook hit the stores with a vengeance.
“When I went into the hospital, I wasn’t sure I was going to get out,” she said.
Linda has gone extended periods during and after psychological therapy without descending into compulsive over-shopping. In fact, she said, two years had passed between her previous shopping spree and the one last fall.
“I had almost all the bills paid off and then this happened,” she said. She began seeing Bruner again in February, and credits those sessions for her current progress.
Her disorder is “associated with not being able to look at your feelings and problems--whether you’re hurt or scared,” she said. “I felt inadequate, and shopping made me feel some type of power over my life.”
Joe owed $36,000 to 23 creditors when he decided to seek help for his spending problem. He had tried to get help from Consumer Credit Counselors, a nonprofit organization that helps overextended people lower their bill payments.
Because of the size of his debt, however, he was encouraged by a counselor at Consumer Credit to declare bankruptcy, Joe said. He refused. His other options, he was told, included earning more money or cutting back on his expenses.
“I tried to earn more money,” Joe said. “But I was still spending $1,000 more per month than I was earning.” And he was earning almost $4,000 a month.
Joe, who is not one of Bruner’s patients, said he was also a chronic overeater.
For his spending problem, he found help by attending Debtors Anonymous meetings, a national self-help organization that provides advice and moral support for people in debt.
DA was started 16 years ago in New York by a debt-plagued member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Bruner said that, because compulsive overspenders often behave and think like other addicts, she incorporates the same methods employed by AA or Narcotics Anonymous to treat patients with spending disorders.
She works on self-esteem issues and tries to help patients understand what they do and why, she said. Many of Bruner’s patients are either second-generation overspenders or are repeat offenders--people who have had bouts with the disorder before.
Bruner intends to publish her findings in order to bring them to the public’s attention, she said. “A lot of people can be helped by education,” she said. “They can start their own interventions.”
Self-help strategies, she said, include locking up credit cards and talking to someone about the spending disorder. These are practical ways to start the road to recovery, Bruner said.
Other experts agree that debt-reducing methods are teachable, even to overspenders.
“A lot of people just don’t have the knowledge as to how (to manage debt), and that’s sad,” said Lin McKinley, a former counselor at Consumer Credit Counselors who now teaches family income management at San Diego State University’s School of Family Studies and Consumer Sciences.
Many overextended consumers don’t realize they can negotiate their payments to fit their budget, McKinley said. Once they learn the debt-ridding techniques, such as calculating a realistic budget and sticking to it, “most try not to get in that position again,” she said.
In Linda’s case, she is committed to overcoming whatever makes her spend so much time and money shopping.
“I’m dealing with a lot of issues that I never had to look at before,” she said. “I know I can’t do this anymore.”
