Re: I'm Down!….. but trying to get back up!

[sdwa]

I can relate to compulsive spending. I know if I go into certain environments (oh, I don’t know – like a store?) I’m going to want to spend money. The longer I stay in a store, the greater the likelihood that I’m going to spend more than I can afford, and bring home stuff I don’t need, want, like, or have space for – but which seemed like a good idea at the time. One thought leads to another…look at this, and wouldn’t it go great with that? And so on.

I also understand the lying. I would lie because I didn’t want to admit how much I’d spent, because I knew it was too much, and I felt deeply ashamed, like I should be able to control myself, but I would lose perspective in the moment. For a while I got into collectibles, which was of course a disaster, and I would be desperate – DESPERATE – for my next “fix.” At one point I had about $10K in credit card debt.

I’ve learned I can’t go shopping in certain places, or without a list to remind me why I’m there, and it’s even better if I take a body guard who will keep me from making bad decisions.

A support group with other people who have ADD can really help.

One thing you might try is to set aside a certain amount of money you know you can safely spend – like cash in an envelope, designated for, let’s say, shoes – and when the envelope is empty, that’s it for the month.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if it’s possible to set up a kind of “trust fund” account for yourself. My father used to have one because he was schizophrenic and had a gambling habit, would spend all his money on beer, or give it away on impulse. His family set up automatic bill payments for him, and then gave him a certain amount of “pocket money” and made sure there would be enough to keep him going for years. I’d like to do that for myself! Why make it harder than it needs to be? What if you had a bank account for your daughter with only her name on it, so you couldn’t access the money?

You might try to take note of where you are when you want to spend money, what you want to spend it on, how you feel when that happens, and what’s going on in your environment. When you begin to recognize the situations that prompt you to over-spend, you can start to avoid those situations, or alter them in some way.

For example, I’ve learned that I don’t do well in crowds. I want to take classes and join social and professional groups, but I just can’t. Groups are not for me. When I’m in a large group, I feel overwhelmed and anxious, I can’t listen, I feel freakish, and then spend a huge amount of energy trying to pretend I’m like everyone else. It’s exhausting, and I start to think everyone can see something is wrong with me, and then I tend to get angry and defensive, or just feel depressed. Every time I go into a large group situation, I leave feeling demoralized and alienated. It doesn’t matter who they are, how well I know them, or why they’re there. I’ve come to accept that large groups don’t work for me. I need to stick to one-on-one interactions, study one-on-one, or take classes online. I can handle 5-10 people, but beyond that I’m going past my personal limit. While this is not “normal” for most of the world, it’s normal for me.

My suggestion is to try to take the moralizing out of the equation (i.e. thief, liar, irresponsible, dishonest, self-indulgent, passive-aggressive, selfish, yadda yadda yadda) and start to just observe where you are when you overspend. Become a detective in your own life. Follow yourself around and record what you do. You’ll begin to recognize patterns and triggers. When you learn where and when you go wrong, don’t judge yourself for it. Don’t tell yourself you “shouldn’t” be that way. I think this is where a lot of us get hung up – we think we should be able to do certain things which really are beyond us. Accept that you are the way you are. Then structure your environment so it supports you in doing what you know is right. This takes practice and observation, but you can learn to do it.

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