Compulsive shopping as a form of "therapy"

I can say with my hand on my heart that everything that living a simple life has given me is worth more than anything I have left behind or changed. In fact, I have been forced on several occasions to change some things, such as moving from a small town to the city, and every day I miss the tranquility I had, and I hope to return to a quiet town soon.

However, I must confess that some time ago I used to go shopping as a way to calm my thoughts, anxiety, or other emotional discomfort. It helped me distract myself, organize my thoughts, and then better deal with what I was feeling or even stop feeling it (I'm not saying that was the right thing to do), but it was an easy way to deal with what I was feeling.

Sometimes there are actions that I am very aware do not actually bring positive things, but your brain makes you think they do, and for me this was going shopping for anything, especially anything that had a big "sale" sign on it. It was like a kind of feeling of having what I needed or even having something stored away for later, just in case something happened. In some way, I told myself that it alleviated my anxiety.

Buying everything when I felt a little bad is one of the things I've found hardest to give up. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I had a bit of trauma dealing with an economic crisis, or who knows, but the fact is that with some time and a lot of effort, I understood that the truth was that it fed my anxiety more after buying, storing everything, having too many things stored away, or constantly worrying that they would get damaged.

In the end, I also understood something important, which is that, beyond using placebos to deal with emotional issues, you always have to face things head-on and strive to be aware that you have to do it because that's what will really solve it or allow us to truly deal with what we need to and not just put it on hold for a moment, deceiving ourselves with a bad habit.

But I must admit that I miss not being aware of it, the deception of easily distracting myself with that activity, putting everything aside for a short period of time. Beyond that, I couldn't say that I miss anything else. It must be because of my introverted personality that I value so many things about minimalism, or the fact that it does me so much good. Beyond that, I have only learned to get rid of several small or large bad habits.