Is retail therapy a real thing

However, a few pieces of research conducted over time have proven that retail therapy may actually be a real thing, and has effects on our mind and body that may be healthy for us.The real question is, does shopping just purely for the experience actually relieve stress and provide an enjoyable experience?Retail therapy is defined as:Kit yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at golden gate university in san francisco, writes that buying new things helps to ease a person into a new phase of life.Shopping can be a rich source of mental preparation, she writes in.

But for some, retail therapy masks deeper problems, and a real therapist would be a better solution.Samantha marie grillo december 3, 2015 at 8:16 pm.It can also ease feelings of sadness.Therapy is meant to heal, cure or manage something.Retail therapy usually doesn't involve negative effects, such as buyer's remorse, guilt, anxiety, or other distress.

Items purchased during these shopping sprees (such as clothes or accessories), are referred to as 'comfort buys'.Shopping to feel better is all too real for many people.As winter creeps in and you.When you underperform on a test, instead of reaching for the booze, you reach for the shoes.The mood improvement associated with retail therapy seems to last well past.

Retail therapy, can, in fact, be a sign of a real psychological issue— compulsive buying disorder, an actual shopping addiction, one that typically results in massive debt that sufferers keep.