What Science Says About Attachment and Compulsive Shopping Disorder
Hi, I’m Michele Ross LCSW, an addiction therapist in Los Angeles. I specialize in supporting individuals with behavioral addictions like compulsive buying.
Taking the first step can feel hard. If you’re looking for support with compulsive shopping, I’d be glad to hear from you. Send a message whenever you’re ready using this short contact form.
Attachment patterns are the ways we learned to seek comfort, security, and connection in infancy and childhood.
It’s common to hear about attachment patterns and how they influence relationships with others and with ourselves.
However, recent research suggests that our attachment patterns may also influence how we relate to brands, shopping, possessions, and even buying behavior.
Part of this is because attachment can influence how someone seeks comfort, reassurance, or emotional regulation.
Attachment is just one factor in buying-shopping disorder. Other risk factors can include genetics, stress levels, social media use, impulse control, and general mental health.
Even so, understanding the link between attachment and shopping can help people make sense of their own habits.
What is Attachment?
Attachment the emotional bond we form with others starting with caregivers in early life.
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed the attachment theory to explain how those emotional bonds impact our behavior and relationships. The way we handle stress, seek comfort, manage emotions, and view others can stem from our early attachments (Cleveland Clinic).
People with secure attachment usually were raised by dependable and loving caregivers.
In contrast, insecure attachment is more likely when caregivers were inconsistent, unavailable, or unpredictable.
There are three main patterns of insecure attachment:
Avoidant: These individuals tend to keep emotional distance and have trouble trusting others easily.
Anxious: These individuals often worry about rejection, abandonment, or whether other people really care.
Fearful-avoidant: This style mixes both wanting closeness and fearing it, which can create a lot of inner conflict.
It can be easy to feel discouraged if you recognize these insecure attachment patterns in yourself.
However, attachment styles are not permanent and can change over time. Experiences with healthy relationships, inner work, and therapy can all shift an insecure attachment into a more secure pattern.
Insecure Attachment and Shopping Behaviors
If you have any of the insecure attachment styles, it can change the way that you use shopping to cope.
People with anxious, avoidant, or fearful attachment are more likely to buy themselves gifts to deal with negative emotions and personal disappointment.
When insecure attachment is mixed with emotional loneliness, this tendency to self-gift gets even stronger.
These patterns can be linked to compulsive and impulsive buying.
When shopping is used as a coping mechanism instead of an occasional treat, it can get out of control
(Research Gate, Science Direct, Emerald).
Below are some other examples of how different insecure attachment styles can impact compulsive shopping habits.
Anxious Attachment, Shopping & Hoarding Disorder
A cross-cultural study found that people with anxious attachment were more likely to buy themselves things when they were feeling down or dealing with disappointments. This replaced turning to other people for support.
Hoarding disorder may look like just being messy on the surface, but there’s usually a habit of excessively purchasing new items tied along with it. In this way, it can overlap with shopping disorders.
One study suggests people with anxious attachment are more likely to see their purchased items as a source of comfort when they’re stressed. They tend to anthropomorphize their possessions. Essentially, they imagine the objects as having feelings or personalities. Objects feel almost like friends or emotional support figures.
This can lead to an intense emotional bond, where the individual feels like the objects will be hurt if they are given away. In the end, the bond makes excessive buying more likely, since the objects can feel more reliable than people.
Avoidant Attachment and Shopping Disorder
Where anxious attachment often links to soothing distress, avoidant attachment is more about staying in control and not needing anyone.
One of the studies mentioned above found that avoidantly attached people were also more likely to buy themselves gifts. For them, self-gifting helped them to meet their own needs in a way that was self-sufficient. They didn’t need to rely on other people in order to feel better.
Another study with teens found that those with avoidant attachment and low impulsivity were at higher risk of buying-shopping disorder.
That suggests that shopping isn’t always impulsive, and when it’s planned and calm it can be a way to cope and feel self-sufficient.
Fearful Attachment and Shopping Disorder
Fearful Attachment (also called Fearful-Avoidant or Disorganized) shows up in the way individuals can both crave emotional intimacy and simultaneously be terrified of it.
A study on compulsive online shopping suggests that this fearful style can be a significant risk factor.
People with this attachment style can feel like they are undeserving of love and afraid to depend on others. For them, shopping can be a coping mechanism that soothes stress, fills emotional voids, or improves self-esteem.
When emotional security feels uncertain, shopping can create predictability, reassurance, and comfort to help an individual feel temporarily more secure.
Why therapy helps break the cycle of insecure attachment and shopping addiction
Therapy can help you learn more about your attachment style and coping mechanisms, and how that relates to a shopping addiction.
A therapist specialized in addiction can help you discover your emotional triggers, unmet emotional needs, and teach you helpful self-soothing strategies that are healthier for your well-being.
Once you learn how to manage the emotional need, it can become easier to stop the compulsive shopping behavior.
If you’re ready to move past the cravings to buy, I’m available to help.
Frameworks like EMDR and Brainspotting help you in the recovery process, so you can achieve healing in a way that goes beyond just talk therapy.
