Notes

The Secret Life of a Clothing Shopaholic
Yes, I'm a recovering clothing shopaholic. Perchance you think clothing shopaholics are simply women who can't control their urge to spend money on clothes. But that really isn't what the addiction is centered on. There is a big misconception about clothes shopping addiction. So I am going to let you in on the truth about it and tell you all about the secret fantasy life of the ladies who have it. vegan apparel You see, all female clothing shopaholics have a very important factor in common:

WE CRAVE FLATTERY, ENVY, AND COMPLIMENTS ON OUR APPEARANCE EACH DAY OF OUR LIFE.

When we get a compliment or an admiring stare on the way we look, we feel great. And here is another truth about our addiction: most of us have a "female appraiser". A "female appraiser" is the female in our life that we always imagine envying us and complimenting us whenever we try on new clothes. She actually is the one we always wear new outfits in front of to get appraisal and compliments about how exactly we look. She is the main one who notices every new pair of shoes, every new little bit of jewelry, whether our hair looks particularly healthy and attractive that day, and every new item of clothing we are wearing to the minutest degree. She dissects us physically; she is our lifeblood to feeling we exist; by noticing us, envying us and complimenting us; she makes us feel alive.

And we are her female appraiser aswell. We notice every new item she wears and we comment about how exactly good she looks aswell. We often envy her appearance and new outfits. Our relationship may be the mutual symbiotic feeding of our ego envy. Usually our female appraiser is our female mother, sister, friend or coworker who we subconsciously compete and look to get approval from about our appearance. We always make an effort to upstage her to look at and make her feel envious folks; we always think about whether what we buy can make her envy how exactly we look before we buy it and when she sees a fresh outfit on us and we feel her envy (of course the ultimate high is when she asks us where we bought it) we've our ultimate addictive fix. We even watch just how many people notice us more than her when the two folks walk together in public, to know that we are receiving more attention than she actually is. Yes, it's an "envy/dislike/need of approval dynamic" we've with this female appraiser (or multiple female appraisers) on a complicated physical and emotional level.

When I was a clothing shopaholic, I lived for clothes, they were my life passion. I still love clothes. But I'm less in need of the energy they give me to be noticed, admired, and envied. The need to shop for clothes and imagine wearing them and getting compliments from women when I put them on has taken less of a hang on me. But there was a time when shopping for clothes was an essential part of my lifestyle because I lived for the eye and praise those new outfits gave me. I would fantasize when i tried them on in the store and imagine being envied by my female appraiser when I wore them. And once I purchased them, wearing them always made me feel very special and alive when I acquired that attention, envy and praise from my "female appraiser". I usually needed to wear something new to be noticed which is why the money was spent; to continually have new clothes to wear therefore i would continually get compliments and become noticed. When I wore that outfit a second time, it wasn't new anymore and no compliments received because they'd already been given when I wore it the first time. So that outfit didn't serve its purpose any more for my addiction unless I wore it before a different female appraiser who never saw it before (sometimes I had 3 or more female appraisers in my life). On the days I wore an outfit that I received no attention about, I actually felt invisible and depressed. Sometimes just thinking about another new outfit I'd wear the next day and how good I'd look and how envied I'd be was all I thought about on those depressing days. It was the thing that kept me going; imaging that outfit in my own closet and the power it would give me to be noticed and complimented.. I'd fantasize about the shoes I'd wear with the outfit and how I'd match my eye shadow to it and the admiration I'd be getting. Because I usually knew exactly what to buy and wear that would make my female appraiser envious and wish she had my clothes and got the attention I was geting. And just what a euphoric high that would give me; even thinking about that happening.

Clothing shopaholics have an odd addiction because when you get rid of the women you feel competitive with, the addiction loses its hang on you. That's as the addiction is approximately fantasizing about being envied for how you look in clothes. But take away the female appraiser, and you don't possess the envy and you also lose the necessity to fantasize or look for clothes. Needless to say, eliminating female appraisers in your life isn't easy. As long as you have a mother or work in a corporate office, or have a lady sibling you see, you will have a woman in your life assessing your appearance. Even when babysitting my friend's 10 year old daughter, she assessed my appearance by informing me my pants didn't match my top; "the colors were off" she told me. And here I thought I was free of that kind of appraisal from children and could just "throw on sweats and any old top." In the end, why care what a 10 year old girl considers how I look when I'm babysitting her? But yes, her comment did bother me, although I stood my ground and refused to change my clothes. Needless to say, she actually is a budding clothing shopaholic in the making.
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