A man or woman who does this is now known as a shopaholic – someone who always wants to shop and keeps doing it even after his or her bank account can't take it anymore. Baumgartner says that the satisfaction of finding something exactly right or the happiness of owning a new item can be addictive, and shopping can become an activity to make up for other disappointments. (We've all heard of retail therapy.) Working with a client named Tessa, Baumgartner told her to write down everything she wanted to buy and look at it again in a week to see if she really still wanted it. Often, that wasn't the case, but if she did, she was allowed to buy some of the items. If she had been barred from shopping altogether, Baumgartner reasoned, Tessa would have found it harder to stick to the rules.
