A terrible day. Your manager was unfair, or a teacher, or a friend. The bus was late and you feel invisible. On the way home you open a shopping app. "You deserve it." The checkout offers "4 interest-free payments of €30," which sounds so much smaller than €120. For a moment you feel better. Then the next morning, a familiar heaviness.
Shopping as an emotional painkiller
We often joke about "retail therapy," but for some people shopping really does work as a quick mood fix, and that's exactly what makes it sticky. Research on people with compulsive buying shows that for many of them it's less about pleasure and more about relief.
In a 2025 study, women with pathological buying reported more intense daydreams and mental images about shopping than other women. What drove those images wasn't mainly the expectation of fun. It was the expectation of relief from bad feelings. A 2026 study of 438 adults found that higher levels of anxiety and depression each went together with more signs of online shopping addiction. And a 2025 review found that feeling unhappy with your body was one of the most consistent predictors of compulsive buying. That helps explain the "new me" purchases: clothes and skincare for some, gym gear and supplements for others.
The regret loop
Psychologists often describe a cycle that many people will recognise:
1. A bad feeling (stress, boredom, loneliness, feeling not good enough) → 2. The urge and the hunt for something to buy → 3. The buy: a short rush of relief or excitement → 4. The crash: guilt, worry about money, hiding the parcel → 5. Feeling worse, which brings you back to step 1.
The relief is real but it lasts minutes. The guilt and the bills last much longer. Over time, shopping can stop being a treat and become the only tool you have for coping.
This isn't only about expensive things. For many people the loop runs on small purchases: a €12 lipstick, a €9 phone case, a €15 in-game bundle, a cheap gadget from an app full of bargains. Each one feels too small to matter, which is exactly why they add up unnoticed. At the end of the month the bank statement tells a story you don't quite recognise.
"Pay in 4": why it feels so harmless
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services like Klarna, PayPal Pay in 4 and others split a purchase into small instalments, often without interest. Used carefully, they can be fine. The psychological risk is that €120 starts to feel like €30, and several small plans quietly pile up.
The best data so far come from the US. In January 2025, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported that in 2022 more than 1 in 5 consumers with a credit record used BNPL. Among those users, over 60% had several BNPL loans running at the same time at some point, and one in three borrowed from more than one provider. People aged 18–24 were the most likely to use these services. A 2025 survey of 2,000 Americans found that 41% of BNPL users had paid late in the past year, usually by only a few days, and a quarter had used BNPL to pay for groceries.
Europe is catching up with the risk. Under new EU consumer-credit rules that apply from 20 November 2026, interest-free "buy now, pay later" plans offered through a separate lender are treated as credit, and lenders have to check whether you can afford them. That's the law quietly admitting what many people learned the hard way: pay-later is still debt.
Key numbers
- 6 in 10 "pay later" users had several plans running at the same time. CFPB, 2025 (US)
- 4 in 10 "pay later" users missed a payment date in the past year. LendingTree survey, 2025 (US)
- 20 Nov 2026: from this date, "pay later" counts as a loan in the EU, and the lender must check you can afford it. EU Directive 2023/2225
The costs nobody sees
Beyond money, compulsive shopping brings quieter costs: wardrobes and drawers full of things never used, the stress of returns, packages hidden in the car, little lies to a partner or parents, and a growing gap between how you look online and how you feel inside. Many people who struggle with this feel deep shame, because shopping is so normal that it's hard to admit it has become a problem.
The good news
Compulsive buying responds to help. Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best-studied treatment and reduces symptoms. It focuses on recognising triggers, finding other ways to deal with difficult feelings and putting practical friction back between the urge and the purchase. Understanding what feeling you're trying to buy is often the turning point.
Quick self-check
- Do you shop when you feel stressed, sad, lonely or bored?
- Does the good feeling after buying fade within hours, or turn into guilt?
- Do you have several "pay later" plans running and lose track of them?
- Have you bought something to feel better about how you look?
- Do you hide parcels, receipts or statements from others?
This is not a diagnosis. It's a way to notice whether shopping has become a way of coping.
If money worries or shopping urges are weighing on you, talking to a psychologist or a debt-advice service can make a real difference.
References
- Brandtner, A., Brand, M., & Müller, A. (2025). Mental imagery in the context of online compulsive buying-shopping disorder: The role of pleasure and relief. Addictive Behaviors Reports, 21, 100586. doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2025.100586
- Arayici, M. E., Gedik, G., Basaran, D., Simsek, H., & Gultekin Arayici, S. (2026). Online shopping addiction in association with depression, anxiety, and stress: Exploring independent and relative contributions in a cross-sectional study. Behavioral Sciences, 16(8), 1441. doi:10.3390/bs16081441
- Laskowski, N. M., Ballero Reque, C., Reiß, P., Pahlenkemper, M., Brandt, G., & Paslakis, G. (2025). Interconnected desires: A systematic review of compulsive buying-shopping disorder and its links to disordered eating and body image by gender. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 14(2), 679–713. doi:10.1556/2006.2025.00042
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2025, Jan 13). Research report on consumer use of Buy Now, Pay Later loans (2022 data), released with the press release "CFPB research reveals heavy Buy Now, Pay Later use among borrowers with high credit balances and multiple pay-in-four loans." consumerfinance.gov (PDF)
- LendingTree survey (April 2025), as reported in: "Buy now, pay later for groceries" Fortune (2025, Apr 28). fortune.com
- Directive (EU) 2023/2225 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 October 2023 on credit agreements for consumers (Consumer Credit Directive 2). Official Journal of the EU, L 2023/2225. Recital 16 (BNPL in scope) and Article 48 (applies from 20 November 2026). eur-lex.europa.eu
- Müller, A., Trotzke, P., Schaar, P., Thomas, T. A., Georgiadou, E., & Steins-Loeber, S. (2025). Psychotherapy research for compulsive buying-shopping disorder: Quo vadis? Addictive Behaviors Reports, 21, 100591. doi:10.1016/j.abrep.2025.100591
About these sources
These 8 sources were published between 2023 and 2026. Reliability: 4 high, 3 medium, 1 lower. High means a review of many studies, a large experiment or long-term study, or official data checked in the original. Medium means useful evidence with real limits, such as a small sample, a single point in time, or no peer review. Lower-rated sources, such as a press report or a commercial survey, are used only for context. How we choose and check sources.
Educational guidance, not diagnosis or medical care.