Although I have titled this case study “compulsive spending”, a further part of the problem was a compulsion to apply for more credit cards.
When I was first approached regarding this case, it was the client’s wife who contacted me, completely at the end of her tether with her husband’s spending problem. At this point in time, the client was renting a flat and living separately from his wife and children as a result of the problems. Their marriage was hanging by a thread and it was basically the last attempt at fixing this problem.
A brief summary of the first appointment/initial consultation:
The client had existing credit card debts of a little over £1800. This may not sound like much but as far as he and his wife were concerned, it was the start of the next wave. The previous wave of credit card debt had reached nearly £30,000 until family members bailed him out. In total, he had been bailed out to a total of over £50,000. Much of this was card interest and there was very little to show for any of the money. The only large purchases were holidays, the rest of the spending was a total of multiple small amounts and cash withdrawals. The problems could be broken down into a few parts.
1) Impulse purchases when bored. By this I mean buying unrequired items of clothing because he was in town and bored, buying gifts such as expensive perfume for his wife, for the sake of spending rather than for any romantic reason (and to help his conscience).
2) Withdrawing cash by credit or debit card for no other reason than an impulse to do so if he wasn’t carrying much cash. In this instance, he would withdraw £50 or so and then because he has cash, spend some or all of it. It was as though he had a compulsion to spend cash if he had it as well as the compulsion to be carrying cash!
3) The old trap that so many people fall into – yes, those lovely 0% balance transfer offers that drop through the letterbox! Using a card to pay off a card balance and then continuing to use the old one whilst only making minimum payments on the other cards. Of course making minimum payments on time on multiple debts actually enhances your credit rating and brings the offer of more cards, loans etc.
Points 1) and 2) were always worse when stressed or anxious.
During this first session, I treated the problem as a compulsive habit using a combination of hypnotherapy and NLP techniques. Although I was concerned about the stress/anxiety factors, with a problem like this I felt the first thing to do was to put the brakes on the spending and then deal with the underlying problem. By treating in this order, it would save the client money and probably his marriage as it would leave a noticeable change in his behaviour.
Session 2:
On his return (two weeks later), the client reported that he had been more relaxed in general and had only been buying items that were genuinely needed. His wife was impressed with the change and they had put their house on the market to move closer to family members. However, he was still living in the rented flat and his wife still had trust issues. After years of his compulsive spending, the trust wasn’t going to be coming back after just one session and understandably so.
During this session, we worked on removing/controlling the underlying stress and anxiety factors as well as focussing on the long term future.
Session 3:
There was a one month gap between sessions two and three. The client reported that his spending was now down to “the bare minimum” and that he had actually been putting money away towards the new house. He was also spending more time with his wife and children and had transferred to a different job within his company. To quote some of the content of this update “everything is going the way it should have been ten years ago” and instead of thinking “I can afford it” the inner voice had changed to “I don’t need that right now”. He needed new shirts for his job and instead of going round the town and coming back with a dozen designer shirts as he would have done previously, he bought half a dozen from Asda for a fraction of the price.
It was obvious from here this should be the last session. The session focussed on keeping the changes permanently and upon the client becoming more and more enthused by his successes. In addition to this, the new “inner voice” that had changed to question whether an item was needed rather than affordable was further reinforced.
The result………… this is the email received four months later (edited to remove personal details):
Just a quick email to say “thanks very much for your with with your therapy”, it has helped me no end. My wife and I have just come back from a holiday in Gran Canaria. We are moving home shortly after the New Year as we have bought a new property in our home town, needs a lot of work doing to it but we can’t wait to get stuck in.
Thanks again.
Have a very Merry Christmas and a Fun filled Prosperous New Year.
Total cost of hypnotherapy £180.00, total financial saving £????? – another £50,000? A saved marriage…….. PRICELESS!
Oke Hypnotherapy – Manchester, Glossop & Sheffield
