Compulsive Shopping Tendencies?

I seriously think I have compulsive shopping tendencies. There are few things that make me feel as giddy or happy when I'm blue than to buy something. And it seems like the less money I have to spend, the more money I want to spend. No, I need to spend. I totally don't get it.

The other day as I drove home from work, the car drove on auto-pilot, stopping in the parking lot of Pier 1. I've been on the hunt for new canisters for the kitchen. I absolutely do not need them. There is nothing wrong with the ones I have. I'm just tired of them. I've been trying to talk myself out of buying them for a month now (this is huge progress for me). But this week I was mesmerized by the possibility of buying them and taking them home. There was only one left of the model I liked a lot. But I need 2. I currently have 4 of varying sizes but want to have just 2 of the same size. So I picked up my second choice which obviously had 2 available. I carried them throughout the store for 10 minutes finding other things to buy as well. It's like I couldn't stop. I kept telling myself, "you deserve them. You've thought about it long enough and waited. You work hard. Do it!" But then I countered myself with, "you don't need them. You have very real needs but this isn't it. STOP it."

But I couldn't. I was seriously tormented over it in my mind. I HAD to have them. As I fought myself in my brain, sense finally won out but not because I no longer wanted to purchase something. I finally decided if i was going to buy them, they should be the exact ones I wanted and not a second choice. I put them back and bolted out of the store while common sense reigned.

No, I'm not done searching for them yet and when I find what I want, I am so going to get them. This is the very reason I gave up shopping for 6 weeks a couple of years ago when I did the Daniel study. I was WAY WORSE before that but I could also afford it more easily then.

Yep, compulsive shopping tendencies is what I think. It's not my only compulsive behavior. Don't even get me started on multi-faceted light switches. I don't even know if that's the right term but it's the ones that have 2 or more grouped together. We have several in our house that operate the same set of lights. I cannot sleep if they are up and down together. Steve does it just to drive me crazy. I'm certain of it.