“H elp! I think I’m turning into Tamar!” I was speaking with Suri whom I’d been counseling for about a year. She found me through Mishpacha after having read my serial Three Steps and identifying with Tamar a shopping addict and codependent. Since Suri lives in New York our sessions were done by phone.
Suri was not addicted to shopping but to the Internet — e-mail recipes and especially news sites. She’d become a slave to her smartphone which she grew to love and hate in equal parts. Her recovery began with switching from a smartphone to a kosher phone. When she started using the family laptop Suri asked her husband to password protect it.
Acquiring both self-awareness and the tools to deal with cravings Suri had begun to live life again. She was rediscovering herself as a wife mother and artist no longer choked by her addiction nor trapped by her need to control everyone and everything. Of course there was the occasional longing for “just a quick peek” at the Internet but that too was something she’d learned to expect accept and navigate.
But recently Suri’s recovery developed a glitch: shopping as a painkiller. She understood that using any behavior that way could lead her back into addictive thinking patterns and behaviors. We had to figure out if Suri’s shopping was heading toward addiction. After her panicked call I gave her homework — to write down her thoughts and feelings before during and after shopping.
