6 | The Spending Spiral & Choosing Better!

Life is made up of so many choices. My choice to shop until I literally dropped set me back for years. It had me making more choices and more decisions with fear and limiting beliefs leading the way. In this week’s episode, I take you back to a time in my life where I was making choices that weren’t serving me. All of those choices added up to a decision to move home. I will more than likely deep dive these experiences in future episodes, but I wanted to give you a glimpse at what was happening prior to my move. 

I also share more about my shopping addiction. I was in denial of my addiction for so long. Sometimes it’s easier to put on a face and pretend everything’s fine rather than talk about what’s actually happening. I believe there are a lot of people out there living a life that isn’t completely serving them and denying that anything is wrong. We often times convince ourselves that we really truly do love ourselves or that we love the life we are living. All to keep up appearances. 

The instagram, picture perfect life, doesn’t exist in reality. Once we start to face the reality of our situation, we can start to work toward a more fulfilling, aligned life! 

Have a listen and when you get time, take on the challenge I pose at the end of this episode! Stay tuned for a social media check in post this week.

🎧 Subscribe, follow, and share Permission to Rise with a woman who’s ready to rise into her next chapter.

Transcript

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Hey, it's Chelsea, and welcome to Permission to Rise, a podcast for women ready to find their voice, embrace healing, and rise into their fullest potential. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start showing up for your life, this podcast is your permission to rise. Hey everyone! I'm excited for these next few episodes. I'm going to start getting into the nitty-gritty of everything that I want to talk about. My intention was not to create a serial podcast where you have to listen to the episodes in order, but I feel that season one is going to be best understood by listening to all the episodes in order. I'll be honest, this episode has been one of the most challenging for me to write thus far. I literally bought a gigantic whiteboard on wheels to stick in my apartment to help me outline everything. It's been extremely helpful. Also, maybe consider checking in on your single friends who live alone because they're left unchecked to be able to do whatever the hell they want. And this thing is obnoxiously large. Anyway, I realized that I can't box everything up in neat, tidy little squares. Life has so many layers, and oftentimes there's multiple areas of our life that are demanding our attention all at once. So many things are happening all the time. So bear with me as I use this episode to go back one more step. In episode four, I laid out for you a quick story about how and when my journey to bettering myself started. There were a lot of things that were happening in all areas of my life that were toxic, controlling, stressful. The list goes on. I had so many irons in the fire, it was hard to know where to start in picking up the pieces of what felt like everything falling apart at the same time. So I want to throw back a little bit further before we start digging into my healing journey. I want to go back to where things were at prior to me moving home in 2016. I'll be honest, moving home was not my top choice. I never wanted to move home. I told myself once I left town I was done with it. There was absolutely zero way that I was moving home with my mom because her and I are two very different people, and living together was torturous as a teenager. I couldn't even conceive of the idea as an adult. The main reason I moved home, as I've always put it, is that I ran out of roommates. And, well, it wasn't entirely a lie. All of my friends and connections were either moving home themselves, moving in with their significant others, or moving in a totally different direction. I also knew that living by myself was going to put me in a really tight space financially. I think I was too afraid to do that because I'd already been living paycheck to paycheck for so long, monitoring my bank account down to literally pennies. My dream was to move to the cities, but I was too afraid of the financial strain, and I really didn't want to go job searching again. As I said before, a lot of my financial situation was school, medical bills, a car accident, but most of it was my own doing. My shopping addiction started in 2012. I wasn't processing my emotions well. I had gone through a breakup in 2011 and I was still reeling from it. Not the guy, but the trauma of having someone walk into my life and then disappear. Because he didn't dump me, he just disappeared off the face of the earth. Like poof, and he was gone. No communication, no answers, I never got them. It felt like it never even happened. I spent the entire summer of 2011 questioning if it was even real. I wasn't okay. That summer I weighed the lowest I've ever weighed as an adult. I was down to 122 pounds, and no one really noticed. I fought my way through that next school year mentally and emotionally. I recall having a semester where my grades dipped below a 3.0, and that had never happened before. I've been through this kind of dismissal before in high school, the kind where one day I had friends and the next day it was like I didn't even exist. Everyone in the circle ignored me for a solid week. Then it would go back to normal and everyone would talk to me again. My mom used to say that maybe the reason they quit talking to me or the reason they bullied me was because they were jealous. I would stand there and go, jealous of what? I didn't feel like I was anything great or big or better than anyone else. I never even thought of myself as that beautiful. I got so used to people leaving that it was second nature for me. I never held my breath waiting for people. I always expected them to leave. I don't think I ever fully allowed myself to feel things because I didn't want to deal with the hurt later. Every relationship and friendship became a surface-level connection even when I craved more. With this relationship, I was so happy. I wasn't doubting or questioning anything. I let my guard down and let him in. I allowed every fantasy and every dream that I've ever had play out in my mind. When he disappeared, it was like he took all of that with him. It triggered something in me so deep that I didn't think was there because I swept a lot of these feelings under the rug. I pretended I was okay for so long that if I just swept my feelings away, I didn't have to look at them, face them, deal with them, they couldn't hurt me. So I tried to fill the void. It started small. When I worked at camp summer of 2012, we would drive to a nearby target. I was so fixated on getting settled into an apartment that fall that I started buying things. Decorations, towels, things for the kitchen. I would scour clearance racks and tell myself it was fine. I was buying everything cheap. I recall filling my entire trunk full of things for the apartment, just waiting because I was so anxious to move. I was so anxious for the next stage of my life that I wasn't actually living in the moment. When I finally moved into the apartment right before starting my last year of school, I felt like everything was starting to get better. I had enough money to fill my pantry, I had all that I needed for school, and I adopted Lady. And then I got in a car accident. The rug that I had been so aggressively stuffing everything under got pulled out from underneath of me. All the things that I wasn't facing slapped me in the face. And then I shoved them right back under the rug because I still didn't want to deal with it. I was in so much pain. I had aches and pains and issues that I've never had before, and none of the doctors were listening. I tried calling my mom and talking to her about it, but she kept putting her issues first and telling me that I really didn't know what pain was like. Again, no one was listening. I really didn't give a shit about school at that point. I was questioning everything in my life. When I got into the car accident, I was on my way to the mall to hand in a job application. Eventually, I did get a job at Herberger's. It was a department store that was part of the Bonton chain. I'm sure a lot of my Midwestern ladies remember that store. It was my favorite. And eventually I'll probably talk about it because it was one of my favorite jobs. But it was also a huge enabler. I spent my paycheck before I even got it. At this point, the shopping addiction intensified. I felt like if I could just align everything else in my life, things would work out. If I could just check all the boxes, buy all of the things that I needed, and organize my life better, things would be okay. I did what I did as a child. I was comforted by my things. When I didn't have people in my life, my room became my sanctuary. I could control my room, I could control my space, I could control my things. I eventually had to borrow money from my mom to pay for a medical bill and to buy a new vehicle, since mine was totaled. After graduating in 2013, despite picking up every shift I could and working 40 hours a week in the department store, I had to borrow money for rent too. I didn't find a full-time job until August. Now, let me be clear, because over the years my mother has made it abundantly clear how she felt about my things. I am not and have not ever been a hoarder. I know that I probably have more than most, but I did get rid of things, sold things, and kept things very organized despite the volume of things that I owned. I still do this. Not the shopping, but I still go through my things and downsize. In fact, my move this fall made me literally want to throw everything outside and set it on fire. I thought I went through everything meticulously and was prepared, but I have probably gotten rid of 10 or more totes full of things since moving. In 2014, I moved into a different apartment. I recall shortly after moving in, looking at my food cupboard, thinking, okay, this is what I have for the next three weeks. Because once I get paid next week, that money is needed for bills. So it's going to be three weeks before I get a paycheck that will allow me to buy groceries. I just stood there, looking at my cupboard. I took note, I nodded, and said, I can do this. At that point, I had maxed out every credit card, and the solution wasn't to go increase my limits or find a new one. I was always selling things on Facebook for sale groups, so I used that money to buy groceries. Oftentimes I would play the game where I would make the payment on my credit card and then go immediately spend whatever money was available so that I could buy groceries or pay other bills. But I remember this particular moment because I got a notification a couple days later from Wells Fargo saying that my credit card limit increased. I didn't ask them to do it, they just took an assessment and automatically increased it every once in a while. I almost wept. I recall literally getting in my car, going to High V and buying myself some groceries, telling myself it was absolutely necessary and I was not going to worry about it. Even though by now I had a full-time job, I was still working at Herberger's. But like I said, I was spending my paycheck before I even got it. It was enabling me to shop. I was spending money on eating out or I was walking through the mall multiple times a week. The cashier at Earthbound stopped asking me for my ID to compare signatures on my card because we had spent enough time talking that she knew me by name. I decided to quit Herberger's in 2015 after doing my taxes and realizing that I was working for pennies. I recall my mom telling me, you can't quit that job. You need that second job. You need the extra money. I was like, I don't think you get it. I'm not making any money. And in fact, when I quit, I had more money in my pocket. I was able to drive home more and spend time with my brother, who was dating my now sister-in-law at the time. I was so excited for this because I felt like I was missing out on life by always working. If I had to summarize this phase of my life, I would say that it was one in which I felt a little lost. Okay, who am I kidding? I was very lost. And I was angry. The car accident threw me for a loop and had me questioning everything that I was doing with my life, especially when it came to school and my career. I didn't know what kind of job I wanted. I didn't really have a grasp on what kind of life I wanted to live. I just knew that I was really angry, and it affected my ability to show up for myself in a way that mattered. I was so stuck in survival mode that I didn't focus on a career path. I didn't focus on building relationships with anyone. I was bitter and angry and frustrated with the whole entire world. Quite frankly, I was a bitch. I know that there were days that I walked into Herberg's, and I guarantee you that some of those coworkers were thinking, ah fuck, it's her today. No one could tell me anything positive. No one could tell me it was going to be okay because I refused to listen. I will say that eventually things got better. They started to turn around in the beginning of 2015. I will probably break out an episode for that specifically because it came back around during my life coaching days. I'd come to realize that it was a moment of my life where I started to take back control of my emotions. Quitting my part-time job and spending more time focusing on me and my relationships with other people became a priority. I recall walking into my apartment feeling on cloud nine and happy, no matter what was going on in my life. I was starting to feel more positive and let go of my materialistic connections. And then I moved home. And next week's episode will give you more clarity on how that affected my mindset. But that's why I implore women to go dig a little deeper. I've listened to a lot of women in my life talk about their life as if it's already set in stone, as if they don't have time to focus on themselves, or that they'll be able to figure it out later. I think there's also this general stigma surrounding mindset work, this whole self-care, self-help area that women and men are very dismissive of. I myself went through that because it means you have to face your feelings, and sometimes that's really hard. But I also think there's a lot of women out there that scoff at it, tell themselves they're okay, go about their lives, but find themselves participating in destructive behavior, like excessive drinking or shopping or other activities that lower the volume on their life. And they convince you and themselves that they're having fun and everything's fine. But on the inside, if they actually took a moment to face their feelings, they'd realize that they aren't really that happy. But taking the time to figure out what it means and how to make change is very uncomfortable. Let me tell you, everything about this process that I have been on in the last six years has been fucking uncomfortable. It still is. To say no to the things that aren't serving me or to the activities that I know are going to distract me from my goals feels like I'm not fully living some days. I know firsthand what it's like to get lost. And when you have a lot of things competing for your time, it's harder to make time for yourself. But I feel like it's vitally important for you to really soul search what it means to be you and live the most authentic version of your life. I'm still learning how to do this because it's been far too easy for me to find ways to distract myself from feeling my feelings or putting myself out there. There's all these decisions to be made, and I think sometimes we think life is just easier when we don't have to make them. But that means letting go of control and allowing other people and places and things to dictate our life. And then we say, well, that's just life. I didn't have a choice. But that's a lie, and it's one that I no longer want to tell myself. My challenge for you today is to take a moment to do a little self-assessing. Find one area in your life where you feel a little stuck or a little lost, and see if you can open up your mind to the possibility of how you can move forward or change something by simply making a choice. Can you choose to show up for yourself a little more in that area? Can you choose to learn something new that will help you advance in that area? Can you make a choice that brings you joy? Can you decide that something is no longer serving you and your choice today is to say no? Thank you so much for listening today. Follow along with Permission to Rise Podcast on Facebook and Instagram for this week's call to action post, where you can answer my challenge. Let's start a discussion and hold yourself accountable to making a decision this week. Whether it's something you're going to decide to start now, tomorrow, next week, or next month, let's make a commitment. Give yourself permission to rise.