Shopping as Self-Creation

Attention Shoppers! : The Woman's Guide to Enlightenment Through Shopping
by Eve Eliot

What is it about shopping that makes it at once so appealing and so anxiety producing? The opportunity for self-knowledge is both seductive and frightening. But the same self-knowledge that enables us to choose just the right handbag and leads us to making confident shopping decisions allows us the experience of our own nature and, finally, a sense of being all right.

Therefore, learning how to shop mindfully, in a way that enhances self-awareness—even if only to acknowledge that one's self needs some work—can help a person find the peace that has always seemed just out of reach. This book will show you how to do just that, and provide encouragement and inspiration every step of the way.

Included are short anecdotes from women interviewed by Eliot, depicting different aspects of the shopping experience, along with suggested practices to help readers stay in the present. Divided into short, easy-to-read sections that cover a wide array of topics, this fits-in-a-purse-size book is jam-packed with useful information and delivered with empathy, wisdom and a loving sense of humor.

By learning to shop more mindfully, you'll discover how to better understand yourself and find fulfillment. You'll find ways to connect with that image in the mirror, and know without hesitation how to dress her and furnish her home and celebrate her—and most important, how to trust her. Through that trust, you'll find what you've been shopping for, searching for and longing for . . . increased self-awareness.

For every reader who has thrown up her hands in despair for lack of time or inclination to meditate or practice yoga, this book is a must-read that shows why a jaunt to the mall offers as great an opportunity for self-discovery and soul-enrichment as a Himalayan mountaintop.

Shopping as Self-Creation

All of us long to have an awareness of our true nature, our emotional fingerprints. Sometimes, there is tremendous fear attached to the process of becoming aware, but it beckons compellingly all the same. We read about how we need to take up certain things (like yoga or journaling) and give up other things (like sitting on the couch or worrying), and we are encouraged to write cathartic letters, to see therapists, to exercise.

Meditating and writing in journals are certainly excellent, extremely effective, time-tested ways to gain self-awareness. However, they are not appealing methods for everyone. In fact, self-awareness itself is often such a daunting prospect that many people, when they consider achieving it by meditating or writing in a journal, would rather eat lunch and go shopping.

This book is meant to allow self-awareness to happen while you are at the mall, the yard sale or the thrift shop. Perhaps shopping is to some Americans what meditating is to Easterners, a time to join with the self and explore the fathomless depths of what is possible when we journey within with a clear intention and a courageous heart.

Most of us long for that sense that some organizing force is at work within us. We may feel a secret shame that this feeling is absent. Because of this perplexity, we fear we aren't good enough, and we lament that we don't have what it takes to feel better because we just can't seem to get around to meditating or practicing yoga.

Women who experience themselves as not good enough, who do not have a clear sense of who they are, are subject to frequent bouts of anxiety. This is often very evident in the arena of shopping. The idea of going shopping seems, at first, appealing because shopping is, whether consciously recognized as such or not, an act of self-creation. But when they actually do go shopping, many women find that the very deficiency of self-clarity they experienced as anxiety in the first place also deprives them of the ability to make choices easily.

On the other hand, some women experience a sense of wholeness while shopping that they seldom feel at other times in their lives. The actual choice-making process seems to solidify them, to distill the sense of the self. Making choices provides a powerful opportunity for self-expression and brings with it a feeling of being in control. The discriminatory process exercises an essential part of the self. Exercising one's prerogative is a valuable activity!

Sometimes, a connection with a particular object or article of clothing holds a magic that makes them feel more like themselves or reveals some aspect of their personalities which they find difficult to otherwise identify or express.

The choices with which shopping presents us, therefore, are less about color, size or style than they are about what is and is not us. When we examine the result of a day out shopping, we are faced, finally, with who we are, who we think we are, who we wish we were, who we are becoming, or who marketers, magazines or our mothers want us to believe we should be. These are all steps along the way to self-awareness, another way to define enlightenment.

While both genders are, of course, vulnerable to feelings of confusion, anxiety and despair, I will be using feminine pronouns because women tend to use shopping to self-focus more often; whereas, for most men, sports, working, hunting, fishing or repairing things are the activities that largely fulfill the same focusing functions that shopping does for women.

Shopping for your identity is a wondrous pursuit and brings us to the question of how a self is formed in the first place. It is valuable to explore the process by which identity develops.

But first-are you breathing? Most of us breathe as shallowly and as minimally as we can to stay alive. Since breathing is involuntary, we do not have to think about it. I am encouraging you to think about it, because the instant you do, you will be breathing more productively, resulting in more oxygen, redder blood, and better energy to think and shop.

Breathing consciously is an excellent way to get centered in the present, the simplest way to be focused in the moment, this moment of your life. This is the only moment of your life that will occur on this date, at this time. (Oops-there it goes.) If you are not present to this moment-now-and now, and now-you are not going to enjoy anything you buy, wear or use anyway.

Be prepared, therefore, to be reminded-okay, nagged, but lovingly-periodically throughout this book about this vital matter: breathing.

Evangeline

"When I go shopping, I'm trying to find my perfect self. This is not something I always knew. It wasn't accessible knowledge until I started therapy. Not that we talk about shopping in therapy much; my therapist is not someone who has a passion for shopping, like I do. Maybe she is clearer about who she is. Maybe she already feels perfected. Or maybe something else does for her what shopping does for me. I know she likes crafts and kayaking. Anyway, I feel really guilty about shopping. I don't know why.

"But when I look at a rack of clothes, I get the most thrilling rush. It feels as though anything is possible, that I might finally become something, or that something about who I am might finally become clear to me, and then I'll be able to breathe right.

"I go through each item, and the question I am asking myself all the time is, 'Is this me?' or 'Could this be me?' or 'Is this who I want to be?'

"Then when I come home and look at everything I bought, I think, 'Well! So this is me; this is who I am now. Wow!'

"Or sometimes, I look at the stuff and I think, 'Uh oh-is that who I thought I was? What could I have been thinking?!'

"Other times I think, 'Who am I kidding? Do I really have the courage to show up in this outfit? Because it's really what I want to wear!'

"And on a bad-hair day, you can never tell what you'll do when you're out shopping.

"I know that I need help with figuring myself out because I really didn't have a mother. This is pretty clear-cut. You don't need Freud to figure that out. My mother died when I was four years old, and before that, she never helped me pick things out, or cooked for me or anything because she was sick with cancer. I never remember her shopping at all.

"On a good shopping day, I feel almost mothered. I can't explain this. I just come home and feel more like myself-and I like myself more, too. I know there are different aspects to myself: the flirt in the pink satin shirt, the tomboy who likes to run around in plaid shirts, the glamour girl in bright-red lipstick, the artist who wears odd color combinations and prints I'd never wear to work.

"Sometimes, the need to shop just comes over me in an almost mystical way. I just get this craving, like other people get for chocolate. The craving to go into a store and just drift is so strong that it's like an actual hunger pang. It feels physical, the need. If I am at work and can't go, it's all right, but if I can go, it makes me happy. I just go in there and drift around until I 'recognize' myself.

"One time I recognized myself in a big red basket that is now in the middle of my kitchen table holding bananas. Another time it was a turquoise Chinese silk jacket, embroidered with little figures of people on bridges and gnarled trees. And after I recognize myself in something, I feel I'm myself again, and I can go on with the rest of my day."

© 2003 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

A therapist for the past twelve years, during which time she has treated patients individually and in groups, Eve is also a consultant for The Caron Foundation, where she is a facilitator in their week-long compulsive eating treatment program. Eve has appeared on television with Barbara Walters, as well as on radio and local cableshows. She participated in the Choice Opens Our Lives (C.O.O.L.) Projectvisiting schools to do workshops with students on the topic of eating disorders.