Retail therapy is one of the most effective ways that is proven to be able to improve mood and reduce stress levels. Nowadays, quite a lot of people shop as a way for them to increase their work enthusiasm. Especially when their work morale is disturbed due to stressors such as heavy workload, miscommunication with the boss, or conflict with a fellow team member. It is part of self-reward that can help to uplift mood and thus, any kind of tension that was previously felt can be shooed away.
To help you understand more about this and what kind of benefits you can get from retail therapy, keep on reading below!
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What is Retail Therapy?
Retail therapy is an activity that you specially do to make yourself feel better, because shopping can help to increase your happiness level. A study found that 62% of shoppers admit that they do shopping to entertain themselves. Meanwhile, another 28% of shoppers admit that they shop to celebrate certain moments.
To conclude, here are some fun facts about retail therapy that you should know of:
- Unplanned shopping activities can effectively relieve stress or improve a bad mood.
- Retail therapy mostly does not cause negative effects (except if you get addicted to shopping, thus going beyond your financial means when shopping).
- Improved mood due to retail therapy can last for quite a long time.
Experts believe that shopping has positive effects for the brain. This is because shopping involves an element of hope and surprise, which triggers the release of endorphins. Endorphins are neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) that send signals throughout our brain and nervous system.
Endorphins can help reduce the sensation of pain and increase feelings of pleasure. In addition, endorphins work with dopamine, another neurotransmitter known as the “happy hormone.” Thus why when we do shopping, our body releases more mood-enhancing chemicals, which help us to feel better.
What are the Benefits of Retail Therapy?
Retail therapy is an effective activity that can help to decrease your bad mood. More specifically, a bad mood which is caused by sadness, stress, or anxiety. Here are the 3 ultimate benefits that you can get from shopping therapy.
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Help to control emotions
When you feel sad, usually it happens because you feel like you can’t grasp anything in your life. You are losing control, and unable to do anything to fix it.
On the other hand, when you shop – you can choose what items to buy for yourselves. This can bring back the feeling of having the power to control something. People who have a problem, be it in their personal or work life usually feel like they don’t have any choice, or power to control things the way they like. Thus they started feeling sad, anxious, and full of tension. With shopping, it can stimulate efforts to control emotions, especially the emotions caused by sadness.
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Give a sense of happiness
Retail therapy can have a good emotional and psychological impact on you. This has a close relationship with the production of the hormone dopamine in the brain which will appear when we choose something that we like, and purchase it afterward.
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Distract any feelings of sadness
Shopping can be a great way to distract you from the sadness that you may experience. Whether you do online shopping or do it the convenient way at the mall – both of these can effectively relieve stress that makes you feel down.
Retail therapy is often seen as a consumptive behavior or shopping addiction. Not all retail therapy will lead to consumptive actions. Because this will depend on individuals who shop and whether they will be able to control themselves or not.
From the summary above, it can be concluded that retail therapy is definitely a great way that we can try to manage stress. Besides that, we can also make ourselves happier by doing it. Because shopping is an activity that stimulates the production of dopamine in the brain.
However, it is very important not to overspend when doing this. You should be a smart shopper if you want to utilize retail therapy to manage your stress. Otherwise, this can instead backfire and make your life’s problems even worse. You should check out Temu’s if you want to bring the best for your next retail therapy. This new online shopping platform will allow you to have access to thousands of high-quality products at very affordable prices.
To make your retail therapy even more economical, you should visit Temu TikTok account to find Temu’s most recent promo and voucher code to use. With Temu you can be a smart and savvy shopper!
