I have shopping anxiety.

It started earlier this year, when I started getting rid of nearly everything I own. It was easy to give stuff away or sell it. Most of it, I just gave away.

I always was a tosser. Probably every few months, I’d go through kitchen cabinets or closets and get rid of stuff. Kitchen cabinets and drawers were the worst. It’s amazing what you accumulate – especially when I rarely shopped for anything. Stuff just appeared. Truly, the universe abhors a vacuum.

When I decided to downsize my life in a major way, it was very freeing.

Shopping anxiety hits for first time

Because I had few needs, I rarely shopped at anything other than a grocery store.

One day, however, I went into Walgreens to get a prescription, and I had to walk to the back of the store. If you’ve been in Walgreens, you know the stores aren’t that big, and yet they are packed with stuff. A lot of it is stuff people don’t need, it’s just things they will buy and put in their houses. It made me feel ill. I felt my throat and chest tightening. My breathing was shallow. My hands were sweaty, and I felt clammy.

I realized I was having a mild panic attack. Anxiety over stuff that wasn’t even mine upset me. I got my prescription and got out.

The experience was repeated a few times at big-box stores, which I try to avoid. If I have to go in, I have a list on my phone, and I focus on that. I can’t look at the aisles and aisles of stuff.

Grocery stores don’t cause shopping anxiety

Grocery stores don’t make me anxious, though. Perhaps it’s because the products are mostly consumable. We need food to live. Still, I prefer a smaller format store, such as Aldi, to a big store, where there are too many choices.

Some people benefit from treatment for anxiety. Seeing a counselor, medication and natural products like curcumin can help. For me, I think time was on my side.

Recently, I noticed my anxiety wasn’t as bad. I went to a Michael’s craft store with my sister. She was looking for very specific items, so we were doing a lot of searching, up and down many aisles. In that case, I had to look at all the stuff. At one point, though, I had to stop and just focus on the floor in front of me. I was pretty sure I couldn’t look any more. But after maybe a minute, I was able to bring myself back into the present and continue. However, I spent the rest of the time looking more at the floor than at the shelves.

Shopping anxiety and Black Friday a bad combo

Of course, I avoided Black Friday shopping. I never did Black Friday. Usually, I worked. Rarely was there anything I felt I needed that warranted facing the crowds. It’s not my idea of a fun day.

My sister had to pick up contacts, though, so I rode along. We went past the big mall where cars were backed up and circling. At outlying stores, such as Best Buy, the lots were parked full, all the way to the road. The streets were busy.

Just looking at the traffic made me glad I didn’t have to go into any store. Well, we did get coffee, but that was at the local coffee shop, Get Wired. While it was busy, it wasn’t Black Friday busy. And coffee is consumable. No anxiety there.