Lily Allen shares how she is treating shopping addiction with Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy
Lily Allen has opened up about her shopping addiction, sharing that she has recently taken a more proactive approach to treating it.
The singer, 40, shared on her Miss Me? podcast that she tends to celebrate success by treating herself, though it can often get out of hand.
”I have a tiny little bit of success and I’m convinced I’m a billionaire and I have been shopping like an insane person,” she shared with her co-host and childhood best friend, Miquita Oliver.
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“Just all the time, all day long, shop, shop, shop… There’s definitely some handbags have been bought. Some jewels have been bought, and a car has been bought,” she said, even mentioning a diamond and emerald ring she recently bought herself.
“You’ve got to treat yourself and mark the moment,” she said in her defence.
Allen later added, “I think I try and get rid of [money] because I don’t think that I deserve it.”
In response, Oliver warned, “Careful, babe. That’s how I went bankrupt.”
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The Smile singer has recognised that she has a problem with spending, using eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) to help treat her addiction.
“I actually did EMDR therapy yesterday on my spending. And it’s how it’s related to my sense of self-worth. And we tried to separate the two,” the mother-of-two recalled.
“I’ve been doing talk therapy for a long time, and I started doing EMDR about four months ago, five months ago, and it’s been life-changing. I just absolutely love it,” she said, with Oliver adding, “It’s been in the background of all this new success this whole last few months.”
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According to the Cleveland Clinic, EMDR is a relatively new mental health treatment that “involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories. EMDR’s goal is to help you heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences.”
Allen explained how the therapy usually works for her, sharing that “you usually start by deciding on which area you’re going to focus on during that session, and then you visualise the experience and decide how – basically, if you’re trying to change your attitude towards a traumatic event, you try and think about how painful that event is from one to 10.”
She then activates a stimulus, which in her case is two vibrating balls in each hand, and closes her eyes to put herself in the situation, trying to identify the feelings coming up in her body and her mind.
After doing it five or six times, the pain level associated with the situation reduces.
She further explains, “If you’re trying to get rid of a negative behaviour… you do the opposite.
“You think of the good feeling that it brings up in your body, and you try to disassociate that good feeling from your sense of self-worth or whatever.
“So if it’s like – in my case, a handbag – then you try and separate yourself from thinking, this handbag is gonna make me a better person.”
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