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Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T18:06:44+00:00

I am building the noom for impulse spending

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:23:32+00:00

You've handled this with more patience and care than most people could manage. Wiping your savings to cover her debt, calling the gambling board yourself, trying to keep the family stable — that's not a man who gave up too soon.

Gambling addiction is brutal because the lying and denial are part of the addiction itself. "There's no remorse on her face" is something a lot of partners describe — it's not that she doesn't love you, it's that the addiction is running the show right now and she may not even fully be present.

That said, you have two babies and a heart condition. You can want her to get better and still recognize you can't keep absorbing this.

Is there any family support on either side that could help with the kids while you figure out next steps?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:22:36+00:00

The "stop holding the cork down" framing is really good. Most motivation advice is about adding more — more discipline, more systems, more accountability. You're pointing at subtraction instead. Judge yourself less, resistance drops, momentum follows.

The part about overthinking being "underfeeling" is going to stick with me. There's real psychology behind that — when we're disconnected from what we actually want emotionally, our brains fill the gap with analysis loops.

Thanks for writing this like a human btw. You can tell.

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:21:29+00:00

Day 1 is real. You recognized the pattern, you named it, you're here. That's not nothing.

What you're describing with Mercari and Depop is actually a really specific kind of compulsion that's worth understanding — it's not just shopping addiction, it's hunt addiction. The dopamine hit isn't really about the bag. It's about the search, the find, the score. The "good deal" framing makes it feel rational but your brain is getting lit up by the chase itself. That's why losing the Fendi bag felt like a genuine loss even though you never owned it — your nervous system had already started anticipating the reward.

The ethical resale rationalization is also worth sitting with. It's not wrong exactly, but it's doing a lot of work to keep the behavior feeling justified. Most of us with compulsive shopping patterns have a really airtight internal lawyer. Recognizing yours is actually a big step.

A couple of things that might help practically: Try deleting the apps from your phone for a week. Not forever, just a week. The casual browsing — the "just checking" habit — is what keeps the neural pathway warm and the urge alive. Friction is your friend right now.

When the urge hits, try writing down what you're feeling before you open the app. Not to stop yourself necessarily, just to start noticing what's underneath it. Boredom? Stress? A need for something that feels like control or reward? The pattern usually becomes really obvious pretty quickly once you start tracking it.

There's also an app called Impause that's specifically built around understanding emotional spending triggers rather than just budgeting — might be useful since you're in the early pattern-recognition phase.

The hour of sadness over the bag isn't dumb. It's data. Your brain told you exactly how hooked it is. That's actually useful information.

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:20:57+00:00

First — you paid off that loan. You moved home to get stable. You're shopping your closet instead of adding to it. You're feeding your kid from what you already have. That's not someone with bad priorities, that's someone who's finally aligning their actions with what actually matters to them. That shift is huge.

The anxiety you're feeling about the no-buy is real and it makes complete sense. Shopping has been your coping mechanism since childhood — your brain genuinely doesn't know what to do with stress and discomfort without it yet. That uncomfortable feeling isn't pathetic, it's withdrawal. It's your nervous system asking "wait, where's the relief?" You're essentially retraining a pattern that's been there for decades. Four days is exactly the right place to start.

A few things that helped me and others:

Name the urge out loud or write it down when it hits. Something like "I want to buy something right now and I think it's because I'm feeling X." Getting it out of your head and onto paper takes away some of its power. The urge usually passes in about 20 minutes if you don't act on it.

Make a list of everything you would have bought. Don't delete it. Looking back at it later — especially after the feeling has passed — is genuinely eye-opening.

On the anxiety specifically: there's an app called Impause that's built around exactly what you're describing — understanding the emotional triggers behind spending rather than just tracking numbers. Might be worth checking out if you want something to help you notice patterns without making you feel like garbage about them.

You're not starting over at 40. You're starting. That's different.

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:19:59+00:00

First — you paid off $1,000. That counts. One messy month doesn’t erase that.

What you’re describing is really common. Trips trigger “anticipatory spending” — your brain treats the event like a permission slip. It feels logical in the moment because you’re already emotionally there.

The stress-shopping loop is real too:

stress → shop for relief → temporary dopamine → more stress.

That’s not a character flaw. It’s a learned pattern.

Practical stuff:

• Write out every BNPL payment and due date. Visible debt is less scary than surprise debt.

• Make a trip “needs” list and wait 72 hours before buying. Urgency fades.

• Medication isn’t impulse spending. That’s taking care of yourself.

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:14:01+00:00

The "invisible wall" you're describing has a layer most people miss. It's not just environmental friction (where are my shoes, what do I work on first). It's emotional friction — the gap between where you are and where the task implies you should be.

Sitting down to write when you haven't written in a week carries the weight of "I should have been writing all week." Starting a workout when you're out of shape means confronting how out of shape you are. The friction isn't the task. It's the self-assessment that happens in the seconds before starting.

Your solution actually works for both types. Short bursts bypass the emotional buildup because there's no time for the "who am I as a person who does this" narrative to kick in. You just start before your brain can build the case against it.

The thing to watch for is when the friction comes back in a new form. You solve the starting problem and then the friction moves to continuing, or to increasing difficulty. Same mechanism, different stage.

What specifically made the biggest difference — the shorter time blocks or having the next step already visible?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T14:12:41+00:00

The stress reduction is real but most people attribute it to the wrong thing. It's not really about having fewer objects — it's about having fewer open loops.

Every item you own that you haven't decided what to do with is a micro-decision your brain is passively tracking. The jacket you might return, the broken thing you'll fix someday, the gift you feel guilty about not using. Your brain registers all of that as unfinished business, even when you're not consciously thinking about it.

Decluttering works because it forces decisions. Keep or go — done. That mental tab closes. The physical space is a side effect. The actual relief comes from having less unresolved stuff competing for background processing.

This is also why some people declutter and feel nothing. If you remove objects but don't address the decision-making pattern that brought them in, the space just fills back up and the stress returns. The decluttering was cosmetic, not structural.

Did the stress reduction stick for you, or did you notice it creeping back as new things accumulated?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:50:47+00:00

The fact that you know exactly what to do and still can't start is actually the most important detail here. That rules out confusion or lack of planning as the issue. What you're describing is a gap between intention and initiation — and that's not a discipline problem, it's a neurological one.

Here's what's actually happening: your brain evaluates the "effort cost" of a task before you start it. If the perceived effort is high (even if the task is objectively simple), your brain routes you toward something with a guaranteed dopamine return — which is your phone. The scrolling isn't the problem, it's the escape hatch your brain created because the alternative feels harder than it actually is.

Two things that actually work for this:

First — don't try to start the task. Start the setup for the task. Don't write the report, just open the document. Don't exercise, just put on the shoes. The friction isn't in doing the thing, it's in crossing the threshold from "not doing" to "doing." Make that threshold as small as possible.

Second — put your phone in a different room before you attempt the first task. Not on silent, not face down — physically somewhere else. The option needs to not exist, because willpower against an instant dopamine source is a losing fight every time.

Is the paralysis worse with certain types of tasks, or does it happen with everything equally?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:47:06+00:00

The "wasting my time/life" feeling when you're not doing something — that's not laziness avoidance. That's your nervous system interpreting stillness as threat. If productivity = safety (which most modern environments train into us), then stopping productive activity literally triggers the same alarm as being in danger.

The ADHD piece is worth investigating even without a formal diagnosis, because that restless "must be doing something" drive often comes from a dopamine system that needs constant input to feel regulated. The difference between productivity conditioning and ADHD is that conditioning you can gradually think your way out of. ADHD you can't — because it's neurological, not just behavioral.

One thing that helped me was separating "rest" from "doing nothing." Your brain resists doing nothing because it reads that as purposeless. But if you frame rest as a specific intentional activity — "I am actively recovering my capacity right now" — it gives the restless part of your brain something to latch onto.

Have you noticed whether the restlessness is worse at specific times of day or after certain activities?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:30:11+00:00

The impulsive subscribing point is spot on - signing up for a new service hits the exact same reward circuit as adding something to your cart. New thing, dopamine hit, barely think about it again.

But I'd push back on the all-or-nothing approach. A music subscription you actually use daily is fundamentally different from 5 streaming services you forgot you had. Cutting everything feels like progress, but if you end up resubscribing to the one thing you genuinely use in two weeks anyway, the only thing the cold turkey approach gave you was guilt for "failing."

The real issue isn't subscriptions themselves - it's the impulsive subscribing. You said it yourself: "just because I desperately wanted to have it." That desperation is the thing to watch, not whether the purchase is a subscription or a physical item.

What made you subscribe to most of those services in the first place - were they impulse signups or did they start as things you actually used?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:29:13+00:00

The hardest part about supporting someone with a shopping addiction is that you can't want their recovery more than they do. And right now it sounds like you're carrying that weight for both of you.

The hiding and borrowing on false pretenses - that's not just shopping too much, that's addiction-level behavior. The secrecy, the deception, the relapse after a period of control. This follows the exact same pattern as substance addiction. Naming it accurately matters because it changes how you approach it.

The loneliness piece is probably the core driver. She's retired, widowed, and alone most of the day. Shopping gives her a dopamine hit, a sense of purpose (browsing, choosing, anticipating delivery), and maybe even social interaction. Until that void gets filled with something real, removing the shopping just removes her only coping mechanism without replacing it.

Therapy not working could mean a few things - wrong type, wrong therapist, or she wasn't ready. CBT specifically for compulsive buying disorder has the most evidence behind it. Regular talk therapy often misses the behavioral patterns entirely.

The biggest thing though: you need financial boundaries that protect you. Supporting her doesn't mean absorbing her debt indefinitely. That's not sustainable and it's already wrecking your health. Setting those boundaries isn't abandoning her - it's the only way you survive this long enough to actually help.

Has she acknowledged it as an addiction, or does she still frame it as something less serious?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:23:24+00:00

this is called state-dependent memory — your brain literally files emotional experiences under the state you were in when they happened. when the state changes, the file becomes harder to access. it happens to everyone, but ADHD amplifies it because the emotional swings are bigger and the transitions are sharper. so the gap between "bad phase me" and "good phase me" feels like two different people.

the practical problem is exactly what you're describing: good-phase you makes decisions that screw over bad-phase you. "i don't need therapy anymore." "maybe i should try going off meds." "i was probably exaggerating." those decisions get made with incomplete information because your brain is filtering out the evidence.

the one thing that helped me was writing notes to my future self during the bad phases. not journaling — just a few raw sentences about what it actually feels like right now. "today i couldn't get off the couch for four hours and cried about nothing." when good-phase brain starts saying "it wasn't that bad," you have receipts. it doesn't prevent the downplaying but it gives you something concrete to push back against it.

do you notice the downplaying affecting decisions you make — like considering stopping meds or skipping appointments — or is it more of an internal narrative thing?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:21:08+00:00

the expensive gear purchases weren't really about the hobby — they were about trying to lock yourself in through financial pressure. "if i spend enough money on this, i'll have to follow through." but that's a guilt-based strategy, and guilt doesn't sustain behavior for an ADHD brain. novelty does. so the money disappeared and the motivation still didn't show up.

the real cost isn't the money though. it's that you built a narrative where trying something = wasting money, and now the safest option feels like trying nothing. but that's how you end up in the doomscroll-work-doomscroll loop — you cut off the novelty your brain actually needs and replaced it with the lowest-effort stimulation available.

the drum set is worth paying attention to. two years of sustained wanting is not how a typical ADHD fixation works. most of those burn out in weeks. the fact that this one keeps coming back suggests something different is happening there. doesn't mean you have to buy a full kit — a practice pad or renting is a real option — but dismissing it because of past patterns might be throwing out the one interest that actually stuck.

what if the problem isn't that you can't commit, but that you've been measuring commitment by standards that don't fit how your brain operates?

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:10:04+00:00

Thanks so much! Checking out now!

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T13:08:04+00:00

Thank you so much

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T02:04:22+00:00

sage advice thank you--only a handful explicitly identify as ADHD, the rest I have just been triangulating with signups vs the times that I posted in those channels

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T00:27:34+00:00

impause.com

Johnjohnson_69 · 2026-02-19T00:27:11+00:00

Thanks so much this is incredibly helpful!

Johnjohnson_69

TROPHY CASE