Compulsive Spending and Eating Disorders: Experts are Recognizing the Similarities

What’s the connection between poor financial management habits and dysfunctional eating? Perhaps a significant one, say experts who founded a new study course called “Weight and Wealth: When Food and Finance Become Disordered,” available from FinancialPsychologyCeus.com. The subject of money management and its relationship to eating, highlighted in a BusinessWire article, brings to consideration some interesting points about what underlies the two and how their treatment could overlap. Like binge eating or purging, people with poor financial habits may also have a tendency to use money as a tool for escaping or coping with negative emotions. This can range from hoarding unnecessary items all the way to going on serious spending fasts. Developer of the Weight and Wealth course Kathleen Burns Kingsbury notes that compulsive behaviors with money and eating may be linked to pressures for physical beauty no matter what the price – including financial devastation and the emotional and health dangers of eating disorders. Founder of the course, Joe Lowrance, says many professionals have asked for more information about helping people who compulsively buy and who also struggle with an eating disorder. New literature is helping strengthen the connection between eating disorders and compulsive money habits, including books focused on ways to manage wealth that draw upon a person’s self-esteem and positive self-views. This collaborative effort between the disciplines of money management and eating disorders treatment could not only uncover new truths about the psychological issues surrounding these widespread problems, but help prompt further collaborations for other disorders that may share similar root causes.