Retail therapy

Retail therapy or shopping therapy is shopping with the primary purpose of improving the buyer's mood or disposition. It occurs either due to people taking pleasure in shopping or during periods of depression or stress. Items purchased during periods of retail therapy are sometimes referred to as "comfort buys" (compare comfort food). Making shopping decisions can restore a sense of personal control over one's environment, alleviating feelings of helplessness or emotional distress. The purchases, therefore, act as a coping mechanism for this perceived lack of control as they may be able to restore feelings of agency and empowerment. People use shopping to express, manage, and communicate emotions, both to themselves and to others.

The name retail therapy is ironic and semifacetious, acknowledging that shopping hardly qualifies as true therapy in the medical or psychotherapeutic sense. It was first used by Mary Schmich in the 1980s, with the first reference being this sentence in the Chicago Tribune of Christmas Eve 1986: "We've become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy."