I have a really specific anxiety reaction when I buy things. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happened tonight again, sometimes when I’m grocery shopping, or picking up things I need, I start thinking about all of the people who have to live without essential things that I’m lucky enough to afford. It gets stuck in my head and I end up putting half of my things back because I end up feeling bad. Like, why should I have an extra peach or a fancy bottle of water when there’s a kid sitting in an empty house with no food somewhere in my neighborhood? When there’s homeless people living in tents down the street from me? I end up reducing my groceries to bare bones, and every purchase I make is burdened with guilt. I grew up in extreme poverty so maybe it’s tied to that, but I’m constantly reminded of the active suffering of the people around me and it makes me panic. It makes me feel helpless that so many people have shitty lives and I can’t do anything immediately to help them. It ends up as an obsessive thought for the rest of my day. I don’t want people to see me buying things I don’t need, because they’re probably thinking I’m greedy, and because someone else might need it more than I do.