A couple months ago, when I realized I needed to start taking my debt and my credit card usage seriously, I looked to the online resource provided for employees at my workplace. I came across a book that appealed to mostly because of the cover design: pops of bright pink and lovely typography. No matter what I’m doing, I can never switch off the graphic designer in me.

One of the best self help books anyone can read when it comes to learning about credit cards is Confessions of a Credit Junkie by Beverly Harzog is about her struggles with accumulating debt on seven (yes, SEVEN!) credit cards, and how she went from a debt disaster to a debt-free diva and credit card guru.

I began reading and was immediately motivated by Beverly’s own struggles to share my own. I haven’t completed my debt-repayment journey, but I figured I would take a chance in hopes that people can learn with me, or at least come along for the ride.

In chapter three of the book, Beverly has readers do a quiz called “What’s Your Credit Card Personality?” There are five categories ranging from Power User to Walking Disaster. Much to my relief, my results didn’t land me in the ‘Walking Disaster’ category (by Beverly’s standards, at least). Instead, I fell into the category of ‘Accidental Debtor':

• I usually pay my credit card bill on time
• I used to have good or excellent credit until an unfortunate circumstance came into my life

I’ll be the first to admit that my unfortunate circumstance was self-inflicted. It wasn’t intentional, of course. I think most people have good intentions when it comes to using their credit cards. Perhaps anyone who uses their credit card recklessly and is completely conscious of it relies on someone else to pay the bill.

At what point did I become unconsciously reckless? To figure that out I looked at my payment history on both credit cards:

I started off poorly but managed to pay off my cards as often as possible. You’ll notice some pretty large payments. Those were made while I still lived at my parents and didn’t have expenses like groceries, utilities, and rent to worry about.

So what triggered my reckless spending in 2015?

My struggle with depression was along with my complete lack of understanding when it came to credit cards and personal finance made for a pretty quick climb toward the top of the incline on the debt treadmill. Let’s be honest, when it comes to the debt treadmill, the climbing isn’t the hard part, right? Once you start, it only gets easier. And the more money you spend, the higher you get (shopping = endorphins, endorphins = happiness). Yep, that’s an Elle Woods reference.

I’ve been living with depression for many years. In fact, when I was born, I was given a package deal that includes the following: depression, anxiety disorder, OCD, ADD, and a mild case of Tourette Syndrome. I’ve learned to manage everything really well with the help of medication and cognitive thinking.

However, sometimes you enter a period of your life where you’re just not happy. That’s what happened to me.

Since the first day of my job at a major financial company in 2013, things were great for me. I have amazing bosses, I enjoy my coworkers, and I’ve gotten two raises.

Just after the one year mark at the job, however, I started to feel alone. My coworkers are all older than me and they have different passions than I do. They have families/kids and I’m single. I love the city, they don’t. I was really struggling with such a strong feeling of not necessarily being lonely, but feeling alone. I wasn’t lonely. I had plenty of people around me every day, but I didn’t have the connection with them that I knew was missing. Making friends as an adult is a lot harder than making friends as a kid. As an adult, I know who I am and I know what I like and don’t like, especially when it comes to the people I want to be spending my time with.

My very best friend, Rachel, is my cousin. Technically she has to love me, since we’re family, but even if we weren’t I know she would anyways. She lives about 45 minutes from where I live. She has a husband and an almost 9-month-old, so we’re at totally different places in our lives. Despite that, we are still best friends. We text each other constantly. She’s my sounding board and my buffer, and she knows me better than I know myself. But gas is expensive, and it’s easier for me to visit her, so I’m not able to physically see her as much as I would like. I am so happy to have her in my life, but I was still missing that connection with someone local that I could spend time with.

I was struggling to find my fit in a team where most of them are my mom’s age. Don’t get me wrong, my mom is great! But when you’re a young adult surrounded by men/women/moms/dads that are close to my own mom’s age, I feel like it’s hard for them not to feel like a parent to me because I’m essentially young enough to be their child. Parents are always necessary in one’s life and I’m never too old to go to mine for advice, but I didn’t graduate high school, go to college, and get a job so I could be parented at work.

I also think that, for my coworkers, being a mom/parent is just part of who they are and it’s hard for them to take off their “parent” hat when they’re at work. That’s fine, and I would never want to ask them to change who they are just because I was struggling with it and felt alone. But that meant I had to learn to deal with it independently and figure out how to adapt to my environment in a way that still allowed me to be happy. No more blaming my ‘alone-ness’ (I don’t want to say ‘loneliness’ because I think feeling alone and feeling lonely aren’t the same thing in my situation) on my coworkers for their annoying habits. Besides, who doesn’t have an annoying habit or two? I’m sure I have plenty!

Feeling alone + no understanding of how credit cards work + self-prescribed retail therapy = accidental debtor

Emotions and a serious lack of understanding how credit cards and interest work are the culprits. I’m going to blame the latter more so than the first. Everyone has emotional days now and then, and even with my mental illness I can still manage to make the most out of them. With a clear understanding of credit cards and the consequences of using them, emotions don’t need to play much of a role on the rigorous debt treadmill.

It’s important to deal with emotional struggles in ways other than good old fashioned retail therapy. Shopping might feel good at first and might lift your spirits for a while, but the damage it does to your credit and bank account will do more harm than good to your long-term emotional status than the short-term joys of a new cardigan.