Digging into your psyche rather than your financial records might not at first glance seem like the obvious solution to being in debt. But in a new series on BBC Three, that is exactly what I do to ten brave souls. Billed as the UK’s first mainstream psychological makeover programme, Spendaholics examines the issue of personal debt from both a practical and a psychological perspective. While my co-presenter Jay Hunt gives lifestyle tips on how to live better for less, I delve into the participants’ psyches to help them unearth the underlying reasons for their destructive habits.

The programme’s producers, who wanted a presenter with the right mix of accessibility and psychological insight, approached me after reading my What’s Wrong With Your . . . ? column in Body&Soul.

Our retail addicts, in their early twenties to late thirties, were a mixed bunch; some with well-paid jobs, others scraping by. They were spending money on clothes, going out, travel, home improvements, new cars, internet shopping, gadgets, taxis and takeaways. The cash was coming from anywhere they could get it; credit cards, overdrafts, store cards, student loans, parents, friends, even mortgaging their properties up to the hilt. Most of them had no assets but debts of between £15,000 and £35,000. But this is just a drop in the ocean. According to the Bank of England, the outstanding balances on credit cards was £53.173 billion at the end of 2004.

What all our addicts have in common is a visceral pleasure in the moment of transaction. One woman who was ill with flu actually went into a shop, bought two suits and came out feeling well again. Another talked about the adrenalin rush of handing over a credit card, unsure of whether or not it would be rejected. A third spoke of the feeling of personal transformation that a small clothing purchase could provide. Affordability was not an issue.

Retail therapy has long been recognised as a “pick-me-up”. The ultimate goal is to change how we feel. So spending can be like a drug and people can get hooked. Our retail addicts said that they found it almost impossible to stop spending simply by wanting to. We had to get tough. We started by confronting them with a visual representation of their spending: 100 yards of mobile phones laid out on the beach at Southend; a kitchen full of designer water. In each case we presented the annual totals of their spending on favourite items. They were staggered to discover how much of their income went on their favourite morale boosters. Next we put them through “cold turkey”. They were given a fraction of their usual weekly spend to live on for seven days and instructed to report back to us at the end of it. This financial detox had two purposes: by stripping everything away, they were able to determine what it was that they really missed and, deprived of their fix, the emotional reality that underpinned their addictive behaviour started to become apparent.

While Jay worked with them on how to get what they wanted with what they could afford, I began to excavate the many layers of their psychological reality that the spending was disguising. Behaviour that doesn’t seem to make sense (like spending yourself into bankruptcy) does, nonetheless, have a logical basis; it is just hidden. My challenge was to find it. Usually such spending is an unconscious effort to draw attention to some forgotten trauma that has become confused with money. It was not until I unearthed the underlying issue that the behaviour started to make sense. And once it was understood, it could be treated.

I found tales of hardship, suffering, sadness, loss and trauma behind often happy, retail-fuelled facades. One participant had been so badly teased at school that he thought he was genuinely worthless. His reaction to having money was to get rid of it as quickly as possible on the basis that he’d probably never have any ever again. He depleted himself financially to avoid facing up to the experiences that had left him with so little self-esteem.

Another had been told repeatedly by her mother that she was wrong and ugly, and had grown up with a great sadness about herself and her family. For her, spending was an act of rebellion. When I asked her who she was rebelling against, she said her parents — they have been dead for more than five years. This was an important clue about how the normally rational world of finance gets used as an irrational, emotional cover-up.

A third had lost her father just as she was going to university. Unable to deal with the grieving process, she distanced herself from her family and got into debt instead. Fifteen years later she was still spending. On the surface she presented herself to the world as capable and strong, but deep down she was frantic about her debts. Gradually she began to let go of her fear of vulnerability and she opened up about the loss of her father.

It wasn’t all straightforward. In general, the younger the spender, the less interested they were in the psychological interpretation of their behaviour. We were scratching away at a set of emotional scars: it was often painful; it was always invasive. Thankfully, most of the time it was productive. In almost every case, at the end of our four weeks together our subjects were crawling out of the red. One women cut nearly £400 out of her weekly expenditure; another paid £1,500 off her overdraft.

But more than that, we felt that we were making a difference to their personal lives. Although some of the debtors had previously been in some kind of traditional psychotherapy or counselling, this had never been linked to their spending. The challenge became to find a way to encourage change by a form of “action therapy”. One student, for example, who had been indifferent to the psychological work, really connected with her lost inner-self when she read a children’s story that she had written to a class of delighted five-year-olds. Their gratitude turned out to be a much more satisfying drug than Dolce and Gabbana, especially on her student budget.

Ultimately, it was through their vulnerability that we discovered the strength of these retail addicts; their openness was the measure of how much they were able to change. By allowing us into their tightly sealed cans of emotional worms, we found that the money was just the tip of the iceberg. And they got a chance to understand why, however hard they tried in the past, they were never going to get the connection between them and their money until they looked below the waterline.

Hidden costs

Five reasons for emotional spending

Dads If you’ve got unresolved issues with your dad, watch out that you’re not “punishing” him by getting into debt.

Low self-worth If you believe that you are worthless, you will probably feel most comfortable with nothing.

The wounded body Many women grow up deeply traumatised by other people’s reactions and comments about their bodies. They long for their inner-swan and shop to compensate, but getting the right “look” never heals the scars of those insults.

Expensive tastes If you’re addicted to debt, it could be simply because you have expensive addictions; travel, eating out, drink and drugs. So, get into your issues to get out of debt.

Loss If you’ve suffered blows to your emotional security, you may be unable to bear financial security.

For advice and help on the burden of debt, contact the Consumer Credit Counselling Service charity (www.cccs.co.uk). Its helpline, 0800 1381111, is open Monday to Friday, 8am- 8pm.

The UKCP (www.psychotherapy.org.uk) is the umbrella organisation for psychotherapists

Spendaholics starts on BBC Three next Thursday, at 9pm