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Financial worries can cause you to lose sleep, crave unhealthy food and even resort to drinking too much alcohol – even though this will only make you feel worse over time. So, it’s important to prioritise your financial wellbeing as much as your physical or mental health.
Fortunately, much of how we feel about situations is down to how we manage our thinking and emotions, rather than what’s actually happening, or might happen. So, here are some psychological insights to help you cope with financial anxiety.
Think like a stoic
Stoics can be seen as the pioneers of what we now refer to as cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), due to their ability to reframe situations and understanding that much of how we feel about a situation depends on how we internally process what is happening to us.
At a time when much of the world and our future destiny feels out of our control, this is a surprisingly reassuring concept. However important our current predicament might seem to us, the reality is that the overall levels of happiness in our life are only 10% defined by circumstances — the money we have in the bank, our job, where we live and whether we can travel. The rest is down to our disposition and ability to put things into context, so we don’t fall into despair.
If you are beginning to feel overwhelmed, contemplate for a moment what life would be like if you lost something of great value to you. The aim is not to dwell on this — this is not an invitation to sink into further gloom — but rather to reconnect with what matters most to you and remember how much is good in your life currently. By reminding yourself of what really matters, you can start to put the dramatic events surrounding you into perspective, to keep negative emotions at bay.
Take back control
One of the most important ways to boost your emotional resilience is to have a sense of control over your life. If not having enough money at the end of each month means you can’t provide for yourself or your family, or plan for the future, take small steps to put yourself back in control.
Instead of ignoring bills or letting credit card debts rack up, talk to your partner or a family member to acknowledge the problem. If you have access to an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) you can call them in confidence for help to consolidate your debts and build a manageable payment plan that would help to reduce what you owe. If you don’t have access to an EAP, contact the Citizens Advice Bureau or charities supporting people with financial problems, but don’t wait and don’t ignore high interest rates on credit card debt.
If you’re more worried about what might happen, think about what you can do that’s within your control to feel better. This could be getting your CV ready to start job hunting if needed, finding a second job, learning a new skill that would help you in the future or saving up three month’s living costs, to put a protective buffer in place. Feeling like you are in the driving seat and proactively getting your finances under control will pay huge emotional dividends and go a long way to reducing how anxious you feel.
Get emotional support
If financial worries are causing you to lose sleep, become forgetful, distracted, tearful or angry, you don’t need to process these emotions alone. Talk to family or friends or, if you don’t feel ready to open up, your EAP can also put you in touch with a counsellor you can talk to in confidence, who can provide you with emotional coping strategies.
This is helpful because when we become too stressed about something we can enter into a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ panic mode, which inhibits our brain’s ability to think rationally and problem solve to come up with the practical or creative solutions which exist.
By taking the first step of talking to someone about how your financial problems are making you feel, you can start the process of taking back control and stop a financial problem from escalating into a stress or anxiety disorder as well. Also, a problem shared is genuinely a problem halved, so talking to someone you can trust will go a long way to making you feel better in itself.
Africa
