How do You React to Stress and Money ?
I don’t know how someone who has financial issues hanging over them like a job loss and many bills to pay keeps from completely losing their sanity. I was very lucky that during my lay off, I had severance to live off, and I had my direct family and friends to help me deal with the stress involved.
How does someone deal with the fear that they will lose their home, if they don’t find a job soon? Especially if they have a family to support. This kind of crushing financial pressure can easily become like Shiva, the destroyer of worlds, destroying both families and lives.
Do I have advice on how to deal with this kind of pressure? The advice I can give that helped me in my problem times may not really fit for most folks, but I will volunteer them now as a possible set of ideas to start your coping scheme:
- Be open with your spouse or loved one, about where you stand currently financially, hiding anything can only cause potential horrendous arguments about money later. Do not keep the information to yourself, remember what usually happens to martyrs.
- Don’t obsess over money, if you have made a plan, talked to your family about how it’s going to work, and are sticking to the plan, that is all you can do. Yes, this kind of problem is the 700 lb. gorilla in the room, that nobody wants to talk about, but don’t go in the other direction and talk about it all the time.
- Find support outside of your direct family. There are many job finding places to help you out, seek them out and they may give you ideas that you never thought about.
- If you feel like you are going to buckle under the pressure, seek counselling help with either a medical professional or with your Church or community. Thinking, “I can deal with this”, is the way many of us were raised, but make sure you are dealing with it, and seek help if you aren’t.
- It is going to be really easy to find problems, but look for the good things as well. Find joy in whatever you can (be it your kids, your wife or just a sunny day), or you can easily cripple yourself with negative thoughts.
The really trite answer is, “Things are going to get better”, and I know that is the last thing some folks want to hear, but it is also usually the truth.
Good Video
In case you want to see how silly it looks, try out this video too:
As I said previously there are so many interesting things to worry about at 2 AM in the morning.
It’s the business of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep because your head is racing with money thoughts. Yuck!