Financial Stress

( Stress Causes - Page 4 )

Financial Stress is just one of the known causes of stress. Have you read the first two pages in this theme?

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Are financial problems the real problem?

Financial stress is a major cause of unhappiness. And it's no secret that many people have committed suicide because of some financial 'disaster' in their lives - actual or imminent bankruptcy, loss of job or income, and so on.

Financial difficulties are very real in many, many people's lives. Yet a more fundamental cause of the associated stress is the underlying feeling of fear: believing that one will not be able to cope with the crisis; believing that life won't be worth living, that the loss will be just too great to bear.

Such fear may be associated with any number of money-related circumstances that a particular person feels are important.

And these circumstances will vary from individual to individual.

Fears may be about any number of awful possibilities of why might happen, for example:

• a major disruption to the lifestyle one is accustomed to living (e.g. having to sell one's home, dispose of vehicles, assets, etc.)
• loss of self-respect, or one's status in society or amongst colleagues, neighbours or friends
• inability to adequately feed and shelter one's family, and the associated guilt one would feel on top of the fear
• inability to pay medical expenses or obtain health-care for oneself or one's spouse and children
• the prospect of having to sleep on a park bench or join the street people

There can be any number of money-related fears that create a great amount of stress. Those above are just a few of them.

While not wanting to trivialise these concerns and stressors in any way, when one really boils it down to basics, it is the individual's personal response to the situation that determines how much adverse stress is taken into one's body as a deep-seated stress.

It is the interpretation of the situation and its possible consequences that causes the real damage, rather than purely the financial situation itself. And sometimes the situation is not even real, but an imagined one.

I once knew a man who would sit in his lounge and look at the curtains. Then he'd start to cry. Why? Because he knew that one day they would need to be replaced and he did not know how he would be able to afford new curtains ... sometime in the futue.

The facts were that he was indeed on a very tight home budget. Both he and his wife worked. But it was his mind and his anticipations and his fears that actually triggered what many would call 'financial stress'.

Preventative actions for financial stress relief

• Adopt the general stress management strategy applicable for all kinds of stress
• Assess the real financial situation you are facing
  In order to deal effectively with the situation and take appropriate action, you first need to get to grips with the exact and realistic nature and extent of the problem. If you don't do this, you will be harboring uncertainty, which itself is a well-known stressor.
  
  By elimninating the uncertainty, you will in fact be eliminating one extra stressor that you don't need right now. And this will bring you a sense of calm and inner strength, even if just enough to consider more clearly some practical options open to you. "Know they enemy" is a very apropriate term here.
  
  The true facts of the situation may not be as bad as you thought; or they may in fact be as bad or even worse. But at least you'll know exactly what you're dealing with, and not some thoughts or imaginings of how bad the situation really is.
• Once you have the facts, consult someome outside your immediate family, like an accountant or a debt counsellor, and listen carefully to their advice. Then take appropriate action, no matter how difficult it might seem at the time.
• Revisit your beliefs about the nature of money
  Money flows to where consciousness is pulling it . That is the basis of all the buzz we hear about the Law of Attraction.

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