Healthline: Understanding Financial Stress and Tools to Help You Cope

“The Financial Health Institute defines financial stress as “a condition that is the result of financial and/or economic events that create anxiety, worry, or a sense of scarcity, and is accompanied by a physiological stress response.” Emerging research is linking financial stress to mental health. A 2014 study from Yale University explores the idea that some “mental health problems” are actually money problems.

Annie Harper, PhD, the anthropologist and researcher behind this study, noted that the majority of participants were in debt and were very stressed about it. Debt has a strong negative impact on mental health, and she suggested that if an individual’s financial problems were solved, other problems might be solved as well. On a day-to-day basis, financial stress can have a negative impact on your money decisions. It can lead to extremes of overspending or underspending. Similar to food where one can emotionally eat or severely restrict their diet due to stress, the same effect occurs with money.

An individual may find comfort in “retail therapy” — mindlessly spending on nonessential items — or find relief in restricting their spending to the point where they go without basic necessities, limiting their food intake to save money. However, in the long run, both extremes can be harmful. As stated earlier, there are top-down changes that absolutely need to be made to reduce the stress caused by expensive healthcare, predatory student loans, stagnant wages or salaries, and the ever-rising cost of living.

But what can you do to shift your situation while the folks in the ivory tower filibuster their way to change? How can you take back your power to reduce your financial stress, elevate your financial health, and feel good about your financial situation? My suggestion is to incorporate financial wellness into your life. Just like you read Healthline for physical and mental wellness tips to have agency over your general well-being, there are steps you can take to create agency over your financial health."

Some Insights From This Article

• What is financial stress? According to the article it says that it is any financial/economical event in your life that can create anxiety, worry, scarcity, etc. With the holidays coming and with the current economic events for some parts of the world, many of us may have some financial stress that may come.

• How do we understand this? First understand your relationship with your money, how do you spend it? How do you view it? For some people they find spending on certain things essential while others may view spending on that same thing not as important. It all depends on each perspective.

• Financial stress can be framed as taking away the control that money may have on your life from you. However perhaps reconsidering and reframing such a relationship may help us strive for financial wellness! Specific steps or actions can be found in the article!

What is your relationship with your finances?

Full article is here!

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