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We often talk about debt as simply a financial problem. But our financial health and overall wellbeing, especially our mental health are closely linked — with one often impacting the other.
From anxiety and difficulty sleeping to low mood and reduced self-esteem, debt can impact every part of your life, causing difficulties in your work, your relationships and more.
It can be easy to get trapped in a cycle of poor mental health and poor financial choices. Anxiety and depression can cloud our judgement and affect our motivation, making it more difficult to manage our money effectively.
This can become a downward spiral that feels difficult to get out of. But by focusing on protecting our mental health, we can may be able to spin things in the opposite direction and start seeing a positive impact on our relationship with money.
Here are a few ways to protect your mental health and brighten your financial future.
Facing shame and reducing stigma
When we’re dealing with financial difficulty or problem debt, shame is often the first emotion to rear its ugly head.
We might feel regretful or embarrassed about finding ourselves in this situation, or beat ourselves up about decisions we’ve made in the past that have led to us having this experience.
Shame is a normal human emotion, and can sometimes help motivate us to make different choices. But allowing shame to take up too much time and headspace can be very damaging to our mental health, so we need to be careful about how much we allow it in.
If you find yourself dwelling too much on negative self-talk or feelings of shame and regret, you might find it helpful to actively challenge those thoughts when they creep in.
For example, you might counter thoughts of ‘this is all my fault’ with ‘this is my responsibility to fix, and I am fixing it’.
Work on what’s in your control, and accept what isn’t
Financial difficulty is rarely caused by one factor, and the solutions aren’t often simple. Make sure that you can differentiate between the factors that are within your control and those that aren’t.
Make a list of all of the things out of your control and refer to it when you feel yourself worrying. Using this helpful trick, you can save precious energy and stop beating yourself up for things that weren’t your fault, or that you can’t control.
Then, make a list of all the practical changes you can make towards a more positive financial situation. Add habits or steps you can take to get you on the right path to addressing these changes. Focus your energy on these, and you will start to see results in both your material financial situation and your money mindset.
Don’t punish yourself, focus on moving forward
When making a plan to pay off debt, it can be easy to punish ourselves. This can be especially true if the financial issues we are facing have been because of choices we now think of as ‘bad’.
This can lead to overly restrictive budgeting and depriving ourselves unnecessarily — which can both set us up to fail as well as harm our mental health and self-worth.
It’s important to acknowledge where you’ve gone wrong in the past, to learn from your mistakes and stay accountable. But instead of trying to find motivation to clear your debts from a place of self-punishment, instead, focus on a good outcome for yourself.
But if your motivation to succeed in fixing your financial situation comes from a place of self-punishment, it can be hard to sustain and have a negative effect on your mental health and self-worth, which can be long-lasting.
Accepting the mistakes that you’ve made and shifting your focus to look at what you could do differently is a much better way to protect your mental health and keep making progress on paying off your debt or reaching your financial goals.
Seek support and guidance
As with anything relating to mental health, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to go it alone! There are lots of places where you can find support for your mental health, whether you look to find online communities to engage with, find a friend to confide in or seek professional help from a therapist or debt advisor.
If you’re struggling, reach out to us!
Remember that, even if your financial situation is due to mistakes you’ve made in the past, you are still deserving of advice and support, and that your mental health and wellbeing are still just as important as ever.
If you’re struggling with your mental health reach out to us here. We can point you towards resources specific to your situation that may help you
If you need immediate support, please contact the Mind’s emergency helpline here.
