How Financial Stress Can Impact Your Mental Health
We’re all wanting to feel safe, secure, and stable: safe in our relationships with others, secure in our career and life choices, and stable in regards to our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. These three things in alignment can make up the idea of “mental health,” as they’re all connected and important to one another. One more uncomfortable and taboo topic that can come to mind regarding wanting and creating this safety, security, and stability is finances. Finances can feel like the elephant in the room; you absolutely know that the elephant’s there, and we can see the elephant in our peripheral vision, but we often pretend or avoid it as if the elephant doesn’t exist in the first place. And finances, whether we are able to accept this easily or not, can be a serious contributing factor to our mental health and well-being.
Finances and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Marc Bineham, an Australian TedTalk speaker and former financial advisor, believes that there are four main stressors in a person’s life: work, relationships, finances, and health. And using a Venn diagram, he notes that at the root of three of these stressors are finances.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, everyone in the world has certain needs to be met for us to reach our full potential and feel fulfilled. So based on Bineham’s and Maslow’s ideas, we see that safety and security (which includes financial safety and security), are only the second level within the hierarchical category, meaning it’s extremely hard to address higher level needs if one of the first few levels can’t be satisfied.
Impact of Finances on Mental Health and Well-Being
Finances can bring up mixed emotions.
Some of us might be living paycheck to paycheck, scraping by to make ends meet, while others of us may be able to save here and there or come from families where money is easily accessible. Whatever the case may be, this comes along with a myriad of emotions, such as shame for what situation you’re in and how you spend money, stress for how you’ll provide for yourself or your family, anxiety for how you’re going to save or spend for things you need, depression about how you might get yourself out of debt or struggle, tired from dealing with the same debt cycles, or greed and emptiness for spending money on materialistic things that you didn’t actually need (I’m not afraid to admit, I’ve been bitten by the retail therapy bug, too, it’s OK!).
Finances can make us avoidant and go to extremes to hide our finances.
As finances are often a sore subject for people as well, some may retreat and isolate themselves for fear of having to discuss their financial situations; and in extreme cases, if you’re a true crime fan, you can see how finances have even caused people to choose to engage in serious federal crimes. We could also make our situations worse by racking up copious amounts of debt in order to consolidate, conceal, or pretend we aren’t in a current financial bind.
Finances can impact our relationships and attachments to people.
Finances can cause tension in our relationships, whether these relationships are with a partner, friends, or family. This tension can be from miscommunication about how to manage finances as well as loss of trust or resentment toward others for how the finances were spent or used. Finances can even impact how we manage relationships in terms of dependency. Too much dependence can cause us to stay in relationships that may be unhealthy or harmful to us long term. Too much independence can create this idea that we can never trust or rely on someone else to support us.
Finances can affect our sleep.
Constantly worrying about finances can raise our cortisol (stress hormones) levels. A rise in cortisol can mean a decrease in melatonin production, making it harder for us to fall asleep, stay asleep, and feel well-rested after sleep.
Finances can affect our overall health.
Physical health to many people means going for annual and regular checkups with health care providers such as doctors, therapists, dentists, etc. It can even keep us from keeping up health in other ways such as being able to afford and buy food that’s good for us (not just unhealthy junk food that’s cheap and tasty) or joining other healthy lifestyle programs like gyms or wellness centers.
Finances and excessive spending can be influenced by certain mental health disorders.
Certain mental health disorders, such as PTSD, Bipolar I Disorder or Bipolar II Disorder, Addiction Disorder, and Substance Abuse Disorders can be directly influential to our financial spending habits or the spending habits of loved ones. This can create difficulties in the cognitive processing regarding spending money, saving money, and using healthy or adaptive coping skills that help us solve the core issues of the problem.
Start Working With An Anxiety Therapist in Miami, FL
Financial stress can be one of the most painful things to experience, but it doesn’t mean you have to feel alone through the process. Reach out to Miami Vibes Counseling and schedule with one of our therapists to help you identify and address the core issues that may be influencing your financial stress. Start your therapy journey by following these simple steps:
Reach out to get matched with a Miami therapist
Get to know our team of caring therapists
Start coping with financial stress in a healthier way!
Other Services Offered with Miami Vibes Counseling Center
Anxiety therapy isn’t the only service offered by Miami Vibes Counseling. Other mental health services include CBT, ACT, TF-CBT, and parenting support. In addition, we are happy to offer treatment for depression, stress, trauma, grief, and life transitions. Our team is happy to provide support for couples, infidelity, children, and families. Learn more about our other services including ESA letters, support for business or employment stress, spirituality, and online therapy. Visit our blog or FAQs page for more helpful info today!
