Perhaps this is a familiar situation: you go to the ATM to check your account balance and there it is: You see dubious debits from your own account that you don't even recognize. It seems that someone has stolen your credit card information.
The pulse increases, sweat production increases and thoughts like "Wow do I pay my rent?" or "Do I get the money back?" are spreading. Rational thinking is difficult in such a situation, after all, the roof over your head has been taken away.
This phenomenon is called Financial anxiety. Financial anxiety can quickly turn into chronic stress, which is more than just harmful to one's health.
In this article, I explain what financial anxiety is, why financial anxiety causes stress, and why it is harmful to your health. Finally, I explain what you can do about it in the future.
What is financial anxiety?
The special thing about this type of anxiety, is that the financial anxiety ties in with one's own existence and therefore has a higher radius of action than other fears, such as fear of heights.
Financial anxiety is related to one's financial security and occurs as soon as worries about one's finances arise. These worries can be, for example:
- Fear to look at the account balance
- Fear of withdrawing money
- Fear of thinking about one's own pension and retirement planning
- Fear of spending money
- Fear of making investments
The difficult thing about this type of fear is the fact that it can affect both the present and one's future.
How does financial anxiety cause stress?
Financial anxiety can throw a person completely off track, as one suddenly becomes massively worried about one's future. In order to better explain the connection between stress and financial anxiety, one must first look at the Maslow's pyramid of needs before your eyes.
This is divided into five levels, each representing one type of need. Here is an overview of the five levels:
- 1st level: Self-realization
- 2nd level: Recognition and appreciation
- 3rd level: Social need
- 4th level: Safety needs
- 5th level: basic and existential need
It should be added that the upper levels cannot be satisfied until the lower levels are also satisfied. Thus it becomes clear, Why stress is caused by financial anxiety. Financial anxiety, in fact, attacks between the fourth and fifth levels of need, and that's why it feels like your whole world comes crashing down as soon as you get a little money-strapped.
Man loves security and his comfort zone. This is mainly because it is a creature of habit. The mind works largely in routines, and automatisms, which is why it is perfectly normal to feel comfortable giving in to one's mind.
And this is precisely where the problem lies: if you rely on your own automatisms and thus on your own subconscious, stress creeps in with the fear at the same time and the chaos is perfect.
Why is stress caused by financial anxiety harmful to health?
One thing can be stated: No matter what the stress factors are, whether financial or not, as soon as the Stress chronic becomes, he is harmful for own body and mind. Chronic in this context means long-term, i.e. over several weeks and months.
As mentioned above, this type of fear ties into the primal instinct for one's own survival and therefore has devastating effects on one's health. It decimates one's own rational thinking and puts the head in a State of emergency. This state of emergency, also called stress, can both positive and negative for their own health be.
Positive stress, for example, in the form of an adrenaline rush, helped ancestors survive. Nowadays, however, this stress is often no longer necessary. Symptoms of chronic stress can be: headache, abdominal pain, Diarrhoea, Burnout, increased irritability, emotional instability, Rash to the point of depression.
What can you do about stress caused by financial anxiety?
The best way, of course, is to tackle the problem at its source, and face the financial anxiety. There are several methods for doing this. Whether it's hypnosis, therapy, or "curing" yourself, the most important thing is to becomes aware of his fear and works on this.
After all, you can only work on things that you are aware of. Furthermore, there are of course countless possibilities, Reduce stress in a natural way.
We at Mindmonia recommend especially Meditation, Sport, sufficient Sleep and power naps, when you want to show your teeth to stress. Of course, we know that the existential problems will not disappear by meditating, however, it gives you a clearer head and sharpens the own sensory perception.
This makes it possible to think calmly about the situation and find logical-rational solutions. Who knows, maybe the apparent existential problems won't look so bad after a good dose of sport or meditation.
This article is a guest contribution from Steve.
I am one of the two founders of Mindmonia. Formerly very negative myself, I now want to help people get the fullest potential out of their lives through the application of Mindfulness.
Mindfulness helps you change your life because it allows you to get to the source of any problem.
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