Living with financial anxiety: Seven steps to dealing with your worries - March 2009 Psychotherapy Brown Bag featured article

By Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D.

If you are like a lot of people you have watched part of your savings evaporate. Your 401K is down, your stock portfolio has shrunk in half, your real estate is worth less and you worry about keeping your job and paying your bills. As one man said about his savings, “My money has died and gone to heaven”. Some people are so anxious that they just won’t look at their monthly reports—they don’t want to face the news. Others can’t pull themselves away from the daily blend of pessimistic news—all bad news all the time.

What can you do to put things in perspective and keep yourself from having a total breakdown in your life? Let’s see how cognitive therapy can help you gain some distance from your intrusive and disturbing thoughts of doom and gloom.

1.       Validate yourself. No matter how much you may try to put things in perspective you should realize that you are human and that bad news does hurt. You can tell yourself that you have every right to feel anxious, sad, and angry. Or even confused. Give yourself permission to have feelings. And then ask yourself how long you want to stay in this state of anxious, angry and sad emotion.

2.       Accept the given. No matter how much we protest or ruminate about the past, it is what it is. It’s happened. There’s nothing we can do to reverse history. What’s lost is gone. Accepting the given doesn’t mean that you like it or that it’s fair. It’s simply recognizing reality for what it is right now. It gives you a point to start from.

 From this starting point you can think of how you can make it less catastrophic. Although we often feel that a major loss of money is a true catastrophe we can also recognize that life doesn’t have to be as bad as we are making it out to be.

 3.       What can you still do that you did before you lost the money?

One question to ask yourself is what you are doing today and tomorrow that is very similar to what you did last week or last month. Keep a schedule for every hour and notice how much remains the same. If it remains the same, then it’s hardly a catastrophe.

4.       What can you do that is free?

I like to start each day reminding myself of what I can do that is meaningful and pleasurable--and that is free. It won’t cost you anything to be loving and kind toward your family and friends. It won’t cost you anything to listen to music or read. And it won’t cost you anything to exercise.

5.       Was your life so bad before you made the money that you lost?

Before you had the money you lost you had a life worth living. What did you do when you didn’t have the money? Was everything so miserable?  Probably not.   In fact, you may have worried about money a lot less.

6.       Are you basing your self-esteem on money? The most fragile basis of self-esteem is money. But some of us feel worse about ourselves when we have less money. You can think of basing your self-concept on your virtues, as Aristotle noted 2400 years ago. These virtues include courage, self-discipline, integrity, and generosity. You can practice these every day—and no one—not even the stock market—can take these virtues away from you.

7.       Stretch time. Unless you are ready to retire, you may have a lot of time to recover from financial losses. Think about future earnings as the parachute that provides your safety. How will you feel about this in a year, ten years or twenty years? But even as you stretch time to think about the future, remember to make the best of the present moment. And ask yourself, “What can I do today that will be meaningful, give me pleasure, or even make life better for someone else?”

 To learn more about how to handle your worries, please see my book The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You or visit my website at www.CognitiveTherapyNYC.com

Robert L. Leahy is the director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy and a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Weill-Cornell Medical College