'Of the people I see, the ones who are most stressed out are the planners — the people who manage their anxiety by coming up with a strategy for what to do next,' says financial therapist mandaclay
Photo: Getty Images Before Amanda Clayman became a therapist, she grappled with serious debt in her 20s. When she got her degree in social work in 2005, she decided to help people understand how money is tied to their emotional needs. “I wanted to say to as many people as possible, ‘Hey, it doesn’t have to be like this,’” she told me. While the field of financial therapy is still relatively new, Clayman says a lot of therapists ask how they can address their clients’ financial anxieties.
I was also desperate to hide the situation from my mother. But she was just like, “Look, you have five bills. Just write them down. Here’s the amount of money that you have. You don’t have to starve yourself to pay off this credit card debt. You can have a timeline, and you’re in control of that timeline.” And I was like, “What? Really? Where was any of this?” It took me just over a year to pay it all off.
It’s true that the uncertainty is paralyzing. What are some ways that people can cope with losing money and income? First of all, limit how much time and energy you want to give to this sort of problem, or this question. You want to decouple your normal pattern of, “I feel stressed about something, so I’m going to find a way to control it, and plan for it.” That’s the most well worn track in your brain, and it isn’t available to you right now. But if you are flexible enough, you can use this moment to grow in all kinds of other capacities.
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