How To Take Control Of Your Money To Eradicate Financial Anxiety (Part 2)

Financial anxiety affects many people, irrespective of how much money they have in their bank accounts.

In my blog post How To Take Control Of Your Money To Eradicate Financial Anxiety (part 1), I discussed how you would know if you were suffering from financial anxiety, along with some practical tips to allow you to start regaining financial control. In this post, we will dig deeper and discuss your relationship with money.  It’s important that you identify why you have arrived at the point of financial anxiety. Isolating the issues is the first step to prescribing the solutions to improve your financial health. 

Relationship with money

As with any relationship, your affiliation with money can cause enormous stress and worry if you don't manage it correctly.  However, unlike most other relationships, your control and influence over money are entirely in your hands.   

Poor relationships and money management develop over time, and even the financially comfortable can become victims of anxious thoughts.  These anxious thoughts and fears often become ingrained into our unconscious mind during some of our childhood experiences.  

These fears can then manifest themselves as beliefs we convince ourselves to be true.  We then unconsciously develop a 'set of rules' based on these theories, which ultimately forms our financial habits, even when nothing has occurred to prove their validity. 

One way to heal your relationship with money, and therefore reduce your financial anxiety, is first to identify the rules we have created for ourselves.  Once we have done this, we can begin to deconstruct them through methods such as journaling and mindful meditation.   

These practices will set you on a powerful path of self-discovery; they will encourage you to challenge your financial beliefs so you are empowered to tackle them.  You can then begin rewriting your financial rules to set yourself free and regain control. 

Money Stories

Let me introduce you to Emily.  Emily is one of my clients. Her parents divorced when she was eight years old.  Throughout her childhood, both parents showered her with gifts.   

When we began unpicking Emma’s relationship with money, she realised that she was spending money she didn’t have on gifts for loved ones. The money belief she held was that you needed to buy people things to prove your love for them.   

My guidance to Emma was simple and encapsulated in this one-line synopsis. Emily concluded that she should show love for her family by spending quality time with them. 

Of course, we all have our own different relationships with money and our own life experiences. Consequently, there can never be a “one solution fits” approach or quick fixes.  Our subconscious money stories will continue to impact our financial decisions until we identify the influence of the story and we examine the behaviours this is creating in our spending patterns.   

We all have 'money stories' - the rules that govern how we manage our finances. 

Solutions

If you begin to take the time to re-write your money story, you will quickly experience some changes that will help to ease and alleviate your financial anxiety.  Take a few minutes each day to write down your thoughts. Review your written notes at the end of the week and use them to form the basis of a plan.  This approach will slowly develop into a more robust financial strategy. 

If you want to journal about your money story, you can find my Rewrite Your Money Story Journal on Amazon.com  and Amazon.co.uk .

To help further alleviate some of your negativity and fear, you might also consider therapies such as Hypnosis or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), both of which have been found useful in removing negative beliefs about money. 

If you are suffering from severe financial hardship or having challenges in managing your debt, then you should contact organisations such as www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk or www.nationaldebtline.org 

If you are ready to give your money a detox, to get to grips with what is happening with your finances, try my 30-day money detox program. I’ll send you short video instructions with a daily task every day for 30 days. You'll better understand how your finances work at the end of the 30 days, or however long it takes to complete the tasks. Click on the purple button below to find out more.

Learn More: 30-Day Money Detox