The 3 Types of Responses to Financial Stress
By Matt W. Sandford, LMHC Financial stress is about as common as Geico commercials, just much more annoying. The commercials are short and sometimes funny. Not so with most financial challenges and the stress they produce. However, I’d like to propose that there are three types of stress responses associated with financial difficulty, based not on someone’s situation as much as on their perceptions about their situation. I’m going to break down these three types and then offer my take on how to address each one. The first type looks over the basic situation of amounts coming in and going out. They tally up the numbers and see the shortfall. They also look around at all the things that are missing from their homes or lives or environment and they compare to what the other families around them have. “Wow, my kids don’t have those new phones, or that new thing that they’ve been bugging me about. They say everyone has one. And it probably would help them with their school