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 work.” Or maybe they’ve been persuaded by
some commercial. “Yeah, that Omi-zoomi ap actually would be preparing my kid
better and what kind of parent would I be if I don’t want my kid to get ahead!” And
then there’s the things that we parents want, too. And we focus on our deficits
and we feel bad. We feel that there is something wrong that we aren’t able to
have what other people have. We may reflect on the occasions or the people that
we feel have ripped us off or made our life harder. Or we may sulk about our
rotten situation and how we feel stuck financially and how it is not fair.
The second type gravitates instead towards
worry. They have done the tallying and see how they are coming up short and
their mind goes into overdrive. They start working through possible scenarios –
could I this, what about that, maybe if this or that… They carry this with them
and it affects their sleep and maybe their eating patterns. Where can we cut
back and where can we make more? This type gets caught up in obsessing about their
needs and may transfer their stress into medical issues like back aches and
digestive problems. And likely everything
feeds their worry.
The third type may begin in much the same way;
calculating their situation and struggling with much the same feelings or
stuckness, anger, and anxiety. But at some point it dawns on them to go to God
with their emotions and their situation. I’m not suggesting that type one or
type two folks don’t run to God. Sure they do. Although I think that many of
type ones or twos run to God not to resolve their anger and anxiety, but either
to demand or plead with God to rescue them and resolve their financial
difficulty.
You see, I think that we struggle culturally
with the sense that God loves us. What I mean is that we have been conditioned
to understand God’s love as a sense of favor that is expressed through
protection and comfort. From our perspective America has been so blessed and we
interpret this to mean that God has favored us.
Or we learned somewhere that love means to be sheltered and so we
project this onto God. And when we struggle we feel that God has disappeared and
removed his care and may even feel abandoned by him. When we interpret God’s
love and care for us in this way we will inevitably struggle with great anxiety
or resentment when things go badly for us.
Jesus spoke of this struggle in his parable of the sower, which you’ll find
in Matthew 13 and in Luke 8. Jesus describes a farmer sowing seed and he says
that some falls on rocky ground, but since there was no depth of soil the
plants had no root and withered away. And he says that some seeds fell among
thorns and that the thorns choked them. He later interprets the parable and explains
that the seeds that fell on the rocky ground are those who “endure for a little
while, but when tribulation or persecution arises”, he falls away. As for the
seeds who feel among the thorns he says, “the cares of the world and the
deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.” I believe
that the seeds that fell on rocky soil parallel the type that gravitates
towards anxiety and the seeds that fell among the thorns parallels the angry,
resentful type.
I used to read this parable and analyze it to
discern which seed I was and then worry about my not being the “right” seed.
However, I have grown to believe that the parable can be interpreted as
conditions that are changeable. That is, that if I am at some point on the
rocky ground that I don’t have to stay
there. The parable is not representing determinism, such that these denote destinies
that are programmed. They represent attitudes or maybe even stages of growth.
That brings me back to the third type. I
believe the third type has grown; grown through their financial struggles and
so when they encounter them they are drawn to run to God to depend on him. They
have grown to see their heart and their tendency towards either anxious fear or
angry control. And so they surrender their inclinations and they acknowledge
God as the wise provider who is in control. As they practice this they find
that their anxieties diminish or their resentments are resolved by a love that
doesn’t provide comfort and ease but instead comforts them with what they
really needed – God’s presence.
You see, no matter what we are lacking
situationally there is always something we need more. Let’s learn with the
Apostle Paul how to be content whether in plenty or in want.
That’s the way to manage financial stress.