Christmas Expense Anxiety: Why It Arises And How To Combat It
Managing Christmas shopping, both for gifts and for family dinners and gatherings and their logistics, is much more than an intellectual challenge. It is also a challenge for our ability to manage our emotions and our stress levels. For this reason, in this article I will talk about one of the most underestimated phenomena of these dates: Christmas expense anxiety, and how to deal with it.
What are the causes of anxiety over Christmas expenses?
Anxiety is, in most cases, a positive thing; or at least useful. It helps us stay activated and alert in situations that require attention and a certain amount of attention. ability to react quickly.
However, sometimes we are not able to adequately manage anxiety and we enter a vicious cycle of self-sabotage that leads us to worry more and more about our difficulties in progressing and making decisions with the fluidity and confidence we need.
That is why many people feel anxiety at the prospect of having to make extra expenses for the Christmas holidays, on dates marked by consumerism. How to buy everything we need by finding a balance between what we can afford, on the one hand, and the expectations we have generated for ourselves and that we have generated for others, on the other ?
Beyond this situation that triggers anxiety problems, there are several causes that combine:
What to do about this?
Although each case is unique and the most effective solutions are those that adapt to the particularities of each one, These general tips can help you when facing the anxiety linked to Christmas expenses.
1. Bet on creative gifts
It is undeniable that there is high social pressure towards the tendency to spend a lot of money on gifts to gain the acceptance and affection of others; However, not everything has to obey this consumerist logic. There are gifts that, precisely because they are based on one’s own creativity and not on the fact of buying something already finished as a “polished” product, They have a great capacity to like and reinforce those emotional ties with others.
These types of gifts can range from short stories with the person we are giving it to as the protagonist, to a set of relatively cheap products offered in the form of a “kit” (for example, “medical student survival kit”). , through drawings, invitations to own events, etc.
2. Set weekly spending ceilings
Setting spending maximums in advance is a very good way to not only keep track of how we manage personal finances, but also to provide us with peace of mind at a time of year marked by rapid variations in the amount in the bank account. It is true that this is an “extra” task that implies having to worry about it enough to carry it out, but it provides more positive elements than negative elements in terms of preventing anxiety. It is a way to clear our doubts about whether we are doing it right in a matter of seconds.
Additionally, through their mobile app, some banks offer the possibility of establishing sub-categories within our bank account, to assign from the beginning the amounts that we can dedicate to each thing.
This way, we won’t constantly worry about not being sure if we’ll make ends meet.
3. Take care of yourself
Eating a relatively balanced diet and, above all, getting enough sleep, is something that protects us from excess stress. But during the Christmas holidays and family gatherings, this costs more, since There is greater variability in schedules and food. Although it is not bad to “break the rules” of the routine occasionally, this should not be the norm.
On the other hand, beyond getting enough sleep and eating well, exercising regularly is an excellent way to release tension and leave behind intrusive thoughts associated with stress, by linking ourselves to the here and now.
4. Avoid “desperate” investments at all costs
In this context, some people fall into the trap of experimenting by investing money in assets capable of bringing them a relatively high profit in a matter of weeks (for example, some cryptocurrencies or NFT games). The main problem is that These types of investments are, precisely, the riskiest and those that are most likely to make us lose practically all the money invested in them. But that’s not the worst: as they have high volatility, they will have a stressful effect on a person already exposed to anxiety, since they will be constantly checking the rises and falls in the value of their investment, consulting forums in case the value plummets, etc.
Related article: “What is impulsivity? Its causes and effects on behavior”
