Your Mental Health Is Much More Valuable Than Money
Financial decisions, believe it or not, are closely linked to your emotions, and specifically to your inner life. For example, both excess and lack of confidence make us believe that we can take all kinds of risks; It can give us a lot of excitement and happiness to spend money, but this sometimes prevents us from seeing what we are really spending on.
Anger is a very powerful and sometimes destructive feeling, especially when it influences the way you make decisions. It can help justify expenses, so when making decisions regarding money it is important to be calm.
Another common feeling is when the person does not feel valuable or even feels sorry for themselves… And they believe that by buying they will compensate for their shortcomings.
The relationship between emotions and financial decisions
Low self-esteem is what causes compulsive shopping in order to achieve a feeling of worth and belonging. In this sense, during the pandemic, money management changed due to the anxiety and fear of death that we all experience.
There is so-called “chrometophobia” which is the extreme fear of spending money. Being very greedy eventually turns into chrometophobia when it is a very intense psychological phenomenon.
When a person suffers from this disorder, they may frequently have episodes of tachycardia, increased blood pressure, and muscle pain. In addition, a feeling of helplessness due to not being able to control these irrational ideas, depression, insomnia, mood swings and general anxiety may arise.
There is a fear of running out of money, or a feeling of guilt may arise for not being able to enjoy what we have, and that can also cause a lot of sadness. This sadness may be due to feelings of frustration for not feeling capable of reaching the desired goals. But here another problem arises, which is when there is not enough money to make us feel good.
Financial problems have to do with control, since when we spend without control, what we are doing is self-sabotaging and not seeking happiness. Those who go through these kinds of experiences are afraid of success.
The feeling of guilt in the face of one’s own success
Sigmund Freud, in his writing Those who fail when they succeed He reflects on the fact that just when the person is succeeding, something happens, he becomes ill, and as a consequence he fails as if the subject could not bear success. Real success in adult life is associated with the idea that whoever succeeds must be punished as if it were an Oedipal crime, which of course will create a feeling of guilt. In this sense, the fundamental thing about success is “having gone” further than one’s own father (or mother), which is something forbidden. This is where the feeling of guilt and the need to “pay for it” arises.
For this reason, many people, far from being happy about obtaining some financial achievement, begin to feel unbearable anxiety that can lead to mental health problems and ruin a project that they have been working on for years. This financial failure may be due to certain paranoid ideas of feeling envied by others.
So, an internal mandate prohibits the achievement of the expected victory because it makes us feel that achieving a goal would have higher implications and costs than not doing it, so it is preferable to opt for various inhibitions or symptoms in order to not achieve it.
S. Freud comments in this regard that “the ego is not allowed to do those things because they provide it with benefit and success that the severe superego has denied it.” Then, the Ego renounces in order not to come into conflict with the superego.
Thus we can understand that the heir to the superego is the Oedipus complex, and for this reason it is likely that the guilt that prevents achievement is an unresolved aspect of that complex or a repetition of it.
Those who fail to succeed
S. Freud establishes an unconscious equivalence between the success achieved in adulthood with the achievement over the rival parent of the opposite sex in childhood, thus causing the feeling of guilt and punishment for such a daring act. Thus we can see that those who fail to succeed are reliving the Oedipal dynamic and thus “you cannot go further than your father, nor earn more money than him or be happier.”
There is another type of people who simply do not allow themselves to experience success, because They experience it as a “payment” that they are not willing or unable to make and they consider it preferable to sacrifice themselves and remain paralyzed.
In cases like this, we see how money management is related to our life history, the bonds we have forged, our self-esteem, previous failures and fears.
It is important to analyze the role that money plays in your life. Money is ultimately a tool. For many, money causes tension, frustration, worry… And sometimes money can be controlling your peace of mind, your happiness.
We must be clear that money does not buy happiness, but it is said “but it helps.” Yes, but in this case we need to set limits that today, with social networks and the Internet, are increasingly difficult to apply.
Sometimes money brings out the bad that may be in them. Money can change your behavior; can affect our social relationships, and above all, Sometimes money prevents you from striving to achieve your personal satisfaction.
The pursuit of money can be addictive, as the person desires to have more and more. Just as the need to “spend money” can be an addiction.
Thus, we see how money can divert our pain, emotional and physical conflicts. It can also cause people to become more aggressive. They believe that money can buy well-being in our lives.
Definitely, Excess or lack of money influences people to the point of producing stress and anxiety which can lead to alcohol or drug abuse.
In situations of this type, before that happens, I offer you to start a therapy process to help you.
