Russell Dickerson from RD Debt Counselling chats about financial stress and the affect it has on family. Catch Russell on East Rand Stereo, every Saturday morning at 8:15.
In the financial and debt counselling world, we see a lot of stressed people coming to RD Debt Counselling and asking for help.
How do we know when we are stressed? You may notice symptoms when you get very scratchy during busy times at work or when you are really impatient with your family and friends.
Stress is our body’s reaction to harmful situations, whether they are real or in our heads. When we feel threatened, our bodies want to protect themselves. It is during this time you will start to experience an increased heart rate, quick breathing and high blood pressure. It is almost as if you are ready to react, mostly it’s for a short time, and then the body goes back to normal. The problem comes in when you are stressed all the time. When your heart rate and your blood pressure is high all the time, you will start to damage to your body.
Stress affects us all, here are different ways in which you could experience stress.
A sure sign that stress is affecting you is when you are feeling anxious and restless all the time, have no motivation to work, are extremely irritable, or you get very angry over things that you would normally not be angry about or you feel sad or depressed a lot of the time.
The two most common effects of financial stress are anxiety and depression and they go hand in hand. When you can’t fall asleep because all you can think about is how you are going to pay your credit card or car, that’s financial stress and it affects you through the day. It will always spill over into your work, and into your relationships.
In this case, stress will have an effect on our relationships with family, partners and friends. This is usually apparent when we are short-tempered and irritable with the people around us.
People often ignore a headache they are constantly having, the fact that they aren’t sleeping properly, or not performing at work, but stress could be causing all of that. Did you know that stress can make you physically ill? Even the fact that you are behind on your payments on the house could be making you sick.
In this article, we discuss the signs and symptoms of stress. It is often difficult to identify stress, because we just say “I’m irritated because I didn’t sleep well last night”, “I had a bad day at work”, or “my wife is being difficult”. This way, we don’t face the problem and do something about it.
We have already mentioned some of the symptoms of stress, but here are a few more:
Headaches, chest pain, fatigue, a constantly upset stomach, or problems with sleeping.
Some people deal with stress by abusing alcohol or drugs, some people overeating or others hardly eat at all. Some people smoke much more than usual or start to smoke again after giving up. Another sign of stress is that you stop doing your normal amount of exercise.
The first part of coping with stress is to identify the source of the stress and deal with that first.
If it is financial, then face the financial stress head-on. Don’t run away from your stress, or simply ignore it, nothing will be solved that way. One of the biggest problems, when you have anxiety and depression, is that you don’t want to face the source of the problem, so you really have to talk to yourself and get moving to do something about your financial stress.
Talk to a debt counsellor. If someone comes and sits with us to assess their income and expenditure and look at everything in a clear way with no emotions, then we can tell you what your financial situation is. If we can, we will try to provide you with a solution to your financial problems which will help you deal with your financial stress better.
You have to do something. If you can’t motivate yourself to do something because of depression, then do it for your family. They are also suffering if you are stressed, irritable and having angry outbursts.
Another problem that could cause financial stress is if you have lost your job, and you allow yourself to get depressed and anxious. The chances of you finding another job are less due to these feelings. The person doing the job interview will pick up that you are less motivated than other applicants and they will get the job, so you have to pull yourself out of it.
Exercise. It doesn’t matter what you do, whether you run around the block and increase the distance every day, or even walk around the block for the first few times. Considered doing a park run in your area, it is free to sign up. Try to improve your 5km time every Saturday. Spend some time out in the fresh air, be around other nice people and bonus, any form of exercise gets your body in a much happier place.
Eat healthier. Even if you are on a tight budget try to reduce your sugar intake. Eat more fruit and veggies and try to eat less meat and fat.
Talk to someone. It costs nothing to book a free debt review with to RD Debt Counselling and have us go through your finances.
Talk to your pastor. Many churches have financial advisors you can speak to.
Consult your doctor. They see people in stress-related situations all day, and can give you great advice.
Talk to a close friend or family member. Always remember that a problem shared is a problem halved, and it really works to get things off your chest and get someone else’s view on your situation.
But most of all - face your stress issue. If you know it’s financial, make sure you do something about it. Discuss it with your family, your partner, your church, and get yourself into a better place, a happier place so that things start to improve.
Need to talk to a debt counsellor? We are debt counsellors in Benoni and we help you get debt free in the shortest possible time. Contact us today for a FREE debt review and say goodbye to your financial stress for good.
