There is no question about it – debt has an enormous impact on our emotional well-being.
There is nothing worse than being in debt. Well, of course there are many things worse than being in debt – terminal illness, famine, the loss of a limb or a sense, even the loss of a loved one. These can all be considered as being much, much worse than mere financial struggle. But if you ask someone who is experiencing financial problems, they will more likely tell you ‘There is nothing worse than being in debt’.
So, maybe a more accurate way of depicting the situation is that there is nothing worse than the feelings that you get when you are experiencing financial struggle. It is perhaps the many feelings that we attach to financial hardship that actually control our emotional and physical attitude towards our life. The fact that somebody who is in debt will claim that there is ‘nothing worse’ illustrates how effortlessly one can assume this form of responsibility and take ownership of an undesired situation, behaviour or circumstance and allow it to consume and control both their actions and their emotions.
To most people, debt is not a bad thing, and it affords us the opportunity to obtain things that we would not be able to otherwise enjoy. Debt has many positive attributes;
‘…it [debt] can be used as a powerful, positive, experience - provided you don't let it take control of you and your life’ (MoneyMatters101.com™)
Being ‘indebted’ can teach us humility, appreciation and empathy, it can teach us about ourselves and bring into the forefront of our realisation just how well we can cope as individuals when the going gets tough.
But as a society have an unhealthy relationship with money. We project onto money the power that we believe it will provide for us to fulfil our fantasies or to appease our fears or our pain. Today’s society makes us believe that we can buy anything we need from hope to happiness. We become determined, as we see others apparently achieving their goals and dreams, to purchase the life we dream of. The life which we think we need.
We mislead ourselves that we can afford it because there are so many sources of credit out there that will happily lend us money so that we can live the life we want. We fool ourselves into ‘forgetting’ that when we spend on credit we are buying our dreams with somebody else’s money, and when the time comes to pay it back, our dreams can transform into nightmares.
There is no doubt that debt has a dramatic negative impact on one’s emotional well-being. Owing a debt means that you are in service of a lender until that debt has been repaid as agreed, even if there is no interest involved, you have still entered into a master-slave relationship.
Debt is acquired with the rationalization that everything will always go according to plan. Seldom is there any consideration of the possibility that something may happen in the future which will change our financial situation and thus our ability to repay the loan. Instead of planning for these eventualities and risks, the lender blindly signs documents with the irrational belief that they have no chance of being made redundant, being fired, becoming disabled, or in any other way being unable to generate a level of income equal to or better than their current status.
For women especially, debt can have a very negative emotional effect. This is contrasted by the feeling of joy when the house is finally paid off, for example. The home is the nest, and owning it outright yields a sense of financial and emotional security that is extremely satisfying.
