Is Fight-or-Flight Holding Your Money Back?
When someone mentions finances, do your shoulders tense up? Does the prospect of talking about budgets and retirement savings with your partner put a pit at the bottom of your stomach? Or maybe you reach checkout when shopping, and just before seeing the glowing total you start to feel on edge or a little clammy.
You may be experiencing the fight-or-flight response in these moments and not even realize that it’s affecting your decision making when it comes to your money.
How our bodies respond to financial stress
The fight-or-flight response is our body’s natural defense against stress. It’s meant to limit our brain and body’s functions to only what’s needed for immediate survival.
Despite the name, we actually have come to identify four different types of stress responses:
Fight - the instinct to confront the threat head-on and defend ourselves
Flight - responding by fleeing or avoiding the threat
Freeze - under stress this response is to shut down until the threat has passed
Fawn - this response includes using people-pleasing tactics to deal with the threat
Yet against modern stressors, and when living with a chronic low level of stress, this response can actually work against us.
Because when confronted with a threat, this natural stress defense puts our amygdala (the emotional regulator) in the driver’s seat, and our front lobe (rational planner) temporarily becomes a backseat passenger.
—So what do we do?—
Take some deep breaths with me
Breath in the oxygenated air into your body, feel it freely fill your lungs and imagine it traveling up to your brain. Every breath bringing relief to your overworked and stressed out system. Breath out and imagine your amygdala taking a step back, letting your frontal lobe light blink back on. Take another breath, your shoulders dropping and your brain rebalancing.
Tell yourself there’s no immediate threat in this moment. No lions are about the pounce. The bills can wait, the bosses can wait. In this moment it’s just you, safe in your body, on a rock spinning around a star.
Keeping our amygdala and front lobe balanced is essential to smart money management. It lets you use the full extent of your skills to make decisions that will benefit you in the short term and the long term, decisions to balance your responsibilities with your future goals.
Reframe what money means to us
Now imagine what matters most to you (as we spin on this giant rock in space). What brings you the most joy? What do you cherish the most?
There is no right answer. Maybe you imagine something tangible like your family, or a passion project. Or maybe you feel something more abstract, like laughing with friends, or lounging peacefully in the sunshine.
In our heightened stress responses, we forget that our money is a reflection of our values in this life. Both in how we earn it and how we spend it, it’s part of our story.
What would happen if we start taking a values-oriented approach to our finances? An approach that makes stress management the first step, and likely a recurring one to keep us grounded, and then puts our values front and center as the accountability check for how we view the money coming through our hands.
Reframing with our values in mind can be a quick mental shift:
If our top value is family - then working a job we don’t like may look more worthwhile if it means being home for evenings and weekends.
If our top value is travel - then driving a beat up car and not eating out or buying new clothes may start to be as much a part of the trip planning as the pinterest board.
Part of financial coaching with me can include developing a framework of your values and how it maps to your money.
Shape the future we want
Through the lens of our values, we remember that money is not the destination, it’s a tool and a means to achieve the life we want.
That’s not to say that the financial stress isn’t real, and there is much that is outside of our control.
However, our goal by overcoming the stress response and remembering what matters most is to be able to see clearly where we do have control, and to see clearly what we can do differently.
—So how do we start using money as a tool for the life we want?—
Set a monthly finance routine -
It may feel difficult to do, but set aside time the first few days of the month to look back at the previous month - what you earned, what you spent, and progress towards your goals.
Don’t judge or regret anything, just be willing to look (overcoming the flight stress response).
Create a budget -
The 50/30/20 budget is a great starting place and gives a lot of flexibility for customizing your own categories/subcategories within what you view as a “need” or “want”.
Just like life evolves, our budgets evolve with us. The goal is to stick to your budget, and give yourself grace when you don’t (this grace is needed if your go-to stress response is fight). The monthly finance routine is when you can review and make adjustments to the budget.
Set savings or “sinking funds” goals -
Saving money is commonly where we see our goals and hopes reflected. Setting aside money for future use is an investment, and the meaning we attach to it (the why) matters.
Emergency savings are important to start setting aside first, it’s the safety net to weather unexpected job changes or unexpected costs.
“Sinking funds” are savings with a pre-defined plan for what and when they’ll. be used - these are great especially for holiday spending, planned home or auto repairs, or planned medical costs. The idea is that you map each month how much you can dedicate in order to reach the goal by the time you need the money.
This is a great place to match your values to your money -
———
In my own financial journey I started with a list of my personal values, and imagined who the version of me would be, if I was living the way I wanted. Not just in material terms but with how I’d spend my time and who I’d be with.
From there I looked at my finances through the lens of, is this how I want to earn and spend my money? Where can I start making small changes now? And how can I start dreaming of bigger changes I could make next year, or someday?
My first small change was a spotify playlist, songs I could listen to while going over my previous month’s spending that would keep me from sinking into stress, sinking into feelings of shame and overwhelm at every impulse buy.
Then I had a breakthrough. The job that I didn’t like was giving me the stability to travel and start saving money for my dreams that were still forming. I realized I was already living some of my values, and that could be true while I was still at this job. I kept driving my 2002 subaru and thrifted clothes. On the flip side, since one of my values are my nieces and nephews, I increased my budget for their birthday/holiday presents and set travel time aside to go visit them more intentionally.
There would be a time a few years later that I’d leave my corporate stability, end up spending most of my savings for medical bills, and essentially be faced with the financial stress of starting over. However even within the darkest moments of that financial stress, I’d have my monthly financial practice to fall back on. Reviewing my spending and budget through the lens of my values.
If this resonates and you want more, you can learn more about my financial coaching services here.
[quote about money]
