Times like this feel stressful for many of us, and it can seem like we’re the only ones experiencing negative emotions. Understand that you are not alone.

Secondly, times of high stress can leave us experiencing feelings that we haven’t felt this intensely before, and that can be uncomfortable. It’s important not to push those feelings away; feel your feelings. Pushing them away because we don’t like feeling them only hurts us in the long run. It’s okay to be afraid, so acknowledge your fear.

When we’re experiencing high stress, the oldest part of our brain that’s responsible for fight, flight, and freeze responses views the world as life and death. That’s why it seems so scary.

Try this exercise to explore your fear, and communicate to your animal brain that it’s not a life or death situation.

Step 1

Articulate your fear, out loud, to yourself, a journal, or a friend who is a good listener.

Step 2

Ask yourself “if so, then what?” In other words, assume that happens, imagine what life would look like, who you would be with, and what you would be feeling.

Step 3

Repeat four or five times. 

For example, I’m feeling angry because (insert reason here) and that makes me afraid I’m going to lose my job.

(If so, then what) If I lose my job then I only have $800 in savings to use, so that buys me a little bit of time to find a new job but it takes a long time to find work and nobody is hiring.

(If so, then what) If I can’t find a new job then I’ll have to ask my parents for loans to help me until I can find a new job, but I don’t want to look needy to them.

(If so, then what) If I do have to ask them and look needy then they might judge me and feel disappointed in me. 

And so on. 

What you are doing is sending the message to the fear center in your brain that, although this isn’t an ideal situation, it’s also not a life or death situation. Additionally, since you are intentionally letting your fear be heard, you are painting a picture of the worst-case scenario. Once you understand this isn’t life and death you’ll start to realize that the worst-case scenario isn’t the most likely scenario, and since you just mentally prepared for it, you’ll be prepared for better scenarios, as well. 

Last step:

Now that you’ve explored the worst-case, what can you do today to prevent that from happening? Perhaps you reduce some discretionary expenses until things get more clear, and put that money into your savings account. Perhaps you take on more projects at work to show how valuable you are – which could get you a raise or promotion coming out on the other side. Maybe you use some of this downtime to teach yourself a new skill that you can use to apply to your career and make yourself more marketable.

Be creative.

Contributed by:

Derek F. Hagen, CFP^®️, FBS^®️, CFA

Financial Therapist

Money Health Solutions, LLC