When you’re not able to make ends meet, the things you do just to make yourself happy start to feel like unjustifiable expenses. But even though it’s important to be careful and meet your basic survival needs, you need more than food and shelter to live. You also need to value the little things that make you feel happy, cared-for and comforted – and you shouldn’t feel guilty about that.
That doesn’t mean spend, spend, spend, and forget the bills – but if you spend a fiver on a piece of cake after lunch, or pony up to travel cross-country to visit someone you love, that isn’t an unforgivable extravagance. You deserve to be happy, and to remind yourself that you matter.
If you need a practical reason to invest in your own happiness, remember that when you’re really struggling with your mental health, it is likely to negatively affect your ability to manage your money. Treating your own wellbeing as a non-negotiable cost, like food or shelter, will help you stay more in control and preserve your mental health better.
Investing in yourself is an important part of building your resilience, and reminding yourself why you’d keep going. Make sure you’re not spending so much that the stress outweighs the benefits, but you are allowed nice things, and giving yourself a treat or a small kindness can make all the difference in terms of long-term resilience. As a country, we’re well over a decade into a period of high financial stress and that takes a toll – you don’t need to wait until everything’s 100% stable in order to be kind to yourself.
Make space for your feelings
If you have past experience of poverty, instability or low self-worth, this may be a very triggering time for you. It is likely that worrying about bills and money, as well as being stressful in and of itself, will bring up past experiences and anxieties around scarcity or instability.
Remind yourself that you’re here and now, and that you have agency and control. Even if the situation is similar, you’re not the person you were back then. In the short term, you may find it useful to try grounding exercises when it gets too much; in the longer term, see if you can speak to anyone about the memories affecting you, and what you can do to feel more safe. If you’re not able to speak to someone right now, journalling may help your thoughts feel clearer and help you identify what you’re reacting to.
This is a frightening and unstable time for a lot of people, and doubly so if it’s touching into past experiences for you. You are not weak or silly for feeling this way. Be as gentle with yourself as you can, and, when you feel like you really can’t cope, it’s ok to let go a bit – take a sick day, reach out to someone you trust, order a takeaway and have a cry. It’s taken a lot of resilience to get this far – it isn’t a weakness if you need to stop and take a breath.
Coping with the cost of living
Dealing with the rising cost of living often puts an extra strain on your mental health.
Explore our Cost of Living resources for ideas on how to manage stress and look after your mental health and wellbeing under financial pressure.
