| | JULY 20209tributed across people. It can be highly debilitating and can cause significant distress in one's life. For instance, many of you might be waking-up in the middle of the night, and while you try to get back to sleep, your mind wanders-off to the blurry thoughts about having no funds to thrive. And before you know it, you're in a full blown 5am panic during which you lose sleep and accomplish very little. What begins as a passing thought to remember to pay the bills can suddenly leave you horrifically anxious and worried about how you'd pay those bills if you lost your job, how to climb out of debt, or how to make your budget stretch for the month. If this is regular, it can negatively impact mental and physical health and career. Although financial anxiety is common, it's not insurmountable -- and recognizing what trig-gers your anxiety can help you cope with it. Acknowledge the Signs· Financial anxiety shares many of the diagnostic criteria of generalized anxiety disorder, like ex-cessive worry, irritability and difficulty concen-trating. · Feeling heavily depressed or anxious about finances.· An obsession with being frugal.· Discomfort with accumulating wealth.· Physical body reactions like intense sweating, headaches, shoulder aches or cold palms.· Inability to change financial behaviors, loss of con-trol in one's thoughts & feelings or loss of hope and disconnectedness. · Insomnia or over sleeping.· Loss of appetite or binge eatingIf the question ­ `how to accumulate money' leaves you in cold palms and with a strange feeling then there may be a deeper reason behind the stress. However, the good news is that you can absolutely put your negative thoughts and abrupt actions in full control by taking a step back from your worst fears and making sure you control your cash ­ and not the other way around.Ways to Manage your Financial Anxiety ­ Explore your Body & Mind: If you have a sudden physical reaction like cold or sweaty palms and rac-ing heartbeats due to unpleasant emotions while conversing about money, acknowledge it immediate-ly. Start paying attention to your negative emotions and how your body is reacting while discussing mon-ey. How does your mind react when you make any transaction or check account balance? Try igniting more awareness of what kind of emotions and pat-terns are situated inside your body and mind; for example, sweating heavily due to intense fear. Con-sider what is in the conversation that is triggering these negative feelings. Is it how you communicate with yourself while conceptualizing finance? How do you communicate with your partner? Or are you feeling guilty or ashamed of being underpaid or pay cut? A proper body and mental health check-in and evaluating behaviour teaches us to work with our emotions instead of getting overwhelmed and how to step aside these unwanted feelings and be able to witness more clarity of what's going on so that we're not so consumed with its peripheral symptoms.Kuhoo Gupta
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