Mind Your Money: Reduce Debt Anxiety, Panic, And Financial Overwhelm
By Chidimma Ozor Commer, LMSW, PhD
Debt anxiety can feel like a constant cloud, triggering stress, sleepless nights, and a sense of being out of control. Financial overwhelm doesn’t just affect your bank account—it impacts your mental and emotional wellbeing. You do not have to navigate this alone. Therapy can help you transform panic into a plan, providing both emotional support and practical strategies for managing money stress. In this blog, we’ll explore three therapeutic steps to calm your money mind and reduce debt anxiety, helping you feel empowered and in control.
Step 1: Identify and Understand Your Money Emotions
Why it matters: Anxiety about money often stems from deep-seated beliefs or past experiences. In a nonjudgmental, no shame and no blame, healing space, therapy can help you uncover patterns, such as fear of scarcity, shame around debt, or avoidance behaviors. Therapists and counselors will even “go backwards to go forwards” to come alongside you as you get a sense of the money messages you received from childhood and beyond. A couple of good self-reflective questions to learn more:
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent(s) educate you about finances?
Did you worry about money growing up?
Therapeutic journaling, cognitive restructuring (CBT), acceptance commitment therapy (ACT), strengths-based therapy, radical acceptance, narrative exercises, or counter storytelling are all therapeutic ways to separate emotions from facts. Understanding your financial emotions is a benefit that allows you to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively or with avoidance.
Step 2: Transform Panic into a Practical Plan
Why it matters: Feeling overwhelmed often keeps people from taking action. It’s incredibly common to have decision fatigue or panic which results in feeling stuck and indecision or worse, backsliding. Working with a therapist can help you create realistic, compassionate steps for managing debt and finances.
Strategies:
Track your spending to learn about how much money is coming into your life and going out (this is often a very revealing exercise for people)
Break debt into manageable portions
Prioritize expenses and high-interest debt
Set boundaries around spending
Explore emotional roadblocks to action
A clear, actionable plan can reduce the power of anxiety and give you a sense of control over your financial situation. Reclaiming your power, your agency, and hope can move you from panic to a practical plan.
Step 3: Build Emotional Resilience and Healthy Money Habits
Why it matters: Anxiety can return if habits and coping strategies aren’t strengthened over time. Like many things that you want to get good at, practice is important. Practicing setting and upholding boundaries around your spending, for example, can help keep your anxiety in check. And having one good decision after another can help you feel much better about your financial situation. Therapy provides support to create sustainable habits and manage emotional triggers that often pop up even as you move in the right direction.
Techniques:
Mindfulness or grounding exercises when money anxiety spikes
Regular money check-ins and accountability systems
Challenging limiting beliefs about worth, scarcity, or failure
Therapeutic journal prompts for you:
How can I start seeing myself as a person worthy of growth, love, and success—regardless of past experiences or external judgments?
What future version of myself would I like to become? What beliefs do I need to cultivate to step into that version of me with confidence and authenticity?
Doing this work builds confidence, reduces anxiety, and helps you make financial decisions from a place of self-trust.
Calm Your Money Mind
Understanding your emotions around your finances is important so that you can set yourself up for success. Creating a practical plan that you can follow and people with whom you can practice accountability is a piece of the puzzle so that you feel less panicked and more empowered. Finally, building healthy habits and resilience around your money habits can calm your money mind.
Encouragement to Seek Support
Debt anxiety doesn’t have to control your life. With guidance from a therapist, you can move from panic to plan and regain both emotional and financial control. If you’re feeling paralyzed by financial stress, consider reaching out to a therapist to start building your path to calm, confidence, and clarity.
Ready to start your healing journey? Our therapists specialize in providing anxiety-conscious care. Contact us today to begin your healing journey.
