Do You Experience Anxiety about Money? Understanding How Your Financial Attachment Style Can Be Beneficial

Your financial situation can be affected by your attachment style. You can be certain of your relationship with saving and spending if you feel secure and confident about money.

Financial difficulties are plaguing a record number of people in Britain. Donors seeking assistance with debt, bills, and insolvency are reaching out to financial charities, according to their reports. Debt Justice, a campaign group, conducted a survey and discovered that in the previous six months, 29% of individuals aged 18 to 24 and 25% of those aged 25 to 34 had failed to pay three or more bills.

Most people don’t believe they could make it three months without taking out a loan from their savings. According to data from the UK’s financial markets regulator, over one-third of adult citizens have savings of less than £1,000. Also, according to a Money.co.uk survey, 30% of British citizens between the ages of 25 and 64 make no retirement savings at all. Given those numbers, is it any surprise that 75% of UK citizens experience financial anxiety?

For young people, the current state of the economy is especially unsettling. You are most likely among the first generation to have less money than your parents unless you were born into a family with a trust fund, which is not the case for most people. You’re not likely to own your own home, and retirement seems unattainable. Eighty percent of individuals in their early twenties are concerned about their income.

Early in your career, you should begin making financial plans, but you might find it overwhelming. The good news is that this can be overcome.

Identifying your financial attachment style

Usually, the first step in doing this is figuring out what factors affect their financial relationship. A psychological theory called attachment theory was first proposed in the late 1950s. Your approach to developing emotionally close relationships with other people is explained by your attachment style. While some people are incredibly nervous, others feel comfortable forming relationships. Some people completely shun intimate relationships.

You can use the attachment style to manage your money as well. You are secure in your relationship to saving and spending if you feel safe and secure around money.

However, you might be anxiously attached if the mere thought of opening an ISA or filing taxes makes you feel anxious and panicked, let alone thinking about retirement planning. Furthermore, you probably exhibit avoidant behavior if you put financial concerns to the back of your mind.

Psychotherapists and attachment theorists believe that early experiences influence an individual’s attachment style. For instance, how well your parents or other caregivers took care of you and how secure and loved you felt.

Your family’s financial management practices during your formative years most likely served as the model for your financial attachment style. This may also be shaped by external factors like education or professional experiences.

Even though financial education is taught in UK schools, 76% of students graduate without having the necessary financial literacy to manage their lives.

In a similar vein, banks and other financial institutions have performed a dismal job of assisting people in creating safe financial relationships. Words that are difficult to understand and uncomfortable to hear have created a divide between those who understand money and those who don’t.

Your confidence in your capacity to manage your finances will probably be damaged and a more avoidant attachment style will be stoked if you believe that you are incapable of keeping up with financial jargon or that you lack financial literacy.

Knowing your attachment style can improve the way you interact with money. You’ll be able to recognize and anticipate the reasons behind your particular financial reactions. Furthermore, it can boost your self-esteem by serving as a reminder that financial difficulties aren’t always your fault.

Getting over financial anxiety

Your attachment style may be revealed by some of the recent financial trends that have been making the rounds on social media. Are you publicly stating your reasons for not spending money, or are you “loud budgeting”? This might indicate that you are confident in your finances and that you have a stable financial relationship. Or, are you engaging in “doom spending”—that is, spending money that you do not have rather than building an emergency fund? You may avoid situations.

Maintaining positive relationships with people and money is essential to our survival and mental well-being. You can make these relationships better as an adult. However, attachment patterns are hard to break because they were ingrained early on.

Aside from improving your financial literacy, therapy, and other forms of support can assist you in forming healthier habits.

Try to be aware of what might be influencing you if you want to alter your relationship with money. Financial advice on social media can be helpful and give young people more confidence to discuss money, but it can also spread false information and exacerbate anxiety.