Managing money and mental illness

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV or anywhere else. The advice in this post is based on my experience and my experience alone. If you are struggling with mental illness, please see a mental health professional or your family doctor for expert, professional help.

Up until a few months ago, I was ashamed to admit that I have a mental illness. The stigma that comes along with it, and the looks of pity, concern, and fear from others, just wasn’t worth the disclosure. So I kept it to myself. Although looking back, I probably did a pretty poor job of hiding it. Anyone close to me knew something was wrong and I’m pretty sure strangers thought I was just a basketcase. I was like the kid wearing a sheet and telling people I’m a ghost; everyone knew I was lying, they were just too polite to say anything.

But now, thanks to an amazing support system, I’m fine with telling people what’s wrong with me. Why? Because I’ve decided there’s no shame in it. I can’t help what’s wrong with me. I liken it to my gestational diabetes. I did everything I could to prevent it but my body didn’t care. It was going to give me the disease regardless of my efforts. My depression and anxiety are the same way. And there’s no reason to be ashamed of something I can’t control. Besides, there are so many people like me that it’s almost the new normal to be completely fucked up.

Anyway, as a result of my therapy, I’m working on new behaviors to try, particularly when I’m anxious. I’ve talked about my distractablity list before. Let me tell you, that list, combined with my meds, have done wonders to calm me down. It’s also worked to help change some of my financial behaviors as well. You see, when I was in the darkest part of all of this, my finances almost crashed and burned. I forgot to pay some bills, couldn’t stay organized, almost overdrew my account due to lack of attention to my checking account, and a whole host of other problems. It was ugly. And, as a financial writer, it was embarrassing.

Now that I’m in a better place, I’ve had to readjust some ways I manage my money so that if I ever get really bad again, my finances don’t fall apart. A few changes I’ve made include:

• Setting up autopay for pretty much any bill I can. Since I know our pay schedule and due dates, I was able to go into approximately 2/3 of our billing accounts and set up automatic withdrawals for those bills. This prevents me from forgetting to pay or paying late. For a long time, I didn’t want to do this because I was afraid of the money not being in the account as well as an irrational fear of not receiving credit for paying the bill (as in, the company doesn’t withdraw the money and then tells me I didn’t pay). But I’d rather deal with one headache phone call than screwed up or shut off utilities.
• Using the reminders on my phone. I’ve always had a problem returning things like library books and DVDs on time. But it got really bad. We’re talking weeks late. I would get the reminder email and then…ignore it. Then I’d forget until my library sent me a nastygram that I owed them $5 or whatever on my overdue books. I was even forgetting to renew my daughter’s books. To combat the problem, I use the reminders feature on my iPhone with the due date. Since I’ve started doing this, I have not returned anything late. No more stupid tax!
• Asking for help. While it’s still primarily my job to pay the bills and manage our household finances, I’ve had to ask my husband to step up a little bit. There have been certain things, like our taxes, that I just couldn’t deal with. We owe some money and the thought of having to deal with the IRS made me freak out so I just left it to him. I was afraid of what would happen, letting go of some control but you know what? It worked out just fine.  Asking for help in dealing with our finances has been hard but he is my husband. We’re supposed to work on it together.
• Accepting that’s it’s okay to make mistakes. This has been the most difficult one to do. I loathe making mistakes, especially when it comes to something I’ve been doing my entire adult life. I would beat myself up for missing a payment or forgetting a check at home. Let me tell you, that did not do anything to help the situation. In fact, it made it substantially worse. Because then I’d spend a week dwelling and obsessing over a mistake. That’s not healthy. So I’ve had to teach myself that I’m not perfect. It’s fine that I messed up. No one got hurt. So I had to pay a few extra dollars to rectify the situation. It could be worse.
• Knowing my triggers. This doesn’t have to do so much with paying bills and those related activities as it does keeping my spending under control. I’ve had to learn to recognize what people, places, and situations cause me to spend money. I’ve also had to learn to give myself permission to spend money on an occasional soda or lunch or book. By learning these parts of myself, I don’t go on a spending binge and I can keep myself in check when I’m in the situations that trigger my desire to spend money.

If you’re experiencing your own issues around mental health and money, talk with your therapist or a close friend or family about ways that you might be able to help yourself.  It really does work. By doing this, I’ve relieved myself of a great deal of anxiety. Knowing that I can keep my finances under control even in my darkest days means that’s one less thing to worry about.