The Importance of Emotions in Mental Health and Money
I’ve lost track of how many times clients have told me, “I don’t want to feel bad anymore” or “I just wish I had more positive emotions".” That makes sense to me. Nobody goes out there on a day to day basis and shouts “I love suffering!” However, in therapy I encourage people to get more specific than just labeling emotions as good or bad. Ideally there would be no moral judgement in what emotion a person is feeling. They just are. When we see emotions without the moral judgement, we can open the door for more self understanding, more self compassion and learn to make healthier choices because of it.
What are emotions?
I typically start out by describing emotions with one sentence. They are just outputs for the inputs that we have in our lives. The stimuli we encounter (people, situations, events) are the inputs and the emotions (and physical sensations that come with them) are the outputs. I use this as a description because it helps take the “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts” out of feelings. I hear often from clients that “I shouldn’t feel that way.” or “I should be feeling (insert emotion)” and giving the description of emotions like that with the context they’ve given helps them reduce the moral judgement that comes with whatever emotion they are feeling at the time.
Why is this important?
This matters for both general mental health as well as our relationship with money.
When I am in a therapy session with clients I often see people who want to push away from painful feelings. That’s completely relatable. Avoiding or ignoring them doesn’t make them go away though. It usually makes them louder. It is like shoving everything in a closet when you don’t want to clean. It may work short term but eventually in the longer term everything is going to come spilling out. Emotions contain valuable information about our needs, wants and the histories behind them.
The same pattern shows up in finances. For example, many people are told by financial advisors that they’re “on track” or “have enough.” Yet they still feel intense financial anxiety. That anxiety may drive behaviors like over-saving or living in constant fear where they are afraid to spend any money, even when the numbers say otherwise.
When we explore context for those emotions they often make sense.
Maybe a person has grown up in poverty and more recently have come across financial stability.
They’ve been laid off out of nowhere and it took them months to find a new job.
They’ve dealt with health issues that have limited their ability to make an income or have experienced health issues wiping out their finances.
They have received cultural messages around “doing it all by yourself.”
Emotions Are Information
Emotions aren’t problems to fix. They’re signals. They can point us toward what matters, where we’ve been, and what we need now.
Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, sadness, or even joy, emotions are not obstacles to push away. They’re guides that help us navigate both our inner world and the practical realities of life including our finances.
If you find that emotions feel heavy, whether it is in your personal life or your relationship with money, therapy can help you understand how to work with them instead of ignoring or avoiding them.
