My abusive relationship with money
I have a problem
I want to tell you about an abusive relationship I'm in. I know I should leave, and I want to, but I often get pulled back in.
No matter what the sum of money, any time there is some money ventured, I am anxious.
Upon reflection I have discovered that I come from a family where most of the members of the family do not know how to manage money. We always had a little bit more than we needed to survive, and a lot of problems have had a financial component.
The place where my problematic relationship really shines is when there is some risk in the financial venture. I don't know how to spend or invest money. Any time I try to use money, I'm emotive and often make irrational decisions. I don't usually make irrational decisions in the rest of my life, but no matter how long I consider financial decisions, I find it almost impossible to be rational.
How to see it
When I started suspecting I had a problem, I used a visualisation technique that I find useful for seeing relationships more objectively. It is used in an exercise called 'cutting the cord'.
Money for me was a big brown cord sitting just beneath my solar plexus, basically, my gut.
Whenever I approach money, it's my gut that has the final say. Not the centre of rationality.
I can think about other things that are in my life and there is no obvious chord manifesting. It's because I don't have an emotional connection to these objects. They're just objects, and I think about them either rationally or not at all.
For my friends that are well off and seem to be highly rational about money, I suspect their relationship is not as emotive. Me being in the abusive relationship I am, the less I have to do with it, the better.
What I've done now
Since this discovery, I have effectively abolished money from my life. I have my own company that I contract money into, and it pays me a modest wage that I use to live day to day comfortably. Large purchases require once off bonuses from the company, and they only allow one a month.
Since then, my life has been remarkably improved. There are of course drawbacks, I haven't worked how to take financial risks like spending money on a gamble or education, but I'm sure I could work something out. I'm not sure what the implications of a company gambling with funds is so I have just avoided it.
I'm at a point where I might have to take a wage again, and this scares the hell out of me. I love living without money, and I never want to go back.
Some people understand money, I presume they just don't have an emotional connection to it. Maybe I'll learn how to do this in time. But I just can't yet.
This is very problematic money and emotions, i sometimes feel the same way, altough i am much more used to living without money (mostly by lack of it), when there is some amount or alot, it may be badly spent, at least a percent of it, due to this rush or anxienty.
We need to slowly educate ourselves and then society will shape itself based on money, or lack of it.
This impulses and anxiety are consequences of our capitalist world, that makes us crave for products we don't want or need, just like fiat money itself ;)
So i think it happens wether you have plenty or little.
How the hell were you playing cards all those years?
Badly. Very badly.