At some point in your life, you are likely to experience grief.
Grief is not soley relevant to death. Big changes can bring about grief. Moving home, getting divorced or life generally not looking like you hoped are all things that can bring up the feelings associated with grief. And grief can impact more than your emotions. It can have an impact on your finances.
Why this is can be is both simple and complex. So, to start digging into the financial impact of grief, let’s take a look at how money is often connected to emotions.
Consumer Habits
In the modern world, consumerism abounds. And yes, it’s often connected to how you feel. Imagine for a moment that you’ve had a brilliant day. Perhaps you’ve been offered a promotion at work, your favourite team won the match or you’re just feeling in a particularly good mood. It might be that your default is to do a bit of celebrating. And that celebrating is likely to involve spending money.
Now, let’s reverse the scenario. You’ve made a mistake at work, your favourite team lost or you are just generally feeling stressed and frustrated. How likely are you to soothe yourself with something that costs money?
We’ve gotten to the point where we often opt for consumerism over connection. Yes, going out for a celebratory drink with friends has an element of human connection. But did you make that choice because you were excited to tell your friends about your success or did you make it because it involved going out vibes?
Same can be said about the bad day. Would you opt for a bit of retail therapy over calling someone to vent? Are you aware that this is what you’re doing?
Grief Amps It Up
Now, these scenarios involve emotions. Though one can argue that the emotions in here are nowhere near as intense as what will happen to you during the grief process.
The most known assessment of the grief process is the 5 Stages of Grief developed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. The stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. They don’t always happen in a straight line, and you often move back and forth through the stages. One day anger, one day bargaining, one day depression. Then back to anger, into depression again. It doesn’t happen the same every day and it doesn’t happen the same for every person. It’s an experience that will be unique to you.
When we are trapped in the grief cycle it can be difficult to see a way through it. Each stage comes with its own emotions, reactions and ways of coping. Given the way many of us already subconsciously use money to support or change how we feel, the intensity of grief can only make it harder to overcome that habit.
Understanding and Empathy
Purchases give us a sense of gratification that leads to an increase of dopamine in our brains. Dopamine cheers us up. Momentarily. By understanding the very nature of consumer habits and its chemical impact, it helps us appreciate that the cards are stacked against us. When all the messaging around you is that spending can change how you feel it’s no wonder that this habit is so commonplace.
Once we acknowledge that emotions come into play with our spending, we must start taking steps to combat that. This might include getting to a place where you accept how you’re feeling rather than distract it with ‘things.’ However grief makes you feel is right. Emotions aren’t always logical and grief is an individual process. Meeting yourself with empathy rather than judgement can open the door to creating change.
If you can get to a place where you can sit with your emotions, allow yourself to feel them without judgement and by feeling them allow them to pass, you are more able to resist the impulse to change how you feel. For if we are kind to ourselves, we are often more willing to put in the work required to make different choices.
Grief and Decision Making
When a person is grieving, their brain goes into overload processing the feelings and logistics that come up. Yet grief is much more than emotions. Mary-Frances O’Connor PhD and a leader in the field of prolonged grief explains that grief is“a complex learning process for the brain, which struggles to accept the permanent absence of a loved one.” (If you’re interested, check out Mary-Frances’s book The Grieving Brain for a look at the neuroscience of this process.)
Due to this cognitive overwhelm, grief throws our logical thinking off. It can reduce us to impulse and the feeling of need. When we are in the thick of it, we will do anything to change that feeling. Too often we are uncomfortable with discomfort. As a result, our survival instinct kicks in and we run the risk of making decisions whilst in an unhelpful frame of mind. Whether that sees us doing more impulse purchasing or perhaps just making a big financial decision without being able to see all aspects of it clearly. It’s important to check in with yourself if this is what you’re facing, and seek help and guidance as needed.
Yet there is also the flip side that grief creates decision paralysis. Our brains might be so overwhelmed that decisions on any level seem impossible. And if you are an executor of the estate, or a beneficiary of inheritance, there might be important decisions that need to be made. Some of which are time sensitive and some which can wait. If you find yourself struggling with decision making while grieving it can help to identify what can wait and what cannot. From there, having a sounding board for what to do might help.
Grief and Control
Grieving can also make us feel out of control. The very nature of how it comes in waves and in unexpected moments, as well as the intensity it can arrive with, is enough to destabilise a person. When this happens, we might look to control whatever we can. This includes spending. Noting the dopamine that flows when buying something, that boost of positive chemical plus the perceived control of making a purchase is the perfect storm for impulse spending. So, though we think we are in control we might not be.
If we end up losing control, we run the risk of making serious financial missteps. It might start small with one online shopping spree, but once we feed our feelings or distract from them with spending, it can quickly become a go-to habit for relief. When things around us feel out of our control, as the death of a loved one often does, it can see us trying to hold on to anything we possibly can.
So how so we manage the financial impact of grief?
Managing the Financial Impact of Grief
To provide deeper insight into the impact of grief from a psychological perspective, I’ve asked Lianne Weaver, therapist and the Managing Director of Beam Therapy, to share her knowledge with us.
Grief is described as one of the most complex emotions a human being can experience, it is so much more than just an emotional response. Grief impacts us physically, cognitively and neurologically. When we experience grief, we don’t just “feel” it, we become profoundly changed because of it.
Physically, grief can show up as fatigue, heaviness, sleep disruption, random aches and pains. Research has even shown that grief quite literally reshapes our heart (Mary-Frances O’Connor).
Emotionally, grief can create waves of sadness, anger, numbness, depression, guilt. Those waves can feel manageable at times and other times they take you under where you fear you may never reach the surface to catch your breath.
Mentally, grief rewires our brain. It impacts our memory, focus and rational decision making capability. Your brain struggles to make sense of a world where something so cataclysmic can happen and yet you are expected to function within it. The brain will dip into the stress response much more and decisions are likely to be based more on survival rather than the full picture.
This is where grief meets money mindset.
When your internal world is reverberating, your relationship with security, risk and value also shifts. You may feel the need to cling to security, or you may feel reckless and not care about material things.
Managing the financial impact of grief will require many of the same tools and techniques needed when managing grief generally. If you were to work with a grief therapist, it is likely they will guide you to not make any big decisions for around a year after the loss. This is because we know that grief causes us to make decisions that are far more emotional than logical. So here are some of my tips which can help you make better money decisions whilst grieving:
Pause
before making any big decisions. As grief can cloud our clarity, any rushed decision is likely to be more irrational than rational. Try not to make any decision hastily.
Reduce
complexity. At a time when overwhelm is high, try to make things simple wherever possible. Automate payments, simplify accounts and remove any unnecessary decisions.
Structure
your finances to avoid having to rely on willpower or motivation. Create simple rules and routines that require less brain power.
Be kind
to yourself. You are not operating at one hundred percent, nor should you expect yourself to. Acknowledge that you are grieving and know that it is ok if you aren’t as quick thinking as usual.
Seek help
whether from a trusted friend or professional, bringing someone else into your decision making process who has your best interests at heart will enable you to rely on their capability when you doubt your own.
Grief changes us and it requires us, even if only for a short while, to move at a different speed than we are used to. Accepting that and acknowledging the changes grief causes enables us to make the best decisions both financially and emotionally.
If you are grieving and would like additional support, Bigmores and their network can help.
We have financial mindset coaches who can help you assess and adjust any unhelpful financial habits that are born out of grief. Our financial coaches can also help you make sense of what to do with any inheritance that might be coming down the line. And our financial advisers can make recommendations specific to you and your circumstances.
If you are in need of emotional or psychological support, you can always reach out to Lianne, or search the Counselling Directory to find a counsellor or therapist to help.
Life is filled with all sorts of emotions. Needing help to sort through them and make sure they do not overwhelm you is human. Taking the steps to address them is courageous.
For guidance and support with your finances through the grieving process, fill in the contact form below.
Meet the Team Member: Gretchen Nichols
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