Helpful Information
In Debt - Dealing with your creditors
The Insolvency Service has produced a guide: In Debt - Dealing with your creditors, to support those who find themselves in financial difficulty during the recession. The guide helps those with debt problems to understand what their options are, explaining what the alternatives are, how they work, their pros and cons and handy advice on dealing with creditors involved. The guide provides vital assistance to individuals with consumer or business debt problems, or a combination of both; helping them to consider their options.
Debt Stress Management
The Debt Advisor has launched a campaign to bring about a greater understanding of debt and how it causes anxiety, depression and generally effects peoples’ lives.
The Debt Advisor offers a unique service which covers both advice on debt solutions plus practical help from our resident psychologist and cognitive behavioural psychotherapist. Sue can recommend strategies to deal with the wider effects of debt which include anxiety and depression, relationship breakdown, poor work performance and associated health problems.
Our handy hints and tips on dealing with debt stress demonstrate some of these strategies. All new clients will be entitled to two half hour advice sessions from our resident psychologist.
BIOGRAPHY OF OUR PSYCHOLOGIST (click to view)
HANDY HINTS AND TIPS
Recognising, accepting and managing your debts can be a very stressful time in your life. It is vitally important to manage your stress effectively in order to avoid possible long term mental and physical health problems.
Not only must you deal with the practicalities of the actual debt resolution you must focus your attention on yourself.
It’s Time to Take 100% Responsibility
If you are in debt it’s absolutely essential that you accept 100% responsibility for your situation. It’s not the fault of your friends, partner, spouse or family. No one else is to blame. If you are pointing the finger of blame at anyone else you are playing the victim. You are the one who spent the money, handed over the credit card or signed the loan agreement. Harsh though this may seem, your financial situation is a result of some choices you have made. Accepting responsibility can be a challenge admittedly, but once you do it will empower you to take control instead of allowing others to pull your strings.
Apply the following equation to any situation in your life before you make a decision or response and be amazed at the enormous relief you will feel when you accept responsibility for where you are in your life.
E + R = O
E stands for the event that has happened in your life, example - debt, redundancy, relationship breakdown.
R represents your response to that event, example - you choose to respond positively to debt by seeking professional guidance or you choose to respond negatively by burying your head in the sand hoping your issues will spontaneously correct themselves.
O is the resulting outcome that happens as a result of your response. If you respond positively you are more likely to get a positive outcome and likewise, if you respond negatively then the outcome you achieve is likely to be negative.
Positive response:
You seek help and use the advice to overcome your financial challenges and improve your life circumstances.
Negative response:
Bury your head in the sand; wishing and praying for your debt issues to resolve spontaneously only to find that when you pull your head out of the sand, as you will inevitably have to do at some point, that your debts have escalated, your relationships are breaking down and your health is suffering.
Remember it is ultimately your choice how you choose to respond to your life events.
Get Adequate Sleep
Sleep is essential for the healthy functioning of the physical and mental self. Restless or inadequate amounts of sleep can result in you not feeling very well physically but may also leave you unable to function mentally too. This can result in you feeling unable to think straight, feeling confused and unable to make the simplest decisions. You can soon feel overwhelmed and unable to cope and things appear much worse than they really are.
In order to get a restful night of sleep:-
- Go to bed and get up at a regular time each day. This regulates your body clock.
- Avoid napping during the day. Save your sleep for the night.
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol especially in the evening. Caffeine is a stimulant. Both caffeine and alcohol will dehydrate you making you thirsty in the night.
- Avoid heavy meals in the late evening. Your body needs time to digest your food before you sleep.
- Start to wind down your mind and your body towards the end of the day to prepare for your sleep. Try reading, listening to calming music, take a warm bath with some essential oils, do a meditation.
- Avoid over stimulating the brain watching sensationalised television or reading the newspaper. Your brain will still be processing the information whilst you go off to sleep and wake you with nightmares when it is unable to file away the information or when your subconscious mind starts trying to make sense of it.
Physical Exercise
Taking exercise is a great therapy for managing stress. It need not be a painful process. Encompass it into your daily life. It will make a huge difference to the way you think and feel.
Exercise to the point where you feel you need to take much deeper breaths for about 20 minutes, 3-4 times a week. You will not only improve your physical health but your mental well being will improve as during exercise the body releases natural “feel good” chemicals called endorphins.
Stuck for exercise ideas? Try the following:-
- Take the dog out for longer and walk more briskly.
- Join a gym. Preferably a local authority leisure centre that doesn’t cost as much as a private club.
- Get out on your bike.
- Play a sporting activity such as tennis, badminton or football with your friends, colleagues or family. Group activity can be much more fun.
- Go swimming.
- Do the housework, ironing, hovering and dusting with much more vigour.
- Walk instead of getting the bus or train to work. If it’s too far, get off the stop before and walk the rest of the way.
- Go dancing. Salsa, Ceroc and disco are great for the body.
- Try something new like pilates, yoga or stability ball. Variety will keep you engaged and motivated.
- Take the stairs instead of the lifts
Eat a Well Balanced Diet
A nutritious, balanced diet leads to a healthy body that bounds with energy and copes with the challenges of life much more readily. Whilst under stress it is too easy to adopt a less than healthy eating approach. The saying “you are what you eat” is very true. A good diet rich in fruit, vegetables, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and water will enhance your physical and mental well being.
Avoid stimulants such as caffeine, alcohol and fizzy drinks.
Keep processed foods to a minimum in order to maximise your energy levels.
Eat foods with lots of colour. These will be packed with nutrients and give you much more vitality than the pale, dull and insipid processed and fatty foods. Fill your plate with as many rich vibrant colours as possible such as green sugar snap peas and cabbage, the rich orange of sweet potatoes and carrots and the vivid red of peppers and tomatoes.
Eat only when you are truly hungry for food. If you eat when you are not really hungry then you are comfort eating to block out the emotions of stress and anxiety. Comfort eating is likely to result in weight gain which in turn can lead to further emotional and physical stress.
Drink lots of water. It will help hydrate your body, keep you alert, flush out toxins from your body and keep your digestion working effectively.
Start to develop your self esteem
Your self esteem is your beliefs about yourself that you are a capable and worthwhile person. People with healthy self esteem are more likely to achieve success in life and manage their stress and their challenges effectively. They are the ones with the energy, the oomph, the determination and the motivation to do whatever it takes to create the life they want.
Start creating the life you truly desire by working on your self esteem. Here are just a few ideas for you to experiment with:-
- Learn how to assert yourself in order to avoid people taking advantage of you and draining you of your personal energy. Learn how to say “no” politely and firmly and you will find that you will be able to manage your stress much more efficiently.
- Think more positively by turning every challenge and negative experience into a positive outcome.
- Manage your time by making “to do lists”, delegating where possible and prioritising the most important jobs you have to do.
- Start to give yourself some space, relaxation and quality recovery time.
- Remember no one is perfect and you cannot please all of the people all of the time only some of the people some of the time.
- Get yourself a “Feel Good File”. This will be your victory log or your trophy room similar to those you find in many sporting venues likes Old Trafford Football Stadium. Reminding yourself of all the positive things you have achieved will help keep your motivation for success alive, especially at times when you feel things are not going the way you want. Create your own book or file and fill it with records of all your achievements.
- Write down every achievement you have had such as getting a job, saving up for a holiday, getting married, passing an exam, learning to cook a new recipe, completing a course of exercise classes, learning a new skill. Whatever it may be I want you to record it.
- Put in photographs and mementos of happy and fulfilling occasions. This will help create positive reinforcement when you are feeling low and remind you that if you achieved all this in the past then you are capable of achieving even more in the future.
Set Yourself Some Realistic and Achievable Goals to Work Towards.
Setting and achieving your goals is a fantastic way to build your self esteem. Set yourself goals for the short and long term. Make them achievable but also stretch yourself. Ensure they are meaningful to you and not just to keep someone else satisfied and be very specific about what you want to achieve. Ensure that the goal has a time limit on it. A good example of a short term goal will be “By June 14th 2011 I will have reduced my overdraft down to zero” A good example of a long term goal would be “By July 27th 2012 I will have met all my contributions into my IVA and all my debts will be settled in full.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up
A good debt stress management tip is not to beat yourself up about your situation. Ok you may have made some poor choices about your spending activities in the past but that is “up until now”. Now you are going to make better choices. We are all human, no one is perfect and we all make errors in judgement.
When you feel that you have failed at something remind yourself that you can learn from your experience. If you have made mistakes in the past this does not mean you have failed. You have in fact learnt a way of not doing it next time. You have discovered what does not work and now you know you need to do something different in the future. However, to repeat your behaviour time after time of over indulging/over spending and still expecting your financial problem to disappear spontaneously is unrealistic and self defeating.
Remember “if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got”. Now is the time to learn from your past mistakes and respond with healthier and more positive choices not only in terms of your debt management but also your life. Learn and grow from all your experiences.
Face Your Fear!
Avoiding confronting your problems, burying your head in the sand and/or continuing to spend money you cannot afford is often a sign of fear. This could be fear of reprisals, fear of shame, humiliation or guilt, fear of losing a relationship and very often fear of being seen as a failure.
Do not allow yourself to stay in your comfort zone. As the book by Susan Jeffers says “face your fear and do it anyway”.
F.E.A.R stands for false expectations appearing real. Often, especially when in debt and suffering from debt anxiety, small problems can appear huge and unmanageable, things get over exaggerated and minor life challenges appear catastrophic or sensationalised.
You need to put things into perspective - 85-90% of what is feared never actually happens in reality.
Remember during the time you spend ruminating over things, you allow your imagination to live through the feared event as if it were actually happening. Your mind and body experience the fear even though the event is only in your imagination. The subconscious mind does not know the difference between real and imagined. Each time you feel the emotion of fear to an imagined event eg. your house being repossessed, your physical and emotional well being are put under stress from the release of body chemicals which causes an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, the palms to sweat, the mouth to become dry, the digestion to become upset and breathing to become more rapid.
How much do you scare yourself by imagining what might happen? Most fear is self created and irrational and it will paralyse you, if you allow it. Write down what you are imagining you are afraid of to help empower yourself to overcome it.
I would really like to ……………………………, and I scare myself by imagining …………………………………………………….
This quote from Anais Anin will help you realise that you risk more pain staying where you are than the pain of actually facing up to what you fear.
“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”.
And good luck you will win!
The Next Step
All debt solutions should be very carefully considered; we will always provide you with the best advice to ensure you get a soft landing away from the burden of debt and can assist you with your debt sress management & dealing with creditors. Simply forward your details on our Contact Form and we will contact you. Alternatively ring us on our FREEPHONE ADVICE LINE 0800 085 1825 to have a full consultation with our specially trained advisors.
The Insolvency Service has produced a guide: In Debt - Dealing with your creditors, to support those who find themselves in financial difficulty during the recession.
Financial Information
All debt solutions should be very carefully considered. Fees will be charged if a solution is taken in order for us to set up and maintain your plan - all fees will be outlined during your consultation. For further information on fees, please see the FAQ section of the different solutions available. Retained payment may place you further into arrears. The Debt Advisor complies with the Consumer Credit Act and you have a right to a cooling off period of 7 days. It is likely that your ability to obtain further credit in the short term will be affected and this may also be the case over the medium to long term.