Excerpt from Thriving in Sex Work: Sex Work and Money, a personal finance guide for sex workers, available now, wherever paperbacks and ebooks are sold.

The Overwhelm

In her book, The Energy of Money: A Spiritual Guide to Financial and Personal Fulfillment, Dr. Maria Nemeth writes how money worries can make us feel as though we’re “jammed up against life, like our face is being pressed against a pane of glass.” Struggling financially feels dreadful, and it can lead to all kinds of bad decision-making. Each of us carries that anxiety differently, coming up with reasons to ignore our finances: 

• Procrastination—I don’t have time, I’ll do it later.

• Helplessness—I don’t know how.

• Handing over power to others—I can’t decide, you decide.

• Denial—I don’t need to make a change.

• Forgetfulness—I keep meaning to, but I keep forgetting.

• Boredom—It’s no fun, it’s not my thing.

• Impatience—It takes too long.

• Hopelessness—It’s too hard.

• Disorganization or lack of concentration—I can’t think.

• Paralysis—I don’t know where to start.

• Excuses—I was going to, but...

• Fatalism—It’s impossible.

Sooner or later, though, we’re forced to act. So we stumble around in a haze of confusion, applying bits of wisdom we’ve picked up haphazardly, but with no real design. Maybe we try to tamp down our fears with hypervigilance, monitoring where every penny goes, but with no confidence. Or we focus like a laser beam on a single skill such as keeping our money hidden or spending no more than we need to, thinking that will keep us safe. But because we disregard our entire financial picture, we’re like swimmers caught in an undertow, paddling mightily in the direction of the shore, while slowly being swept out to sea.

I call these states of mind “the Overwhelm.” They may be common, but that doesn’t mean they’re healthy. If the thought of driving made you dizzy, you wouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car, now would you? But that’s exactly what so many of us do with our money every day. We know we don’t have a plan, the thought makes us sick, but we shrug our shoulders and say, “I’m just gonna wing it.”

We do not have to live like this. There is another way.