"By day, he was a charismatic twenty-nine‑year-old marketing manager with a magnetic LinkedIn profile and a talent for storytelling. By night, he was dodging collection calls, ghosting his student loan portal, and panic-refreshing his credit card balance before trying to buy groceries. He didn't always live like this; it happened slowly. First came the student loans-he told himself everyone had them. Then the credit cards-just for textbooks, at first. Then Uber Eats, because he was too tired to cook after ten‑hour workdays."
"Research from the American Psychological Association shows that financial stress is one of the top contributors to anxiety and depression, especially among millennials and Gen Z. And when stress becomes chronic, it hijacks the brain's executive functioning, which makes it harder to plan, act, or solve problems. In other words: stress about money exacerbates financial problems. And avoiding dealing with debt doesn't mean you're lazy-it means your nervous system is overwhelmed."
Michael presented a polished professional image while privately struggling with overdrafts, missed payments, and mounting debt that triggered nightly alerts. Spending escalated gradually through student loans, credit cards, food delivery, a leased car, networking drinks, and vacations, normalizing concealment and shame. Financial stress produced avoidance behaviors like dodging collection calls and ignoring loan portals, which compounded financial problems. Chronic stress impaired executive functioning, making planning and problem solving more difficult. Shame thrived in secrecy, social withdrawal increased, and the nervous system became overwhelmed, turning practical financial tasks into sources of paralysis and further harm.
Read at The Walrus
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