The Emotional Pain Of Economic Security – Pt. 1
Aug 19th, 2010 by admin
A recent analysis by the Rockefeller Foundation indicated that most Americans feel more financially insecure now than ever before in their lives, due to the effects of the current economic recession. And, worse still, they don’t believe things are going to change any time soon.
Data from 2009 indicates that more than 20% of Americans experienced a loss of 25% of their income. This is the highest percentage since these data began to be collected and studied. Since 2009 the economy has been getting progressively worse and the unemployment rate has steadily increased, without any indication of this trend slowing down or turning around. Savings have been mostly wiped out for a large part of the middle class, and the poor are getting poorer. Based on this, we may assume the percentage of Americans who lost 25% or more of their income will continue to increase.
How is this going to impact people emotionally?
The first element that creates a lot of stress is that of surprise. Nobody had predicted the intensity and magnitude of this recession. Nobody had expected it would last so long and its recovery would be so slow (if there is recovery at all.)
Young and old Americans alike have no personal experience of living through a recession as severe as the current one. Therefore, they had no way of preparing for it and, most importantly, THEY DID NOT BELIEVE IT WAS POSSIBLE. Everybody knew, intellectually, that things couldn’t go on the way they were forever. But there is a huge difference between knowing things intellectually and actually experiencing them emotionally.
It’s like when we know someone dear to us will soon die. Intellectually we acknowledge this reality. We can even convince ourselves that we are preparing for this event, so when it happens we will be ready for it. But, in reality, when this person actually dies we realize we had no way of anticipating the emotional impact of this loss. We had no idea of how it would feel like FEELING it. So, we get blindsided by how powerful and out of control our emotions are, and how destabilizing.
Well, something similar is happening to us now, as we try to grapple with feelings of ambiguity, confusion, fear and helplessness due to the current economic uncertainties. We look around for support, directions, comfort and reassurance, but there is very little to be had.
Like children, we look around for surrogate parents to reassure and help us regulate our emotions These are the politicians, the government representatives and other people in power positions we thought would be able to look after our needs and protect us from these kinds of frightening situations. However, they seem to be unable or unwilling to provide us with what we need. Even when they reassure us, their voices sound tentative and their body language not reassuring, so we have a very hard time believing them.
We are like a huge dysfunctional family where the parents are asleep at the wheel and failing to provide safety for its members. The children – all of us – always assumed they would take good care of us: that they would come through for us if/when needed, so we placidly continued with our comfortable lives, expecting things to go on forever. Now the parents are like the emperor without clothes, who is showing his nakedness for all to see, even though he still thinks he is hiding it. But we now know better, and because of it, we are scared and deeply hurt.
In the next blog post we will describe what can be done to improve this situation and feel less powerless.
Feel free to give us your views by clicking the “comments” button below.
