Thompson’s situation worsened when she was sexually harassed at work and had to leave her role. Her relationship also ended and she was forced to find a new job and flat.

“I became very unwell,” she recalls. “I didn’t sleep well, and that itself had a deep impact, making me more sensitive and out of control. I repressed a lot of it so it was externally unnoticeable but inside I was a wreck. I contemplated how I could end it all and sometimes wondered if ending my life was the only way out. I was physically terrified every time I heard the post and felt sick. I couldn’t open my bank statements and eventually turned everything to paperless so I didn’t have the daily trigger. I was living in a permanent state of shame and guilt and felt disgusted with myself.”

Shame and guilt are common amongst sufferers of financial anxiety, who often keep their problems hidden and blame themselves for their situation.  

A Lloyds study in 2019 found half of Brits said talking about personal money matters was taboo in everyday conversation, higher than sex, religion and politics. The same study found that 44 per cent of people avoid discussions about money and a quarter have lied to family and friends about their personal finances – usually, to hide debt.

“I see people who suffered financial trauma fall into depression, experience hopelessness about the future, have a negative and self-critical inner dialogue and struggle with feelings of guilt and shame,” says psychotherapist and financial therapist Vicky Reynal. “People who are excessively anxious about their finances might avoid the subject altogether and avoidance is a common defence because in effect it stops them from having to deal with it. Others, rather than avoid the topic, might find themselves constantly checking and re-checking their accounts – this takes on an obsessional quality and it’s driven mainly by fear and anxiety and an unconscious desire to feel in control.”

Living in scarcity for just three months – so having more money going out than going in – is enough to send people into an anxious state. 

“Scarcity creates a lot of pain and may even cause us to overspend because when we’re in that state of anxiety, we don’t have our full cognitive ability as it causes the pre-frontal cortex area of our brain – the part we need to control impulses and make good money decisions – go offline,” says Chantel Chapman, financial educator and co-founder of Trauma of Money.  

According to Chapman, the first step to dealing with anxiety is to find ways to calm down the nervous system and understand what triggers it. “We may not get to the place where the trigger goes away but if you acknowledge the anxiety and use tools to come into a more regulated system – through breathwork, CBT therapy or mindfulness techniques – then you enter a window of tolerance where you can start the financial literacy work of budgeting and accounting,” she says.

Reynal agrees, adding that making sense of the loss and trying to understand what happened “in a self-compassionate way, without judgement or criticism” and then mourning the loss and letting go of the past is key to moving forward. 

For Jones, talking about her money problems became the way to ease her stress.

“I spoke to my mortgage company who helped me with a payment plan, I returned the car and bought a secondhand one and over time I did a lot of renovations at my home then sold it,” she explains. “Once I did this the weight started to lift. I then spoke to Step Change, the debt management charity, who helped me put plans in place to get the debt paid. I made friends with money and invited it into my life by changing my mindset.”