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'money Panic' -- Why Do People Panic Over Money?
By Steve Slimm
'Money panic' is not something you hear discussed in the bus queue, or at your local bar. Yet panic over and issues relating to and finance is an extremely personal form of anxiety and panic, and is surprisingly widespread. If we were unfortunate enough to find ourselves caught in a tsunami wave, I'm sure the panic would be overtly shared by all; but the nature of panic over is something much more covert and subtle -- yet no less real, and no less pandemic.
The words 'panic' and 'pandemic' seem to be similarly rooted, yet apparently they are not. 'Pandemic' is from the Greek root words meaning 'pertaining to all people', ('pan' referring to 'all'). On the other hand 'panic' derives from the Greek god Pan, a cloven footed rural deity. Imagine you are were an ancient Greek walking home through the woods and fields late at night, fearing that at any moment you might be accosted by the spectre of Pan! This is panic -- that felt sense of fear and foreboding of an as yet unexperienced threat.
What is it about that causes panic? Why does panic exist as a very real, and yet totally subjective experience? Panic over or anything else is rooted in fear, and such fear is invariably linked to a previous experience, either personal or related by a third party. It's interesting we say 'third party'. Assuming you or I personally constitute the first party, who or what is the second? The answer has to be that itself is alluded to as the second party, as some kind of entity in its own right, (or Pan-like god?)
The fears relating to Pan in ancient Greece must surely have been fed by people relating their fears and panic to other people, sharing their real and imagined threatening experiences. Such panic would then be projected forward into future time, into future generations.
So where does own panic originate today? Why should you or I as rational 21st-century beings, used to dealing regularly with financial matters, (both beneficial and seemingly detrimental), having spent perhaps decades of life surviving and being okay -- why should you or I panic about money?
The origin of panic over and issues is not something readily discernible in our individual psyches. It takes more than a little conscious awareness and focused intent to get to its root. Any rural Greek who got him/herself out of the whole Pan panic thing, must have done so through specific personal
experience, combined with intelligent reasoning. Either of these two on their own would not be enough. But I would proffer that personal experience is the prime essential.
Could this possibly be why many of us seem to put ourselves into and through financial situations that tend to involve panic over money? And if so, could this possibly be some kind of unconscious bid to free ourselves from such irrational fears by facing them full on, rather than avoiding them, and eventually dispel our panic? 'Dispel' is certainly the right idea here, as it literally means 'to drive out', but maybe 'disenchant' would be even more apt.
Money can indeed appear to hold some kind of spell over us, involving all kinds of fears, panic, and anxiety -- that is, until we become disenchanted by it. To 'disenchant' can be defined as: 'to free from enchantment or glamour; to free from a spell; to disillusion'.
Does hold a spell over you? Are you held by its spell in some way? Or is it the lack of that holds the spell? Either way, it seems to be at the root. But I would postulate here that it is not itself, as a commodity, as an entity, that lies at the root of anything -- it is rather the place you and I assigned to money. In other words it is our projection of and not itself that is at the root of the problem.
Should you be inclined to panic over money, it is YOU yourself who gives power, who makes it into or even MONEY! If I panic over financial issues, it is I who is making some cloven footed daemon out of something that is essentially just a means of exchanging energy -- what we have come to refer to as money.
If we can come to clearly see purely as a means of exchanging energy we immediately free ourselves from any hold it might have on us -- that would ever cause us to panic.
It is only when we assign personality to (with a capital M), that takes on some kind of authority over us. We might well smile and nonchalantly dismiss various gods of the ancients, including the sly little Pan, but could we not unwittingly even now be creating even greater monsters in our personal financial lives? If we are assigning authority to the entity of money, then, like any god we make, it is bound to turn on us with a vengeance, creating panic, havoc and mayhem. And are we actually any different from those ancient superstitious people? Food for thought!
My name is Steve Slimm. I am an artist and musician living in Cornwall, UK. Having suffered tremendously with anxiety and stress over money for almost 2 years, I have put together an insightful ebook publication: "How to Let Go - and Let the Cash Flow!" designed to assist anyone struggling with money issues to gain personal awareness of money processes & recover speedily from stress and anxiety. I speak about my experience at MoneyStressAnxiety
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