Lesson 2 of 6 · The loop between debt and the mind
The engine is the not knowing
Here is the finding that surprises people most, and it is worth sitting with.
The size of the number is not what drives the worry. The not knowing is.
That is why somebody with a moderate, entirely survivable debt that they have never looked at can be in a far worse state than somebody with a larger debt they know the shape of. And it predicts the thing that sounds wrong until you have seen it happen: people often report that opening the letters is less bad than not opening them, even when the number is bad.
Not because bad news is pleasant. Because a known number is a fixed object and an unknown one expands to whatever your worst hour can imagine.
Lesson four takes exactly one number, chosen by you, and nothing else.
What the research says
Intolerance of uncertainty sits at the centre of chronic worry and separated people with generalised anxiety from others. With money the hard part is genuinely not knowing, which is why the work here is on the not knowing rather than on the arithmetic.
Sets out intolerance of uncertainty as a central component of chronic worry, and found it distinguished people with generalised anxiety disorder from others. The point that carries over here is that the difficulty is with not knowing itself, rather than with the particular thing that is unknown.
Dugas MJ, Gagnon F, Ladouceur R, Freeston MH (1998). Generalized anxiety disorder: a preliminary test of a conceptual model. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(2), 215 to 226 doi