How Therapy Helped Me Use My E-Fund Guilt Free

So, funny story. I was at work the other day when my husband texted me. My lovely doggo didn’t get the memo that drugs are bad for you, and she ingested an entire bottle of ibuprofen. My husband caught her as she was gnawing on a second one. We still don’t know how she figured out how to open the medicine drawer or what possessed her to try and poison herself, but we do know that the two days she spent at the vet’s office cost $1100. Yes, $1100. And that’s after I negotiated it down from $1,700. 

That’s not a small chunk of change. In fact, it’s ~10% of our emergency fund. And it hurt to spend it. Not because the cause wasn’t worth it, saving doggo’s life is 100% worth any money I’ll ever have to spend.  And I’d pay that much again tomorrow if I had to (yes, I just knocked on wood that I wouldn’t have to). She’s my joy and also my responsibility. It would be irresponsible for me as a pet owner to not take care of her when she does stupid things like do drugs. 

But still, spending that money hurt.

Why? Something else was psychologically at play when I dipped into my emergency fund. It was the deep-seated feeling of failure. That the act of using that money, when it was an emergency, was failing. At what, I’m not sure. Life, maybe? At keeping her from harm’s way? Yeah, that too.  But more probably, it was a brutal coming to Jesus moment where I announced to my wallet that I am not perfect. That I make mistakes, big epic mistakes that cause harm to my doggo and my wallet. 

And that stuff sucks, folks. 

We need emergency funds. They’re the buffer between us and credit card debt, or us and homelessness, or us and a variety of other terrible circumstances. But we like to have them in case of the theoretical what ifs… When we actually need them, though, it’s a whole other ball game. They hurt to use.

The common narrative is that you’ll feel relief.

And I did, for a split second, we were going to be okay. And then I saw the initial vet bill, and I panicked. Sheer, oh my god we’re going to lose everything panic. Even knowing we had plenty, that we’re inching our way up to the middle class. In fact, we’ve been saving for the past two years to cover emergencies like this. Even knowing all of that, I still wasn’t able to feel relief. Instead feelings of stress, guilt, and re-configuring the entire year’s money goals wafted in and out of my head and my toes froze. 

And I’m not altogether proud of that moment. It’s hard to be face-to-face with your own prosperity and still feel like you’re grasping at scarcity. That I shouldn’t be using these funds because I haven’t actually earned them. I have earned them. My husband has earned them. 

We have a right to use the money that we have collected – and we have a right to do so without guilt. 

Insert Where My Therapy Helped Me Process

There’s a CBT technique called challenging self talk that I’m learning in my trauma recovery class. It’s to take a negative repetitive thought and turn it on its head. 

I’ll admit, I’m not very good at it. It’s easier to live in the negative thought patterns of not enough that I’ve used to survive. But this time, I didn’t. 

This time, I looked at the guilt and shame and I reminded myself that it was okay – necessary even – to spend an obscene amount of money for something dreadfully important. And that the feelings of guilt that I had were okay to feel, but that they were misplaced. 

Doing this therapy exercise helped me to dig deeper into my money philosophy. 

I’m afraid of not having enough. I’m afraid of living paycheck to paycheck. I hate feeling unsettled financially. Knowing that is important. Knowing that is the first step to changing a scarcity mindset. I’m still working on it. I’m still uncertain about how we’re going to bulk up our emergency fund again (even though my side hustle will get it back up to full in no time). But I’m not letting myself fear that missing money anymore. 

Doggo is back from the vet. She’s happy and healthy and all put together now. We’ve changed where and how we store our medicine so hopefully she won’t get adventurous again. Our emergency fund is still hovering at around $8,000 (I took out a little extra in case there were extra expenses we needed to pay and then decided to just chuck it all at the credit card anyway). But we’re safe, we’re happy, and we’re learning not to be afraid of life’s curveballs. 

I don’t talk a lot about therapy on the blog. It’s a pretty private and personal part of my journey. But therapy has helped me in a lot of little ways, and it’s tumbling into aspects of my life I wouldn’t have initially expected.