From Highs to Lows — And Back Again

By Yaacov Weiss, LCSW

*He sat across from me looking worn out. Not tired in the physical sense, but rather in the emotional sense.

“I just got back from vacation,” he began, “and I’m sick about how much money I spent. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I checked my credit card statement. Now, instead of remembering the fun we had, I just feel depressed. How am I ever going to make the money I need so that I can have a vacation and not regret it afterwards?”

Vacations are supposed to be fun and restful, but for him, they always came at a price. While he was away, he had given himself permission not to think about his financial worries. With a credit card, it was easy to shut out reality. But when the bills came in, it hit him like a punch to the gut.

“All the joy I felt disappears in an instant,” he admitted. “It’s like I swing from one extreme to the other.”

As he described it, I could see the pattern clearly. In the highs, he spent without thinking, pushing consequences out of his mind and doing what felt good in the moment. And then came the lows. When he saw the bills, it all came crashing down into despair, shame, and bitterness. He lived on a pendulum, always swinging, never resting in the middle.

“I just wish life could be smoother,” he sighed.

I sat with him in the moment. It is difficult when our reality does not live up to our wishes. He just wanted to have a vacation without needing to calculate every dollar spent. Is that so bad? After a few moments, I suggested we take a step back and map things out. On the whiteboard in my office, I drew a line down the middle. On one side, I wrote “good.” On the other, “bad.” Then I asked him to list the major aspects of his life and place them where he felt they belonged.

Slowly, we filled the board. Family and friendships went in the good column. His marriage too. With his kids it was mixed, some aspects were good, others needed help. His belief that he could make a lot of money in the future was strong and went on the good side. His current financial stress however went to the bad side- he was barely able to pay his bills. He paused often, thinking carefully before each placement.

When the exercise was done, we looked at the board together.

“What do you notice?” I asked.

He studied the two sides for a while. “I guess my life is a mixed bag,” he admitted. “But when I’m up, I only focus on the good. And when I’m down, I only see the bad. I never see it all at once.”

“That’s exactly it,” I told him. “Our lives aren't all good or all bad- they are a mixed bag. We need to learn how to hold the whole bag at the same time. The truth about your finances, according to what you are telling me, is that on the one hand, you have potential to make more money than you do but on the other hand, at the present moment you can barely pay your bills. I'm wondering if when on vacation you subconsciously focus on the potential part of you and imagine yourself as the wealthier version of yourself, forgetting the present situation. Then when you get home, reality hits you, you forget about the potential and focus exclusively on the present.

He nodded slowly, the insight beginning to take root.

The work, I explained, is learning how to integrate both sides. To know that the good, the bad and the in between exist together, all the time. When we can hold them simultaneously, we will no longer swing wildly between extremes.

“It’s not about pretending the bad doesn’t exist,” I said. “And it’s not about denying yourself hope. It’s about carrying the whole truth, all at once, making decisions and acting upon them with the whole bag in mind. That’s what makes us steady.”

He looked back at the whiteboard. “If I had done this while I was away, maybe I wouldn’t have spent so much,” he said. “And maybe I wouldn’t feel so crushed now, either.”

We did an experiential exercise to help him synthesize these truths together in a way that does not overwhelm him. It was an important moment. He began to see that the pendulum needn't be his fate.

The next time he takes a vacation, my hope is that he will remember both sides of the board. That the thrill of freedom and the reality of finances can live side by side. We may have not figured out in this session how he can make more money to support expensive vacations but we hopefully figured out how he can remember to spend within his means and enjoy himself at the same time.

*Details may have been altered to protect confidentiality