Financial Crisis: Early Days

The Early Days of financial crisis is when the most acute urgency of the immediate crisis has given way to a new kind of difficulty: the sustained reality of what has happened and what comes next. Bankruptcy has been filed, or a crisis plan is in place, or some form of stabilization has occurred. The emergency decisions are behind you. What is not behind you is the full weight of what those decisions mean, and the long road that lies ahead of them.

This stage carries a specific kind of emotional complexity. There may be relief that the immediate crisis is addressed, alongside grief for what led to it and anxiety about what comes next. The shame that was so acute in the Just Starting stage has not resolved, but it has shifted: from the shame of crisis to the more sustained shame of living with the consequences of it. Many people at this stage find it very difficult to be honest with people in their lives about what has actually happened.

Connecting with others in the Early Days of financial crisis offers something specific: people who are navigating the same particular mix of relief and ongoing weight, who are not judging from outside the experience, and who understand both the practical reality and the emotional one. That combination is harder to find than it should be, and it tends to reduce the isolation that makes this stage harder than it needs to be.