Do you ever wonder if there should be a 12
step program for people who have a problem with credit card debt? The idea might not be as ridiculous as it
sounds. The 12 step program is one of the
most successful therapy programs there is for helping people with
addictions. And in a lot of ways, our
love of credit and of buying things using our credit cards amounts to an
addiction.
And like people who are suffering with an
addiction, many times the biggest step forward is when you recognize that you
have a problem. Too often when someone
has the beginnings of a credit card debt problem, there is a sense of
ambivalence and “just let it go” because after all “everybody does it.” And when you have a problem that threatens to
become a huge problem, that is no time to be lazy and decide to just let it
continue because you think everybody does it.
That attitude of “oh well” is exactly why
the credit card companies are making record profits. If we all would get mad because they are
enslaving our family budgets, we would rise up and throw them off and the world
would change dramatically for us. But we
can’t fix the world. But you can fix our
own world and start at home, with your own credit card “addiction” and maybe
even use some of the principles of 12 step programs to get started.
Most professionals who work with people
needing 12 step programs will tell you that the biggest obstacle is getting the
troubled person to know they are in trouble.
We all live in a bubble where we tell ourselves and each other that
“everything will be all right.” 12 step
programs use tough love to tell the people who come there that everything will
NOT be all right unless they take steps to change their addictions because
their addictions will destroy their lives.
Well folks, we might need some tough love
when it comes to us not taking action to fix our credit card debt problem
before it destroys our lives. We have to
find a way to get over this idea that we should just endure credit card debt
and get motivated to do the hard work to dig ourselves out before the task
becomes insurmountable. In a lot of ways the problem is pride. We may suspect we have a credit card debt
problem but we don’t want to tell someone else we have one. We are proud and we want others to think we
always have it together.
That pride says “just take care of this
yourself” and it will keep you from talking about the problem with your spouse,
your family and then even going to someone like a credit card consolidation
company to find out how to get this problem under control. The big moment when an “addict” becomes a
recovering addict is when he or she recognizes that the problem is there, that
it is huge, that it could destroy their lives and that it is time to seek help.
Maybe that time has come for you. Maybe its time to not let your pride be so
stubborn that you wont turn and seek help from people who know how to help you
get this problem under control. So let
this little discussion be your “intervention” to give you a slap in the face
that the faster you let that pride go and seek some help, the faster the credit
card debt problem will go away and you will be back on a solid financial
footing once again. And once you get
this “monkey off your back”, you will never want to become enslaved to credit
card debt again.
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