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- Chronic financial stress changes brain function by making threat response stronger and logical decision-making weaker.
- Doomscrolling is like reward cycles in gambling, making harmful information-seeking habits stronger.
- High cortisol from money worries makes gray matter smaller and hurts emotional control over time.
- Too much financial news makes threats seem bigger even if the economy hasn’t really changed.
- Brain science techniques like mindfulness can retrain the brain to handle uncertainty better.
Market Anxiety: Is Doomscrolling Making You Sick?
The economy being uncertain is in the news a lot, and for good reason—it affects our stress, choices, and even how in control we feel. If you can’t stop looking at scary money news, and keep refreshing your feed even though it makes you feel worse, you’re not the only one. This worn-out feeling of being on high alert is a real reaction from your brain. Let’s talk about what market anxiety is, why doomscrolling feels so hard to resist, and how you can start to train your brain to take a step back and calm down—using methods based on brain science.
What Is Market Anxiety? The Psychology of Uncertainty
Market anxiety is more than just normal money worry—it’s a real mental state caused by outside economic things like inflation, joblessness, market crashes, debt limits, and talk of recessions. This kind of stress is situational, meaning it shows up because of real-world things, not just always being there like general anxiety.
Market anxiety is mainly about loss aversion. This idea from psychology says that losing money hurts about twice as much as gaining the same amount feels good. For example, losing $100 causes much more emotional pain than the happiness of making $100. This likely developed to help us survive—but in today’s money system, it makes us likely to overreact.
Also, ambiguity intolerance, or feeling stressed when we don’t know what will happen, is important here. Human brains like things to be predictable and under control. Sudden interest rate increases, stock market drops, or shaky job markets don’t give clear answers—only possibilities, mostly bad ones. When we can’t guess or control what’s coming, our brains see possible danger and become more watchful, sometimes too much so.
So, money stress isn’t just a thinking problem; it’s very basic. It turns on the oldest parts of the brain, which were made to deal with physical danger, not how the stock market is doing.
The Brain on Financial Stress
When money stress lasts for a long time, it doesn’t just affect your feelings—it really changes how your brain works. According to Brooks et al. (2013), constant money worries turns on the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, and turns down the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain handles things like planning, clear thinking, and thinking about the future.
This creates a bad cycle: the more stressed we are, the harder it is to think straight about money. Our ability to wait for rewards, figure out risks, or make plans for the future gets worse just when we need it most.
Over time, this lasting stress makes more cortisol, the main stress hormone. While cortisol is helpful for short-term danger, having too much for too long can hurt the hippocampus (important for making memories) and make areas of gray matter smaller. Gray matter is key for self-control and emotional balance. That’s why money stress can cause real problems with thinking, emotions being all over the place, and even health issues like high blood pressure and weak immunity.
In fact, studies show that people with ongoing money stress do worse on IQ tests, decision-making tasks, and tests of controlling impulses—not because they aren’t smart, but because their brains are too busy dealing with threats.
Doomscrolling: Neurological Candy with Psychological Costs
Then comes doomscrolling—a behavior that takes an already worried brain and makes it even more upset. Doomscrolling is the habit of constantly looking at negative news, especially on social media or finance apps, even when it makes you feel worse.
Why do we do it? In the brain, doomscrolling grabs the dopaminergic system—a part of the brain that turns on when we see something new, interesting, or possibly rewarding. Every time you refresh your news and see a new headline (“Recession fears rise,” “Stock market plummets”), your brain gets a shot of dopamine—not because it likes the news, but because it likes seeing something new.
This is similar to how slot machines work: not knowing what will happen next, plus sometimes getting a reward, can lead to addiction. Sometimes, the news might have a bit of good news (like markets going up a little), which keeps you coming back for more. This is called intermittent reinforcement, and it’s a very strong way to train behavior.
But, it comes at a cost. Vahedi & Zannella (2021) found that seeing news often, especially bad headlines, makes people feel more stressed. This feeling of stress then leads to worse mental health, like anxiety and depression. Simply put, doomscrolling makes your brain think danger is everywhere—even if your own life hasn’t changed.
The Anxiety Spiral and Information Overload
When things are uncertain—like a shaky market—the normal first thing to do is look for information. But, the brain can only handle so much. After a point, more information doesn’t make things clearer—it causes information overload. This is when you have too much information to really understand.
This causes a worse anxiety spiral: you look for money news to feel in control. The news makes you feel more at risk. You look for even more news to feel less at risk, but you just feel worse. It’s a losing game.
Each scroll makes you think “I need to stay alert.” With news available all day and night, notifications popping up, and social media focused on money, it’s almost impossible to turn off without feeling guilty or afraid of missing important news—what psychologists call anticipatory anxiety: stress caused not by what’s happening now, but by worrying about something bad that might happen.
This pattern not only wastes mental energy but also pushes people to make quick decisions, like selling investments in a panic or spending too much to feel better—actions that hurt long-term money health.
Why You Keep Doomscrolling (Even Though You Know It’s Bad)
So why do we keep doomscrolling even when we know it’s bad for us? The reason is our brain’s need for control and to find patterns.
Each update gives the illusion of control—you feel like you’re staying informed, getting ready for the worst, or taking action early. This feeling calms us down for a moment, even if it doesn’t really change anything.
Another reason is confirmation bias. When you’re already worried about, say, markets going down, you’re more likely to notice and focus on news that confirms those worries. Then, the website or app shows you more of what you click on, which keeps reinforcing the same scary story.
Also, the brain gets used to threats by creating habits—if you check money news every morning, your brain starts to expect and prompt that behavior automatically. Soon, it’s not even a choice—it’s a loop, starting stress as soon as you wake up.
Your Brain Hates Uncertainty—But It Can Adapt
Luckily, the brain’s reactions aren’t set in stone. Because of neuroplasticity—its ability to make new connections—you can actually train your brain to deal with uncertainty with more strength.
Building uncertainty tolerance doesn’t mean ignoring what’s real—it means retraining your nervous system to stay calm even when things are unknown. Methods like mindfulness meditation, acceptance-based therapy, and trying out small uncertain situations teach the brain that not knowing everything is okay.
Think of it as mental weight lifting: every time you stop doomscrolling, choose to be present instead of worrying about the future, or handle a little bit of uncertainty, you tell your nervous system that things are safe. Over time, this makes new normal ways of dealing with uncertainty—not as danger, but as something you can handle.
Science-Backed Techniques to Reduce Market Anxiety
To handle money stress and doomscrolling, add body-focused self-regulation to your daily life. These tools that start with the body help reset your nervous system’s alarm bells
- Box breathing: Simple and effective. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold again for four. Do this 4–6 times to reset your stress response.
- 5-4-3-2-1 grounding: Name 5 things you see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you smell, and 1 you can taste. This brings your attention to right now.
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Start at your toes and move up your body, tightening and relaxing groups of muscles as you go. This method lowers adrenaline and makes you more aware of your body’s internal state.
You can also use these with thinking-based methods that are proven to work
- Cognitive restructuring: Notice scary thoughts like “The economy is crashing—I’ll lose everything.” Question them: “The market is shaky, but I have a plan for the long run.”
- Gratitude journaling: Spend 5 minutes writing down things you can control that went well with money—sticking to a budget, not buying things without thinking, saving even small amounts.
These small, regular actions can make a big difference if you do them often.
Digital Boundaries: How to Quit Doomscrolling
Not having limits is what turns short-term market anxiety into constant overwhelm. To stop the habit of doomscrolling, set clear digital limits
- Scheduled content checks: Only look at news at two set times each day (like 8am and 6pm). Make a plan that stops you from checking all the time.
- Screen time limits: Use your phone settings to limit how long you can use finance and news apps to 10–15 minutes.
- Curated information sources: Stop following alarmist accounts. Sign up for one or two trustworthy newsletters that give you market news without being overly dramatic.
- Morning swaps: Instead of scrolling first thing in the morning, do something active but not stressful—five minutes of yoga, calming music, or reading a novel.
When you see less digital economic danger, you stop telling your nervous system, “It’s an emergency.” Then, your thinking brain can catch up.
Financial Resilience Without Obsessing Over the Future
Real financial strength isn’t about always being ready—it’s about being able to adapt. And that means changing your focus from trying to guess the future to what you can control today.
Set process-based goals that you can actually achieve
- Did you stick to your spending plan today?
- Did you make a smart money choice (even a small one)?
- Did you do a stress-reducing activity instead of checking the news too much?
Use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) ideas to find and question wrong thinking patterns like thinking the worst will happen. Thoughts like “I’ll never get back on my feet financially” can be changed to “Things are uncertain, but I’m taking steps.”
Practical strength also includes getting professional help. Talking to a financial planner can take away some of the guesswork and help deal with things your stressed brain can’t handle right now.
Connection Beats Chaos
Human connection is a stress reliever—a strong cure for the loneliness of money anxiety. Stress turns on the nervous system’s fight-or-flight response. Co-regulation—the calming effect of safe, supportive talk—turns on the parasympathetic system, helping us rest and calm down.
Reach out
- Share money worries with people you trust in your family or friends.
- Join online groups focused on mental health and learning about money.
- Talk to a therapist to understand deeper worries or unhelpful beliefs about money.
Even short moments of real connection can bring back perspective and make you less likely to try to feel in control by looking at too much information.
Living in a World of Uncertainty with a Healthier Mind
Economic ups and downs probably won’t go away—but how your brain and body react to money stress, doomscrolling, and uncertainty can really change. This change doesn’t happen all at once. But with regular actions based on brain science—like mindfulness, digital limits, body-focused tools, and kind thinking—you build adaptive capacity.
Every time you stop yourself from scrolling, every moment you calm yourself, every budget choice you make thoughtfully—these retrain your nervous system to be calmer overall.
You don’t have to run away from feeling bad, but you also don’t have to get stuck in it. Strength can be built, day by day. So next time you reach for the finance app first thing in the morning, stop for a moment. Your brain is paying attention.
What’s one small thing you can do today to feel more steady in an uncertain world?
