Thank you so much for starting this thread! I did the very same thing. I feel completely incapable of handling unpleasant conversations so every time I see a call from an 800 number I start panicking…who's calling? What do they want? I see a letter and I don't know what unpleasant information is inside it so I don't read it. It's almost a fear of the unknown coupled with social and financial anxiety (if that's a thing)…whenever I do finally open it and I read the bad news I find I can handle it. I also never paid bills late before…now I feel too anxious to log on and the knowledge that I'll have to check my account that day plagues me so much I put it off. I was also very financially responsible before this happened and had excellent credit (I had a relatively high-paying job and a retirement account at 23!) but I just imploded after a bad incident a couple years ago and I've been living off my savings and really struggling with coping ever since.

Here's something I learned that I wish I knew earlier: if you say this has been going for several months and you had payed consistently on time before this set in, know that many credit card and financial institutions have some allowance…some don't report a delinquency until it's more than 60 or even 90 days past due for instance, not 30. They might have cut you some slack at this point. I know this is more easily said than done but if you do something now it won't be as bad as if you continue to build it up and drive yourself crazy for say, a year, like I did.