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For much of my adult life I was burdened with having poor credit. Falling into debt felt nightmarish line ghost of past bad choices always trailing behind me, Not even breaking up with a boyfriend left me as depressed as I was for the five years after I ruined my credit. I learned line hind way that playing fast and loose with money is dangerous, not just financially but also emotionally.

As alone as I felt at the time, I've since discovered that many Black women from all backgrounds have suffered from bad credit at one time or another. This is true for other races and ethnicities, but there are reasons that we in particular fall prey to this. "Black women don't meet the criteria of being the so-called right gender and race. To compensate, many of us try to bolster our sense of identity and self-worth by buying things that somehow give us a sense of worth and self-esteem," says Linda James Myers, a psychology and African-American studies professor at Ohio State University in Columbus "The key is to reverse the faulty formula that has us trying to define our worth by external criteria like how we look and what kind of car we drive."

A Family Affair

When I began to examine my behavior, I realized that most of my family members struggled with credit issues, too. I remember sitting around the dinner table during holidays, laughing hysterically at a relative's dramatic tale of how he or she had cursed out some annoying creditor calling for a payment. In my young mind, paying bills on time was not nearly as much fun as not paying them.

Still I got off to a great financial start. I juggled five credit cards in college and always paid the entire balance on time each month. Because I had part-time jobs and made good money, that was fairly easy to do. Besides, I was very conservative in my spending then. It wasn't until I graduated in 1994 that things went wrong. I was malting a pitiful salary as a paralegal--a job I hated. Buying expensive clothes and shoes made me feel better when I couldn't figure out how to move forward professionally. Most months, I'd spend about $1,000 on clothes--while earning only $300 a week.

Soon my credit-card debt grew to about $8,000. I also blew off my student loans. After all, I figured I owed tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, and it would take years to pay off, so it could wait. I spent the little money I had on clothes and travel, extras I refused to sacrifice because they made me happy at a time when I was generally unhappy. I was in a vicious pattern of purchasing to make myself feel better and being miserable as my expenditures spiraled. Ashamed and unsure of bow to break the cycle, I continued to shop and avoid my bills. Denial was my best friend.

Eventually I could no longer ignore the debt. My cards were charged to the limit and since I had stopped paying the bills, I could no longer use them. The letters from Visa and MasterCard flooded my mailbox. The creditors who called were alternately sympathetic and truculent. They even harassed Ma, my poor grandmother, whom I had listed as a contact on my student-loan application.

And there were other reminders of what a mess I'd made. I couldn't get an apartment without my father's cosigning. I couldn't make hotel or airline reservations with no credit card. Then, when I finally got a job at a newspaper--a job I had wanted for some time--I got called out by my boss because my application for a corporate card was declined. At that point, deeper shame set in. Family members knew I was shirking my responsibilities, and I imagined that everyone at work knew, too. For at least a year I had to pay my corporate expenses out of my own pocket and wait for reimbursement. And that meant other bills were held up. The cycle continued.

I eventually gravitated to purchases that didn't require a credit check, like prepaid cell phones. Here I was, an Ivy League educated woman living like someone on the lam. At 26, I was a little more settled in my journalism job and feeling more confident professionally, but I couldn't do anything on my own. I felt as if everyone-but me--had her act together.

Secrets, Lies and Suffering

The discomfort that comes from ruining your credit extends beyond just getting rejected for a mortgage. There are physiological repercussions from constantly being anxious about calls from creditors or a visit from the repo man. Some psychologists say that people dealing with bad credit often gain or lose weight, suffer from insomnia or anxiety, and get depressed. On Saturday mornings, my heart would race each time the phone rang because that's when creditors usually called. For two or three years I didn't answer my phone then.

"When you ruin your credit and are ashamed of it, you want to keep it a secret. So it becomes a vicious cycle of lying, shame, secrecy and covering up, which leads to more shame," says Brenda Wade, Ph.D., a family psychologist in San Francisco and coauthor of What Mama Couldn't Tell Us About Love: Healing the Emotional Legacy of Racism by Celebrating Our Light.

Credit and Codependence

Unlike me, some women are paying the price for other people's mistakes. Most of us have girlfriends whose credit was ruined after they helped friends, partners and/or family members get a loan or credit card. Cheryl Smith, * a 39-year-old nurse from Brooklyn, continually let other people use her credit. "I've been a nurse for 17 years, so I'm a nurturer and caretaker by profession and nature," she says. But while she was being "kind" and allowing people to abuse her credit, she ultimately hurt herself. "You might tell yourself you're helping out a friend, but you are really being codependent and setting yourself up," cautions Wade.

Smith didn't initially see it that way. She not only took her boyfriend out to party and eat regularly, but she also used her credit to secure a loan for a $5,000 motorcycle he wanted. The same boyfriend told her she shouldn't pay her student loans because they were eating up too much of her cash flow. She admits now that she wanted to make him happy. "I wanted the relationship to work more than I wanted anything else," says Smith.

Frequently when a woman spends exorbitant amounts of money on a man, it's not just out of benevolence. E. Carol Webster, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, says that some Black women overspend as a way to buy love and affection. When it comes to Black men, we sisters often convince ourselves that the world is tough on them--hence their poor financial state--and we try to do whatever it takes to help them.

As Smith's debt grew, it occurred to her that listening to her boyfriend's advice not to pay bills was damaging her life. When she expressed concern about her growing debt, he shrugged it off. It finally struck her that if he didn't care about her financial well-being, he probably didn't care that much about her. Their relationship ended.

Between student loans and credit-card debt, Smith owed about $100,000. But with her man out of her life, she vowed to get back on track. By working overtime, Smith made about $98,000 a year. This put her in position to cover her expenses and begin making a significant dent in her debt. Within a few years, she had paid off her five credit cards. Those zero balances let her allocate a whopping $1,200 per month to her consolidated school loans. Most important, she has sworn never to let others use her credit.

Getting Free of the Debt Burden

People who have bad credit don't have to feel--as I did--that there's no hope, according to Christopher M. Pirtle, a financial adviser at the Peake Financial Group in Silver Spring, Maryland. There's a way out of debt, if you choose to take control of the situation.

"The first thing I recommend: People shouldn't beat themselves up over money they owe," says Pirtle. "The beautiful thing about credit is that it can be fixed by taking the right steps." More people than you realize have had the bad-credit blues and have overcome them, so there's no point in being ashamed.

As for me, I got tired of not answering my phone on Saturday mornings. But more than that, several friends whom I knew had struggled with bad credit at some point had cleaned up their act and now owned homes. So four years ago, at 27, I made a list of my debts and moved back in with my mother, who barely charged me rent; that let me put about $300 a month toward paying off my credit cards. I owed $300 to $500 on each, and they took about a year and a half to pay off. The monster was my American Express bill, at a hefty $5,500. I used one year's tax refund and an interest-free family loan (which I paid back in a year) to pay it off. I consolidated my student loans and rebuilt my credit with a secured credit card. And I came clean about what I was going through to my friends, my family and my boyfriend, it was time to forgive myself and move on.