For many people, the end of the financial year brings a particular kind of dread: letters from the ATO, receipts you can’t find, forgotten logins and forms that make no sense. For most Australians it is a few weeks of frustration. But if you live with a psychosocial disability or complex mental health challenges, tax time can do more than frustrate you. It can knock your whole routine off balance.
When most of your energy already goes into getting through the day, such as taking medication, showering, keeping the house in order and remembering to eat, adding financial paperwork can tip the balance. The mental effort, the stress of dealing with government systems, and the shame that often comes with being behind on paperwork can unsettle routines you have worked hard to build.
That is not a personal failure. It is part of living with a condition that affects how you manage everyday demands, and it is exactly the kind of challenge that psychosocial support and daily living assistance can help with.
Why EOFY Is Particularly Challenging for People Managing Mental Health
Doing a tax return or sorting financial documents takes focus, organisation, decision-making, tolerance of uncertainty, and patience with systems that are not always easy to use.
Conditions such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia often affect exactly these skills. A task that takes someone else an afternoon can stretch into weeks of putting it off, growing anxiety and self-criticism.
The Avoidance Cycle
A common pattern is the avoidance cycle. A letter arrives from the ATO or your accountant. You know you need to deal with it, but opening it brings a wave of anxiety, so you put it aside until tomorrow. Tomorrow, the anxiety comes with guilt about yesterday. The pile grows, and eventually the task feels too big to start.
This is not laziness. Avoiding something that makes you anxious brings short-term relief, which makes it more likely you will avoid it again. For people with anxiety, paperwork and deadlines can feel genuinely threatening, even when you know they are not dangerous.
Shame keeps the cycle going. Other people seem to do their tax without trouble, so you may conclude something is wrong with you, and then you don’t ask for help because that feels like admitting you can’t do what “everyone else” can. In reality, you are managing a condition that makes these tasks harder. Recognising that is not making excuses.
The Disruption of Routine
Often the bigger risk is not the tax itself but what the stress does to the routines and habits that keep you well. When financial worry takes up your energy, the first things to slip are often sleep, regular meals, exercise, time with people, and taking medication as prescribed.
You might skip your morning walk because you feel you “should” be doing paperwork, cancel plans with a friend, or stay up late going through bank statements. Each small change makes the next one easier, and within a few weeks your daily routine can start to fall apart.
How Psychosocial Support Helps During High-Stress Periods
Psychosocial support is not crisis care and it is not therapy. It is practical, day-to-day support that helps you keep functioning and stay independent when life gets more demanding than usual, and it adapts to how you are on the day.
At Lanara, every one of our support workers holds a university degree in psychology or a related discipline and has completed mental health and trauma-informed training. That helps them understand why some tasks feel impossible on a bad day, and how to adjust: offering more structure when you need it and stepping back when you need space.
Breaking Tasks Into Manageable Steps
One of the most useful things a support worker can do at tax time is help you break a big task into small steps. Instead of “do your tax”, the first step might simply be finding your myGov sign-in, with your support worker sitting with you while you do it.
The aim is not to do it for you. It is to be a calm presence that makes it easier for you to do it yourself. Often the barrier isn’t ability. It’s the anxiety that comes up when you face the task alone, and having someone beside you can make it feel more manageable.
Maintaining Your Routines When Everything Feels Chaotic
During stressful periods, your support worker can also help you keep up the wider routines that keep you well, even when you feel like dropping them.
That might mean helping you make breakfast at your usual time when you would rather stay in bed, or going for your regular walk together when your mind is racing.
Consistency helps. When everything else feels unpredictable, regular visits from someone calm and non-judgemental can be steadying. We aim to keep visit times consistent so you know what to expect.
Reducing Isolation During Stressful Periods
Stress often makes us withdraw: cancelling plans, not answering the phone, staying in. Rest matters, but complete withdrawal often makes mental health worse.
Time with a support worker is a kind of connection that doesn’t ask you to perform. You don’t have to pretend you are fine or be good company. You can be honest about how you are feeling, and that can help you stay connected when everything else feels like too much.
Daily Living Support: The Practical Foundation
While psychosocial support helps with the emotional side of stress, daily living support keeps the practical side of life going. When anxiety or overwhelm takes your energy, even cooking, cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping can feel too hard. You can do these things; stress just leaves less energy and motivation for them.
A support worker can work alongside you, at your pace, so you don’t come out of a stressful period to an empty fridge and a home that adds to your distress. Needing help with daily tasks during a hard time says nothing about your worth. It reflects how much you have on your plate right now.
The Connection Between Environment and Mental Health
Many people find that a cluttered, disorganised home adds to feeling overwhelmed, while a tidier space feels calmer and more in control.
When your capacity is lower, help keeping your home in order stops household tasks piling up and becoming one more thing to avoid.
Practical Assistance with Financial Administration
Support can also help with the paperwork itself. Your support worker is not an accountant and doesn’t give tax or financial advice, but they can help you sort documents, sit with you while you make phone calls or use online systems, or simply keep you company while you get through it. You stay in control of your own logins and passwords.
Free help is available too. The ATO’s Tax Help program runs from July to October each year, with accredited volunteers helping eligible people earning about $70,000 or less with simple tax affairs lodge online. To book, call the ATO on 13 28 61. If you lodge your own return, it is usually due by 31 October. If you use a registered tax agent, contact them before 31 October and you may have longer.
Often, having someone beside you is enough to break the avoidance cycle. The task is usually less difficult than your anxiety says it is.
Strategies for Managing EOFY Stress
Alongside support, there are practical things you can do to reduce the impact of tax time on your mental health.
Acknowledge the difficulty. Simply naming that this period is hard for you, without judging yourself, can take some of the pressure off. Finding tax time stressful does not make you weak.
Set limits on the task. Instead of letting tax worries take over your whole day, set a short, fixed time to work on it, such as 20 minutes on a Tuesday morning with your support worker. Outside that time, let yourself put it aside.
Look after the basics. Sleep, food, medication, movement and time with people matter most during stressful periods. They are not rewards for finishing your tax. They are what make finishing it possible.
Tell the people around you. If you have a support worker, let them know tax time is hard for you. If you have a plan manager or support coordinator, tell them too. People can’t help if they don’t know you are struggling.
Be kind to yourself. Progress isn’t always steady. If you have a bad day, avoid the task or skip your routine, it is one day, not a disaster. Tomorrow is a fresh start.
Count small wins. Opened one envelope? That counts. Logged into myGov without finishing anything? That counts too. Each small step weakens the avoidance cycle. The goal is progress, not perfection.
You Do Not Have to Navigate This Alone
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: struggling at tax time does not mean you are failing. You are managing a condition that makes some parts of life harder, and there is no shame in asking for support.
Tax time will pass. The letters will be answered and the forms lodged. In the meantime, you don’t have to push through it alone.
At Lanara, our psychology-informed support workers can help you keep your routines going, sit with you while you tackle paperwork, help you keep your home in order, or simply be a calm presence on a difficult day.
If you are in Sydney and would like to talk about how psychosocial or daily living support could help, at tax time or any other time, reach out to Lanara for a no-pressure conversation. We support adults across six areas of Sydney, from the Inner West to the Eastern Suburbs.