It's like a rock in the pit of your stomach; a cold clammy feeling that spreads up your gut and momentarily stops your breath.
It's the awful moment when they tell you that your credit card is denied.
Or you open the mail and you find out that your utilities are about to be cut off.
Or the check to your kid's school bounces, or the IRS seizes your bank account, or your spouse comes home and tells you they lost their job, or one of a hundred other awful scenarios.
As you take in the information, you go from paralyzed to hyperventilating. It almost seems like it's happening to someone else.
It's when the finality of your circumstances becomes apparent and you have to face up to the facts; You're broke.
Sometimes it happens in public, like when a waiter quietly informs you that American Express has denied your charge and you realize that you have no other way to pay.
Sometimes it happens in private, as you and your spouse finally take a calculator to all the mountain of bills piled up on the kitchen table.
And sometimes it's the heart-breaking realization that you don't have enough money to pay for your kid's lunch card next month.
It's awful, it's gut wrenching, it's marriage wrecking, it's life altering and it's happening to more and more people every day.
If you've ever been there, or you're there right now, you know what I mean.
It's a panic like you've never known. All of a sudden, all the assumptions you made about your life are stripped away. Things you didn't even realize that you took for granted, like that you'd always have a place to sleep, enough to eat and a car to drive, now seem up for grabs.
It's in that humbling, humiliating moment that you finally look at the weary-eyed landscape worker counting out his pennies for a burrito at QuikTrip and you realize - he's no different than me. And neither of us are any different from the guy under the bridge, the kid in the shelter or the waitress living out of her car.
For the first time in your life you look at poor people and you don't feel sorry for them, you feel kinship. Instead of pity, you now feel empathy, because you finally understand - we're all in this together.
When we hear about someone else's troubles or see someone in less fortunate circumstances we often think, "There but for the grace of God go I."
But perhaps we're a bit off.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "There connected by the grace of God am I," meaning that we really are all one.
What happens to one of us, happens to all of us. The distance between our souls is not as great as we think.
Because it doesn't matter whether it's you, your neighbor or the guy at QuikTrip who doesn't make eye contact, when somebody is panicked about money, they should never have to feel alone.
Happy New Year. May the blessings we share sustain us as we navigate the road called life.
Lisa Earle McLeod is an author, syndicated columnist and inspirational thought-leader. A popular keynote speaker, Lisa is principal of McLeod & More, Inc., a training and consulting firm specializing in sales, leadership and conflict management. Her newest book is The Triangle of Truth: The Surprisingly Simple Secret to Resolving Conflicts Large and Small. (VIDEO)