What is Money Trauma?
Remember when we, Millennials, would get shit on for buying avocado toast by “finance specialists” or just Bob, our Dad’s friend, who got an internship at 20, landed a job working at General Electric out of college, and now makes six-figures all thanks to his wife raising the kids at home while she worked full-time as well?
Is it still a thing that these “experts” actually believe that in order to achieve financial freedom you have to stop buying that latte everyday?
Because it’s not about the latte. I promise.
I mean, I do try to limit my latte spending, and cook at home as much as possible because eating out can quickly eat up your budget. But because my go-to trauma response is protest I would buy a fucking latte all the time when I was stressed, depressed, and/or anxious.
So, I got curious about this. Where was the desire to spend nearly $10 on a drink coming from?
In college, I would go to Starbuck’s (but today we’re boycotting Starbuck’s around here) as a break from class with my friends. I’d end up skipping class entirely sometimes to prioritize this connecting social activity. And as I got older, I moved away, and I no longer lived around those core friends, I found myself going to the coffee shop by myself and the latte served as a treat to cope with the horror of living in this capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in. Okay, we’re getting closer…
It turns out something else was happening below the surface subconsciously. I would make these little purchases throughout my week because I wanted dopamine.
Whether it was a latte or shopping for clothes, I found that these desires were expressions of addiction. Compulsive spending isn’t necessarily about the shopping it’s about seeking a dopamine increase. That’s why so often after getting home from the mall, I’d lay my new clothes out on my bed, and feel an immediate crash. This is what they call “buyer’s remorse.” Dopamine is all about new and novel. It’s about the chase. When the chase is over, when I was no longer sifting through racks of clothes, scanning up and down aisles for the prettiest finds, I’d feel low, empty, and unsatisfied.
Dr. Anna Lemke focuses on dopamine addiction and she talks about how “the reason we’re all so miserable is because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.”
Here’s my point: the numbers in our bank account are a reflection of more than our latte budget.
It’s really hard to make conscious financial choices if we’re dysregulated and/or operating from a default of scarcity, or if we are truly experiencing actual scarcity. Yes, It’s important to budget. Of course, it’s important to think about how a latte or avocado toast can add up.
*AND* it’s important to consider the layers of how our relationship with money can be traced back to our subconscious, as well as our childhood. It can be traced back generationally, societally, systemically. As the Trauma of Money program teaches we want to decrease shame and increase discernment. The key to this is learning how to regulate your nervous system and understanding the myriad of ways money trauma can manifest.
Trauma can occur when the nervous system is overwhelmed. When this happens it leads to us forming beliefs. You can think of it like you’re wearing sunglasses with colored lenses, and maybe they’re somehow rigged, scratched, or broken. Trauma can color your glasses, rig them, scratch them, or break them. Through this experience we start to see the world through our “new” lens, and this impacts our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, as well as the stories we tell ourselves about our relationship with money. Let’s talk about core beliefs, how to work with beliefs, and how to be discerning about beliefs.
It’s important to interrogate, investigate, and get compassionately curious about our stories. Ask yourself three questions:
What is your core belief about yourself and money?
What are my earliest memories of money that may have been painful or confusing?
What’s the core belief I want to have with money?
Maybe your core belief is that money is dirty. Maybe these aren’t even conscious beliefs. Like really sit with your feelings and beliefs about money. Maybe you logically know you deserve money but maybe deep down you don’t believe it. Maybe you don’t feel like you can trust yourself with money and money is evil and negative. Maybe you come from a background where the people around you had to work hard for money and so you grow to make money but you give it away because you don’t want it and don’t trust yourself with it.
Maybe you want to believe that you are trustworthy with money, and that you’re more valuable than money. That you’re good at handling money. That there is more than enough for you and everyone. The more money you have means you’re impacting and helping people and that you can hire someone and pay them a thriving wage.
Our capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal society has led us to believe that if we make money we’re taking from others. We’re conditioned to compete, take, and dominate. But we don’t have to participate and buy into these narratives and this way of being in relationship with money.
I personally don’t want the amount of money I make or don’t make to be tied to my value, confidence, worth, or perception of myself.
Throughout my life I was incredibly privileged to be born into an upper middle class family where I had all my needs met and more. My emotional needs not so much. To some extent, I experienced emotional neglect, and that would hurt my parents to say, but it’s true. There’s been some necessary healing there that I’ve undergone over the last few years, so that I can show up for my life, my needs, and my goals with more presence and confidence because that kind of neglect has absolutely impacted my ability to make money and build a business. To be clear, I’m not blaming my parents. I’m simply acknowledging that the way we’ve been cared for, or not, growing up can impact how we care for ourselves, or not, as adults.
I had a very avoidant and anxious relationship with money. I was told to always save and it felt like a precious resource, but because there was this subtle obsession and stress around saving, on top of a shame around buying “superfluous” things like accessories or make up, I ended up just wanting to blow my money immediately when I got it. When I started working my first job as a grocery bagger at 14 my relationship with money became clear. I didn’t like saving. It was like a subconscious protest of the way my parents taught me how to be, and that was kind of how I was my whole life. My bank account reflected this for better or worse.
In general, I’ve never been a fan of authority figures (hah!). I always had a sense of patriarchy growing up without the explicit language to name it. The way I was told to wear certain things and be a certain way as a girl damped down my true self-expression. This led to a kind of constant seething underneath (hello, Scorpio moon). At school I was a “good girl,” but I felt comfortable to unleash my suppressed rage the minute I got home from school. My spirit of rebellion was evident as a child and one of the ways this manifested was how I protested saving my money. As I got older this wasn’t exactly helpful because I was constantly living paycheck to paycheck. Because of my upper-middle class background, when shit really hit the fan, I had the ability to ask my parents to borrow money. This was something that made me feel incredibly shameful, but the cycle kept repeating.
I also grew up as a creative kid, writer, and had a dissociated relationship wth money because it reminded me of math. I had trauma from math class and numbers. Money always felt like this airy, intangible, pretend, and make-believe thing. Like…what was a bank account? I didn’t understand the way it all worked and I was scared of and resistant to it. Money didn’t feel good in my guts and bones. It felt intimidating, and it made me feel stupid so I didn’t want to “go there.”
I also never like the materialism and consumerism of our society, so money was always something i was like, “Ugh, why do we live in this society where we’re so obsessed with material things and money?!” I went through a kind of Beatles-obsessed, flower-frock-wearing, “Hippie-girl” phase in college to impress the cool, “Hippie-dude” bros who smoked weed and lived off campus.
So I’m going through this phase of my life and knew I needed to make money, but I got through with this attitude of it will work out. I’ll be fine. This was definitely informed by the fact that I knew my parents could lend me money, or I could move home whenever/if ever I really needed to. This was also my way of avoiding being an adult. I didn’t really trust myself or believe that I could be an adult. I was always kind of scared of how to make a sustainable living for myself, and also just wanted to follow my passions and dreams, and focus on my writing. I didn’t prioritize saving my money. I prioritized building my website and writing, and was scraping by in my 20s — not really happily or blissfully, but this was what I chose at the time.
Our relationship with money is layered. What also contributed to my relationship with money was the way I was told to follow my dreams. I left college with an english degree. I was working as a teacher, a climbing gym instructor, and a nanny. This society doesn’t pay those roles nearly enough. So, savings? Really? Without savings, I eventually acquired a few credit cards and starting accruing debt.
Growing up I was taught that debt was capital “B” bad, so the deep shame I harbored took a while to heal. All of this led me to feeling pretty irresponsible about my money. These days I’ve let go of the narrative that I’m irresponsible with my money. I just made different choices than my parents, and I had different goals. I didn’t want to “play the game” of capitalism so I just marginally played by just making enough. But I didn’t realize that I was actually deflecting money and rejecting it. I subconsciously made sure to never make an income over a certain amount. I never had more than a certain amount in my bank account, and there was a sort of reliance on my parents, which stemmed from a fear of being totally independent (this comes from my tendency towards anxious attachment).
As I learned about whiteness I came to think, “Well, I should just nanny and give all my money away to Black organizations.” This was a white savior complex. I needed to start healing my internalized white supremacy, and better understand what my role is in this world if i want to fight for Black liberation. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that martyring ourselves isn’t helping anyone no matter what our background. We can’t help anybody if we aren’t taking care of ourselves.
Money trauma can show up as beliefs like:
💵 money is bad/evil
💵 I don’t deserve wealth
💵prioritizing my financial health is selfish
💵being rich makes you greedy
💵there will never be enough
💵if I charge for my inherent skills I’m stealing from people
💵money requires painstaking work
💵I can’t trust myself with money
💵I’m not good with money
Money trauma can show up as actions like:
💰 shopping when stressed
💰 not looking at your bank account
💰hoarding
💰donating too much of your income
💰undercharging
💰constantly worrying about how you’ll pay the bills
💰panicking at the register
Does any of this resonate with you? Visit me on Instagram and DM me your thoughts, or shoot me an email at erin@erinkmonahan.com. I’d love to hear from you!
