How do You Know you Have Money Trauma?
I'm sometimes asked a puzzling question by the South African media - how can people know that they have an issue with money?
The assumption is that people don't know they’re struggling financially.
Or that people have lived their whole lives with money drama so they’re okay with feeling stressed and anxious about money.
Or that people stay in toxic workspaces because of money and they don't know that those spaces are toxic.
I don't believe this.
We know when something is not right, when we’re struggling financially or staying in jobs we don't like because of money, we just choose to ignore that.
We all know when something is off and not working - we just choose to shut off our gut and pretend otherwise.
Ignoring something and pretending it's not an issue and hoping that pretense will lead to a resolution, is NOT the same as not knowing something.
We know when we’re struggling financially or staying in jobs just for the money!
This pretense and need to shut down that inner voice, may even lead you to develop irrational coping habits when it comes to money:
🩸You may force yourself to power through the awful misaligned job, to cover up the tears with makeup when we get to work
🩸You may be using one credit card to pay off the other credit card(s)
🩸You may be struggling to sleep at night because your mind is racing because you feel like you’re drowning in debt
🩸You may smile and post amazing social media pictures and videos to cover up the fact that more than 50% of your salary was debited for debit orders at month end
🩸You may intellectually discuss investment portfolios and even shame people for spending money instead of investing, even though you yourself don't have investment portfolios
🩸You may preach positive thinking, hoping that you can change your finances by thought alone and that something will miraculously happen to get you out of the crazy financial cycle, without having to actually deal with your emotions, banks accounts and financial habits....
I did all these things for years. But deep down I knew that I had financial problems
My major problem was definitely that I felt like money was something mysterious and superstitious and if I could just figure out how to think good thoughts all the time, somehow my bad financial habits would change and my debt would disappear.
The shame of my finances and my bank account, had me acting some type of way - I would put up a front that everything was good even though I was struggling with acid reflux and having panic attacks.
Secretly, I was scared that people would learn the truth about my finances and judge me, criticize me or stop loving me.
So I’d overspend and never say no to anyone who needed help financially because I was scared they’d figure out the truth about my finances.
I would run away from anything that required me to get into my body and feel my feelings because there was a lot going in my body and emotionally.
Forget ever looking at my bank account, are you kidding me?
So I kept hiding the truth and the situation kept getting worse.
My very human fear was - what would people think and say?
Here I was with my finance degree and my MBA from the US, living in different countries, posting gorgeous pictures of the Caribbean but I was struggling and living off debt.
Luckily for me the situation got so bad that I could no longer pretend it wasn't an issue - I could no longer touch money without panicking and my tummy stopped digesting food.
I was living in Pepto Bismol (drinking it 3 times a day) to digest food...because anxiety affects your health, especially your digestive system.
And my friends were taking care of me because getting out of bed was a struggle.
At that point, I had to admit I had a problem and my coping mechanisms were no longer working, it was time for me to heal.
I wish I'd known that it didn't have to get to this point - being honest with myself and listening to my soul messages could have saved me so much grief.
We don’t have to get to rock bottom before we get help or change our situation
Just acknowledging that my coping mechanisms were not working and committing to changing my relationship with money, shifted everything for me.
It freed me - being honest with myself about where I was financially freed me.
Finally I could stop pretending like I had it together and really change my finances.
My first step was to focus on changing my spending habits.
So I started with looking at my bank account, getting into my body and working with the thoughts, feelings and memories stored in my body.
I knew I had to heal the shame I felt about my finances, the fear of criticism, the fear of what people would say and the crippling anxiety of facing my finances, because those emotions were what was really making it impossible for me to make practical financial decisions.
I developed my own exercises and worked with various modalities to help me release trauma in my body - all of which I now teach in my 5 Day Fall In Love With Your Bank Account Challenge course.
I have seen a shift in my finances from doing my own work:
✨ I paid off US$60,000 (at the time it was R700k) in debt in 4 years
✨ Bought property
✨ Launched my company, #WealthyMoney and started traveling again
✨Helped my mom renovate her house, which she now uses to host retreats and paying guests
✨Gifted my mom with a 3 week international vacation, including a 2 week retreat in Thailand where she got massages for 5 hours a day, everyday, for 14 days
✨ I live in various countries and do everything without a credit card - just cash and debit cards (this has become easier because of the work I do around my bank account)
✨Heck I even bought a property cash in 2020 🤷🏿♀️
It all started with me acknowledging that I needed to change my relationship with money because the more I pretended I was okay financially, the bigger the problem got.
I couldn't change what I was not willing to acknowledge. If you are ready to start changing your spending habits and start saving more, then I invite you to join the #BankAccountChallenge at this link: wealthy-money.com/bankaccount
The focus of the Bank Account Challenge is healing our emotional reaction and trauma responses to having or not having money because it's costing us financially in the long run.
