Hi! I’m Liz. I’m a psychologist, and a professor of Community Mental Health. I spend my days thinking and writing about people and their thoughts and feelings and behaviors (basically, LIFE).  I went to school for approximately a bajillion years to try to understand human beings, studying biology and cognition, relationships and sexuality, families, and sociocultural phenomena.   Do you know how many times we talked about money? Like, people’s relationships with money, spending, saving, and the drama and suffering that ensue? Zip. Zero.  To be clear, we studied the human experience from almost every possible lens, including looking closely at power, privilege, class, and all the ways that money (at macro levels) impacts our lives. But we NEVER really spoke about the inner workings of people and families with their own personal finances.  And then I met Adam. Adam spends his days talking to people about some of the most intimate details of their lives: their money. Or rather, their feelings, thoughts, behaviors, and secrets about money. To be clear, he’s not a financial advisor, or an investment guru (in fact, he’s not all that interested in wealth). He’s interested in people, and has found that for many of us, we suffer over our relationships with money.  So, why are so many of us so utterly tortured and miserable about money? Here’s what conversations with Adam have helped me see:

Recognizing Your Money Patterns

Recognizing Your Money Patterns

Recognizing Your Money Patterns

And though we might want to avoid money indefinitely, living in modern society requires that we engage with it, at least intermittently. So, for many of us, navigating all of our internal avoidance and our external need to “adult,” our relationships with money develop a schism embedded within them, wherein different (internal) parts of us have very different feelings and approaches to money. For example, one part of us might be strict, parental, scolding, ostensibly committed to saving (“Retirement! Austerity measures!”)  while another part desperately wants to feel free, cared-for, powerful, and not dominated by rules (“I want what I want when I want it, and you can’t stop me!”).  Sometimes, this shows up as a spending-regret cycle: We feel bad about our money. We feel shame and regret and commit to saving. Then our inner rebel says we deserve to feel good and to have nice things. We go get them. Then the scolding part tells us how stupid we are, telling us we are spending way too much money, repeat ad nauseum.  Or maybe we save assiduously, never overspending. We deprive ourselves of things that we love and that would bring us joy, because of an internal injunction against spending money “frivolously.” While more socially acceptable, this pattern results in us wondering at the end of our life what the heck we were saving for, and why we didn’t truly LIVE more.

So, What Now?!

So, What Now?!

So, What Now?!

Are we doomed to live financially inept and shame-riddled lives? Given everything described above, all of this misery is so very understandable, and the suffering is real. AND, dare I say, optional? Here’s the good news: Shame dies on contact. Avoidance stops when pain stops. Given an ounce of light—of contact with another human being, the experience of being not alone, of being accepted, empathized-with, and appreciated—we find agency, build competence, reverse avoidance, and get traction and alignment. Whatever patterns you might find you have with money, it is possible to develop a healthy approach to money, one filled with ease, clarity, and support for the kind of life you truly want to live.  If you’re reading this with a sinking feeling of recognition (that’s me!) or a glimmer of hope (something else is possible!), here are some next steps:

4 Ways to Start Healing Your Relationship to Money

4 Ways to Start Healing Your Relationship to Money

4 Ways to Start Healing Your Relationship to Money

read more

read more

read more

Elaine Smookler December 16, 2021

Spencer Sherman March 4, 2021

Mitch Abblett January 13, 2022