How is your relationship to money?
Money tends to be one of the topics folks avoid in therapy. However, because we live in a capitalistic society, it matters. When you’re stressed about money it can deeply affect you. Money affects our ability to have safe stable housing, access to healthy foods, health care, hobbies, reliable transportation, seasonally appropriate clothing, and so much more. In essence, money is about stability and security, without it, it’s hard to feel that sense of security. Think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, much of what I just mentioned are base physiological needs before you can move up to self-actualization. When you don’t have enough of it, you get a very real stress response in your body. This can cause more chronic health conditions and exacerbate (or create) mental health challenges. So money matters. Because of its importance, many people still feel bad about money even if they have enough. Sometimes it is about the numbers and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes our relationship to money is so fraught that it feels consuming.
What affects our relationship to money? Like many things in life, the messages and lessons we got about money growing up greatly impact us. For example, maybe your parents lived through the Great Depression. There is a good chance they have a lot of scarcity and fear of losing money, so maybe they taught you to hoard money and never spend because you could lose it all in a moment. So your behaviors around money were based around fear. Let’s say you grew up in a home where money wasn’t talked about, but you heard your parents fighting about it constantly in the other room. You might learn that money is shameful, it's a secret to hide and not discuss because it causes problems. Maybe you grew up in a home where debt and spending beyond your means was normalized and expected, so that’s what you do finding yourself stressed about the choices you’ve made. You may have grown up in a home where money was used to show love or soothe distress and you find yourself repeating these patterns in a way that doesn’t align with your goals or values. Growing up in poverty or in wealth greatly impacts your relationship to money. Marginalized communities historically have less access to financial success. How you feel about yourself influences how you spend money. We are bombarded by messages about what to spend our money on. No matter the experiences, our relationship to money is deeply rooted, it’s emotional. We often don’t examine our relationship to money and just fall into it. So, how is your relationship to money?
Questions to ponder.
How would you describe your relationship to money?
How does money affect your life?
What are some of the messages you received about money growing up?
