The Trauma of Money

USA TODAY BESTSELLER and THE GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER A handbook to disempower the trauma standing between individuals and their financial wellbeing The Trauma of Money: Mapping Compassionate Pathways to Healing Financial Trauma and Disempowering Financial Shame offers a comprehensive exploration of the Trauma of Money Method™, an innovative six-phase approach to decrease shame and increase discernment around money. It spotlights the myriad causes of financial trauma, tracing its roots to their generational, relational, societal, and systemic origins, and guides readers in understanding how trauma directly impacts our financial behaviors. Changing the narratives that come with these traumas is the first step in recognizing that true financial literacy hinges on this foundational healing. This book includes research-based modalities to transform readers' approaches to finances, including somatic trauma healing, narrative therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, internal family systems, addiction recovery therapies, biomimicry, systems change and financial psychology. It also includes practical tools such as: Reflection questions and prompts to intentionally evolve our relationship with money and scarcity as well as tools for addressing financial shame Methods to identify and shift away from trauma responses like financial fawning, somatic exercises to regulate the nervous system, and ways to reprogram our subconscious Approaches to reclaim and deepen the commitment to our money values and integration activities that can be used with clients The Trauma of Money: Mapping Compassionate Pathways to Healing Financial Trauma and Disempowering Financial Shame is an illuminating, effective resource for financial advisors and planners, mental health professionals, entrepreneurs, or anyone seeking to move out of automatic trauma responses and into their financial power.

Introduction ix Chapter 1: “Bad” with Money or Traumatized? Looking at Our Behaviors Through New Lenses 1 Chapter 2: Shame on Who? Identifying and Disrupting Financial Shame Cycles 13 Chapter 3: Financial Trauma Versus Trauma of Money: Its Nuances and Interconnected Qualities 31 Chapter 4: What We Know About Trauma: From the Therapist’s Couch to Mainstream Culture 41 Chapter 5: Your Brain Has Your Back: How the Nervous System Tracks and Tames Trauma 53 Chapter 6: Attached to Money: Realities of Attachment Trauma and Its Impact on Financial Relationships 69 Chapter 7: Money Parts: Embracing the Whole Self 75 Chapter 8: The Problem Is Out There, Not in Here: Disrupting Money “Disorders” and Reclaiming Our Agency 85 Chapter 9: Money Avoidance Defenses: What Ignoring Our Finances at All Costs Costs Us 97 Chapter 10: Money- Soothing Defenses: Escaping to Our Reward Center to Find Financial Relief 115 Chapter 11: Financial Fawning Defense: Approval Seeking and Over-Accommodating at Our Own Expense 131Chapter 12: Relational Money Disruptions: When Financial Secrets, Miscommunications, and Power Imbalances Shape Our Most Intimate Connections 147 Chapter 13: Embracing Collective Healing: The Integral Role of Addressing Collective Trauma in Overcoming Money Trauma 161 Chapter 14: Reimagining Gapitalism: Part 1: Traumatized and Dominated by Our Dominant Economic Culture 175 Chapter 15: Reimagining Gapitalism: Part 2: Creative, Collective Alternatives to Profit- Over- Everything Problems 187 Chapter 16: Scarcity’s Grip: Exploring How Scarcity Mimics Trauma in Shaping Financial Mindsets 197 Chapter 17: Beyond the Clock: Understanding the Interplay Among Trauma, Time Perception, and Money 213 Chapter 18: Dopamine-Driven Consumerism: Escaping Emotions Through Consumption 223 Chapter 19: The Trauma of Money Method: Step 1: A Generative Assessment of Mind, Body, and Money 239 Chapter 20: The Trauma of Money Method: Steps 2–6: From Visioning, Inventorying, and Harmonizing to Action and Refinement 249 Conclusion: Embracing Financial Agency Through Seasons of Healing and Change 263 Notes 269 Acknowledgments 287 About the Author 289 Index 291