Shame and Money
Shame is different to guilt. Shame is the idea that you are bad and therefore unworthy of love and connection whereas guilt is an admission that you’ve done something wrong. Shame means there is something intrinsically wrong with you, and therefore stays with you, guilt means you’ve done something wrong but that’s just a moment which is transient.
Financial shame might sound like ‘I’m bad with money’, ‘I’m a failure’, ‘If they only knew how bad it really was…’, ‘If I had come from a wealthier family I’d have been set’, ‘I’m stupid’ or maybe ‘The only reason I’m okay is because of what my parents or partner gave me’.
They’re fixed, immutable stories which describe something wrong or lacking in you. It could be about where you came from, where you are now, past mistakes, not knowing what to do or knowing what to do and not doing it.
Shame, financial or otherwise, is insidious. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy (you’ll find evidence for it in everything that happens) and it prevents us from truly connecting with ourselves and the people around us - the very thing that might solve whatever the problem is.
There’s a spiral involved in shame: shame → avoidance → things get worse → more shame, that I’m sure feels very familiar to those of you who struggle with mental ill health (although to be clear shame in itself isn’t a mental illness nor is it specific to people with mental ill health).
Breaking a Shame Spiral
Naming it. This is, like anything related to mental health, often easier said than done, especially if you’re in panic or doom mode and your thinking brain has gone offline.
If the panic is hitting then the focus should probably be on nervous system regulation - which often means using your physical body in ways which halt the body’s flight/fight response. This might include breathing exercises, humming, shaking your body, exercise or cold water to the face. I found this to be a great list of potential exercises.
The thing to remember here is that this isn’t just woowoo stuff, this is not even you trying to be a better, more enlightened person, this is literally you bringing your body back into its normal, natural state so that you can go about your life.
Nervous System Regulation in Finances
One of the best, most down to earth descriptions of this is in Burnout by Amelia and Emily Nagoski (that’s an affiliate link so I get a bit of money when you buy through it), where they talk about the stress cycle in the body through the metaphor of being chased by a lion.
In the olden days if you were chased by a lion, your body quite rightly put you into fight or flight mode and then one of a few things might happen - you might die, you might kill the lion and celebrate with your family and friends or you might successfully run away from the lion and then share that story with your family and friends later. If you die then the stress hormones don’t need to be dealt with but if you either kill the lion or escape it then first you have the physical release and secondly in the telling of the story you have the emotional release - both of which the stress cycle need to complete.
The stress we encounter these days, well, we get the fight or flight hormones but we don’t get the release from that unless we make it ourselves. Talking about financial stress that might be not knowing about the future, feeling like you’re behind in life, an unexpected bill, an inheritance from a family member you dearly miss, a pending divorce. This is what we’re talking about when we consider nervous system regulation within financial wellbeing.
So that’s your first port of call if the feeling is overwhelm and you have physical stress symptoms, especially. It’s worth being familiar with some techniques generally, so that they’re available to you when you need them.
Naming the Shame
Once you’re in a position where you can start thinking clearly then you need to be looking out for language, phrases like:
I am…
I should…
I can’t…
Stupid
Failure
Broken
These are all red flags for shame and if you find them coming up again and again it’s worth exploring that.
Building New, Healthier Systems
Financial coaching is a great place to start to put a name to these feelings and find ways to reframe them. One of the most exciting parts of the system for me is when we evaluate whether the beliefs that we’ve uncovered are actually true. There are lots of different ways to do this, depending on how it’s showing up - but evidence is the basis of all of them.
Do you have the evidence for that? How much do you actually believe that evidence? Do you have any evidence that doesn’t support that? Instead of the wild and high thinking that shame brings with it - we’re basing our understanding on the here and now truth.
Notice how financial coaching mirrors the community part of the lion story above? That’s not by accident!
Doing this in communion with somebody else is a tonic. The feeling of being heard, somebody being curious about you and your experiences, having time poured into you - is priceless. It’s also, according to Brené Brown, the antidote to shame. Shame will have you hiding, secret, shut down - shame makes you believe you are not worthy of connection - but you are. And it’s connection, rather than willpower, which will break shame down.
Finally, I know I bang on about it a lot, but I think exercise or movement is a key here. Moving your body in order to move the emotions on but also cultivating an understanding that you start where your body is. If you turn up to the gym having not exercised in 15 years, you’re unlikely to be deadlifting 150kg, but you start where you are and you progress. Truly understanding fitness like this can be an antidote to shame but it’s also a blueprint to how we can start any hard task - like getting our finances sorted.
Loads of love,
Eleanor. Xxx
