Readings and Resources: Overcoming Financial Trauma
“Our relationship to money is emotional. Hopes and fears, guilt and shame — they all play a significant role in your financial life.” — NPR, March 28, 2021
If you avoid thinking about money, overspend, or feel scared when you do — learn why so many feel we’re never enough — and what steps can help!
In an economy that only values what money can buy, your personal money-measure can bring you shame and anxiety whether you have lots of money, or no money at all. Being unemployed or undervalued, losing a business, or not reaching personal financial goals can trigger stress, humiliation, and even debilitating trauma — a Greek word that literally means “wound.”
Financial wounds might not bleed, but they can lead to your avoiding the subject, or overspending. Women’s pay gap is growing again, US credit card debt just topped $1 trillion, and people of color face special risk. So are people who have suffered generational trauma, sexual trauma, domestic violence, physical illness, addiction, or injury.
The good news: you are definitely not alone! We convened a panel of thinkers who shared some surprising perspectives and great resources in our latest Zoom of Our Own.
Keep scrolling to watch the replay and access resources for further learning.
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Riane Eisler founded The Center for Partnership Studies. Her work has transformed organizations, policies, and people worldwide, beginning with her book, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, in over 57 US printings and 30 foreign editions.Her latest book Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (co-authored with anthropologist Douglas Fry, Oxford University Press 2019) shows how to construct a more equitable, sustainable, and less violent world based on Partnership Systems rather than Domination Systems.
S handa Williams organizes Money Matters: Financial Liberation Series for BIPOC families and women, creating accessible programs to learn about racial and generational trauma, financial wellness, budgeting, and building resilience and confidence. She’s organizing and hosting a Money Matters: Eco-Feminism and Radical Love Symposium at Goddard College on Oct. 20th.
Andria Barrett is co-founder of The Banker Ladies Council of Canada, supporting ROSCAs, or mutual financial credit systems. She’s an active investor supporting women entrepreneurs, and serves on the boards of the Culinary Tourism Alliance, Help A Girl Out and PACE (Project for the Advancement of Childhood Education). She’s a member of the Peel Regional Police Anti-Racism Advisory Committee, and for two consecutive years was named as one of the Most Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders. A consultant with The Diversity Agency, she often speaks about the importance of wellness, self-confidence, and unconscious bias.
Jaqueline Strenio is a health and feminist economist currently researching the economic determinants and consequences of intimate partner violence. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Norwich University and specializes in the costs of healthcare and domestic violence.
Rickey Gard Diamond — author of Screwnomics: How Our Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change and founder of AEOO — will facilitate the conversation.
DEFINITIONS
Financial Trauma: An intense and enduring emotional response to current or past financial distress. Experiences like financial hardship, job or investment loss, debt from an injury, addiction, illness, or divorce, can distort your feelings and behaviors about money. Unlike everyday stress, trauma isn’t easily managed.
Trauma Symptoms: Financial trauma is not a mental health diagnosis like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and is often overlooked. Military veterans may suffer from PTSD, but in an economy waged as war, so do money wagers. A 2016 survey found 25% of Americans, and 36% of millennials reported financial stress with PTSD-like symptoms. See common signals below.
Avoidance: If you avoid creating a budget, refuse to open or pay attention to your bills, or never permit yourself to talk about money, you may sabotage your financial wellness.
Excessive Frugality: You may neglect spending what you should in a desire to avoid poverty again, not just saving for a rainy day, but feeling very anxious about necessary costs.
Overspending: You may try to overcome feeling deprived by habitually overindulging. You might blow your savings on a vacation, or eat out with a credit card too often, or be unable to stop impulsively shopping for items you don’t really need.
Self Sabotage: Money pains can make you feel unsafe and unsure. Persistent negative thoughts like “I’ll never have enough money,” or “I’m no good with money,” may block you. So might failing to think about your financial future, or wanting to appear wealthier. You may tell yourself a higher-paying job will make you selfish or you don’t want or deserve it. You avoid the risk of a better paying jobs or fail to ask for a raise.
Collective Trauma: Your relationships with parents, children, marriage or business partners, and your social standing as a woman or person of color or disabled person, also may hold societal and systemic trauma. The racial pay gap exacerbates systemic trauma. So does violence against women and non-binary genders. The 2008 bank bailout, the pandemic, and government policy valuing profit over people adds anxiety and generational trauma. In 2023, US credit card debt shot up to $1 trillion; child poverty rates more than doubled. Sept. 30, pandemic childcare money stopped for 220,00 childcare programs, while The Forbes 400 richest added $500 billion to their wealth.
Articles on Financial Trauma
The way you interact with money could be shaped by individual or collective financial trauma. Real Simple’s online article “4 Signs of Financial Trauma and Steps for Resolving It,” can help.
Head writer at Nerd Wallet, Tiffany Lashai Curtis, tells us “How Generational Trauma Affects Your Finances and How to Heal.” One of her expert resources says that often we learn by observation and reenact things we saw our parents and grandparents do when it comes to what we think or believe is attainable.
Most women have never been taught to be confident with money. Minnesota Women’s Press updates their longstanding work on women’s financial trauma with information on the pandemic.
The Institute for Women’s Policy Research’s paper on The Economic Cost of Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking says these have profound and long term psychological and financial consequences for victims and survivors.
The National Endowment for Financial Education says that it’s time we talk about the relationship between personal finance, financial literacy, and white supremacy in their article “Understanding Racial Trauma’s Impact on Financial Literacy.”
Georgetown University has a PDF 2-page Fact Sheet: Black Women’s Financial Trauma, which argues that financial literacy education must address the specific financial trauma, shaming, and abuse that Black women experience.
In a perfect world, you’ll be debt-free by the time you retire. But that scenario is not realistic for many Americans. Smart Assets reports that in 2023 the average debt for people aged 65–74 is $105,250. You can find other averages by age here too.
Harvard Business Review provides a much simpler overview of economist Thomas Piketty’s 696-page book, Capital in the 21st Century, praised as essential for understanding why the rich keep getting richer. He proposes increased taxes on the wealthiest for countering increasing economic inequality that’s inevitable with our current economic system.
Books, Podcasts, and Resources to Help
Restore Forward Institute is a haven for fostering human connection across differences. Set on 300 acres of Indigenous land and led by the founder of Black Women’s Blueprint, the institute offers conferences and workshops addressing ecological sustainability, gender and culture, trauma and recovery, racial healing, and spiritual practices and ceremonies for wholeness.
Kathleen Burns Kingsbury. Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly about Finances, and Life a Richer Life. Wealth coach and counselor Kingsbury also has a podcast series and a one-hour video on YouTube here.
Talking Dollars and Making Sense: A Wealth Building Guide for African Americans, by Brooke Stephens; McGraw-Hill, 1996. You can still find this book at used book sites and it comes recommended by AEOO’s Katonya Hart.
Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole, by Tiffany Aliche; Rodale Books, 2021. Tiffany Aliche also has The Budgetnista website which offers a free financial tookit, a blog, and an audio book,
Athena Valentine Lent’s website Money Smart Latina; Where Latinas and Money Meet features her book, Budgeting for Dummies, (Wily & Sons, 2023) as well as her blog and services.
The Queer Money Podcast website tells the story of David and John who worked in finance but carried a $51,000 credit card debt. Their website offers a free The Queer Money Kickstarter: A 9-step Guide to Kickstart Your Journey to Financial Independence; A 7-Step Credit Card Debt Slasher book; a blog, a podcast and services for hire.
“Time Heals All Wounds? A Capabilities Approach for Analyzing Intimate Partner Violence” by Jacqueline Strenio. Feminist Economics, 2020. This study examines long-term consequences and costs faced by survivors to help evaluate policies; two US examples are included.
