The principal focus of this podcast episode revolves around the notion that, for a substantial segment of the population, financial issues extend beyond mere numerical calculations; rather, they manifest as profound emotional and psychological challenges. We delve into the intricate interplay between money, the nervous system, and the pervasive feelings of shame that often accompany financial discussions. Our esteemed guest, Jennifer Edwards, a financial wellness professional, elucidates how emotional responses and trauma shape our financial behaviors, thereby challenging the conventional belief that financial literacy alone can resolve monetary struggles. Through this dialogue, we aim to illuminate the significance of addressing these underlying emotional factors in order to foster a healthier relationship with money. As we navigate this complex terrain, we invite listeners to engage with their own experiences and consider the deeper implications of their financial behaviors.

In this enlightening episode, our hosts embark on a profound exploration of the emotional intricacies that underpin financial behavior, an often-overlooked aspect of personal finance. Avik and Jennifer Edwards engage in a critical dialogue that challenges the conventional wisdom that positions financial issues as mere mathematical challenges. Instead, they posit that for a considerable number of individuals, financial concerns are deeply rooted in emotional responses, including shame and anxiety. They emphasize the importance of recognizing these emotional dimensions in order to cultivate a more constructive relationship with money. Jennifer, drawing from her extensive experience as a financial wellness expert, shares her personal narrative of financial trauma that propelled her towards this vital field of study. She articulates that many individuals, regardless of their financial literacy, grapple with anxiety and avoidance when confronted with financial decision-making. The episode further probes the cultural taboos surrounding discussions of money, illustrating how these societal barriers contribute to a cycle of shame and stress. Through their conversation, Avik and Jennifer encourage listeners to confront these emotional challenges head-on, advocating for a trauma-informed approach to financial wellness that integrates emotional regulation techniques with traditional financial planning. The conversation culminates in practical advice for listeners, urging them to engage in self-reflection and awareness regarding their financial behaviors. By recognizing the emotional drivers behind their financial decisions, individuals can begin to dismantle the shame that often accompanies financial struggles and embark on a journey toward greater financial health. This episode serves as a crucial reminder that our relationship with money is not solely defined by our financial knowledge or self-discipline, but is significantly influenced by our emotional landscape.

Takeaways:

• The conventional wisdom around personal finance often reduces money management to mere arithmetic, neglecting the complex emotional and psychological factors at play.
• Many individuals experience financial distress not purely as a mathematical challenge, but rather as a deeply rooted issue involving their nervous systems and emotional responses.
• A significant aspect of financial wellness involves addressing the underlying shame and avoidance behaviors that often accompany discussions about money.
• To foster a healthier relationship with finances, it is imperative to explore the connections between our emotional responses and our financial habits, recognizing that trauma can profoundly influence our money management behaviors.
• Financial education alone is insufficient; it must be coupled with an understanding of the emotional triggers and psychological barriers that impede effective money management.
• Developing a trauma-informed approach to financial wellness allows individuals to dismantle harmful beliefs and behaviors surrounding money, paving the way for lasting change.

Links referenced in this episode:

• breakthroughfinancialwellness.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Breakthrough Financial Wellness

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

🎙️ Want to Be a Guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life?

Send me a direct message on PodMatch.

👉 DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik

🌱 About Healthy Mind By Avik™️

Healthy Mind By Avik™️ Global Mental Wellness Podcast Network - focused, credible, no more identity clutter.

👉 Subscribe and be part of this healing journey.

Refer a Guest

Know someone who would be a great fit for one of our podcast shows? Email us at services@podhealth.club with the subject line “Refer a Guest.” Requests without this subject line cannot be catered to.

Support Our Podcast: Support this Podcast

📬 Contact & Links

Brand: Healthy Mind By Avik™️

Contact Us

Based in: India & USA

🎧 All Podcast Shows

🤝 Be a Guest

📩 Newsletter Substack

👉 Join the LinkedIn Community

📌 Disclaimer - This episode is produced for educational and informational purposes only. All views expressed by the guest are their personal opinions alone and do not represent the views of the host or Healthy Mind by Avik™. The Network does not verify, endorse, or assume responsibility for any guest statements. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, legal, financial, or professional advice, please consult a qualified professional before making any decisions. Listeners are encouraged to engage critically and independently with all content do not consume blindly. Use this content as a starting point for your own reflection and research, not as a substitute for professional guidance. Third-party content is referenced under fair use for informational purposes only. Guest speakers are solely responsible for their own statements.

If you have concerns about any content, please contact us here

By listening, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer in full. Read detailed disclaimer here.

Dear listeners, most of us were taught that money is a math problem, that if you just budgeted better, saved more, spent less, it would all work out.

But what nobody told us is that for a huge number of people, money is not a math problem at all.

It's a nervous system problem.

It's a shame problem.

It's, I'd say it's a this feeling in my chest every time I open my banking app problem.

And until we start reading it that way as something that lives in the body, not just the Excel sheet or spreadsheets, we are, I mean, we are going to keep hitting the same, same wall again and again.

So, dear listeners, today we are going somewhere about the financial conversations are too afraid to go.

So, hey, dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine.

I'm your host, Avik.

And today's conversation is one that I have been genuinely looking forward to because it's all about something that touches almost every single person who is listening right now.

Maybe you'll be listening later as well, whether you talk about it or not, because.

But we come into that.

But before that, I would love to introduce my lovely guest.

Please welcome Jennifer Edwards.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, Avik.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Jennifer.

And dear listeners, like, as you all know that every day I introduce with lovely guest.

So today I would love to introduce you with Jennifer.

So Jennifer is a financial wellness professional who works at the intersection of money psychology and the nervous system regulation, helping individuals and couples understand the emotional and the relational forces driving their financial behaviors.

So her approach is, I would say, trauma informed, deeply human and build on one powerful belief that financial clarity and the inner safety are not the separate goals.

They are the same journey.

Yes.

So we are going to explore like why money triggers the shame and avoidance in so many people and at the same time, how stress literally changes the way we make financial decisions and what it actually looks like to build a healthier relationship with money from the inside out.

So let's get started and stay with us.

Welcome to the show again.

I'm excited about this.

Yes.

I think we've got a lot of important things to cover.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

So before we get into the deep work and the details, I want to start somewhere with bit personal like, because I find that people doing the most meaningful work in this space usually have a reason that goes beyond their professional interest.

So what bought you brought you to this particular section of money and the emotional thing?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, I had my own financial trauma.

And that led to me being very conscientious about money, maybe even hypervigilant.

And it did impact my family life and my relationships in ways that I wasn't proud of.

And so I knew that, you know, I needed to deal with something like that.

But I was working in the financial planning industry and really kind of the kicker for this was when I in the financial planning industry, I saw all of these different money beliefs and different values emerge from different communities and different parts of the country.

And the financial planning training that I had did not prepare me for anything other than just kind of the Eurocentric, the typical way that we look at money in the United States.

And, and I thought, I know there's more to this because what I was seeing was people knew what they needed to do.

We, we'd shown them the numbers, we had run the projections.

They, they had agreed like, yes, this is the best course of action.

And yet it was still sometimes very difficult for them to follow through with what we had.

Both of us, you know, agreed like this is what we're aiming for, right?

And to the financial planning industry to focus on this part of our experience with money.

One of the things that I noticed across the board was no matter the level of wealth, there was always anxiety and stress and anxiousness around, around money.

It just might be something different.

You know, it might be now I'm afraid of losing my money, whereas before I was afraid of just, you know, not having enough to cover my basic needs.

And.

But there was always a new level of stress.

And then something else that I saw and come up a lot was the avoidance of very important conversations.

We know money is taboo in most cultures that, you know, you really needed to have some understanding and connection around money.

Especially when it you have a high net worth individual or a family where there is a lot of money, there needs to be open communication.

And so often those, those conversations aren't happening and it's creating stress on both sides.

Sides of, you know, each generation is feeling like we've got some experiences we need to talk about and we want to reach, you know, but then it all just kind of gets kicked down and then, you know, the wealth builders pass away and then the next generation has to deal with it and they still haven't dealt with the issues that that came along with.

And I just really wanted to be a part of healing that I understood and that's right.

So here I'd love to bring one more aspect about.

It is like the misconception, like I think the biggest myth which is at the center of most financial advice, and that's the idea that if someone is struggling with money, the fix is more information, more education, better budgeting app, a clear spreadsheet, like I was mentioning before.

So I mean, but yet you have built your entire practice around something fundamentally different.

So the curiosity is, what is the misconception about money, Money struggles that you find yourself gently dismantling.

Yeah.

So really the main fixes, like you were saying, that most, you know, almost everybody in the industry will say it's one of three problems.

Either you need more money, and in America, it's always somebody.

You know, there's never a point where you think, okay, now I've had enough.

I mean the culture makes it sound, you can always, you always need more.

So more money, more information.

So better education or just better habits, more self discipline, really.

And one of the problems with attacking it from.

So in my seven layer framework, which if people go to my website, they'll see their seven layers, we might be addressing them all today.

But in my, in my seven layers, one of the layers is educational and another one is behavioral.

That can be in there.

But there's so many broader and deeper forces at work that impact our ability to be successful with money that's not in those two layers.

And then when we attack it with the wrong problem, let's just say, okay, like you said, you know, I just need a better budgeting app.

So you try the better budgeting app and then you still can't save more.

Then it increases the shame, feeds the narrative.

I'm bad with money or I don't deserve to be money.

I'm not, don't deserve to be wealthy.

I'm, I'm not good at this.

And so it actually can cause more harm than good to give somebody the wrong answer.

If there is a neurological or a psychological issue at work, and there almost always is, we have to attack that first.

We have to go, okay, let's, let's figure out what are the limiting beliefs that are going on.

Do we have a trauma response?

Is there a stress that arises when we're, if we're supposed to go into some kind of a money management mode, does our nervous system see that as unsafe?

If our nervous system sees that as unsafe, we're not going to make any progress until the nervous system has settled down.

So you're going to still avoid that because if it thinks it's unsafe, it's literally like a life or death situation.

And that, you know, that's coming from A layer far below conscious or cognitive control.

I agree.

So, I mean, when someone first hears that, reframe that their money behavior behaviors might be rooted in something very emotional or even something which is held in the body.

So what, I mean, what tends to happen?

Like, is there a relief or resistance or both?

Yeah.

So in the, the way that I, I like to do my work with clients is education plus an integration.

So there's education that all of us need on how to diminish shame and why shame should be avoided in regards to money.

It's just keeping us stuck.

That's where the seven layers in the introduction to Financial Wellness.

We need to talk about our limiting beliefs, how they' formed and how they're changed.

The stress response and trauma emotions and what, what they mean, what that actually is, why it's a good thing to even feel unpleasant emotions at times.

The information that that has and then the effect of cultural, cultural messaging around consumption and consumerism.

So what happens when you unlock that is you start to realize a.

What you have control over and what you don't.

So there's a level of acceptance that we all have to kind of hit because we're, none of us are going to be able to.

There's always going to be something that impacts our, our ability to do what we want to do with money.

You know, ethical consumption.

Like, it's just.

You can't accomplish that across the board.

So we figure out what our emotions are, telling us what our highest values are and we try to operate from, from that place.

And that's, that's really empowering.

Sometimes in sessions, in integration sessions, we'll get into a deep money experience or a past money memory and there will be a very emotional response where somebody's like, I didn't realize that that had stuck with me to the level that it had and to the intensity that it had.

And now they can start to look at money a little bit differently.

But we're attacking it from all different angles.

We're, we're going on the subconscious beliefs.

We' we're setting up mantras.

We're saying, okay, here's the new belief that we want to reinforce.

And so we're going to put that on, you know, a repetitive, sometimes some type of repetitive exposure, you know, but whatever it is you're working with, if it's overspending, it could be underspending, it could be over saving, it could be workaholism, it could be a gambling or a shopping problem.

It could be that you're keeping secrets from Your spouse or you want more unity in around money in your relationship, but you feel scared.

Combining finances, whatever that is most.

It always roots down to something like that and, and cracking open that egg, having some conscious awareness of it at the same time that we attack it from the subconscious side.

We can, we can make a lot of progress and then stop having that be the thing that.

That makes the decisions for you.

Exactly.

What I love about it like is it immediately removes blame from the equation.

It's like you are not a bad with money or you are responding in a completely human way to something that was never just about the numbers to begin with.

And I think that that distinction is everything is.

It's where the real work can finally start.

That is for sure.

And if you just go a bit deeper like I think that this is where your work also gets really, really fascinating.

You talk about the trauma informed financial wellness, which is definitely not a phrase most financial advisors use.

Right.

So what gently or I mean if I ask like what does the trauma actually have to do with the way someone handles money?

Yeah.

So our trauma responses usually come in the form of one of four responses.

Either a hyper arousal or a hypoarousal.

So meaning like a shutdown response.

So sometimes you'll hear it called fight and flight.

There's also freeze and fawn in there.

And those are really just learned behaviors.

The way that our.

That we'd responded to stress, especially as a child, we learned a certain pattern that worked that kept us alive, that kept us safe.

And so we will, we'll use that same pattern as an adult.

And now it lives in our nervous system as a pattern that comes up all the time.

Fight might look like where you really just need to have a lot of control and maybe it's causing contention in your romantic relationship or with your children.

You're not listening to other people's.

You know, you're ready to just kind of put your dukes up and have your.

Like I've got my position, this is the right way to handle things which is going to be damaging to relationships.

And nobody really.

They'll all say hey my family's the most important thing.

But then when it comes down to it, if your nervous system says oh no, financial security is the most important thing, you can damage relationships to keep that financial security where it feels safe.

The another one is the, the flight response.

This is where most people have some aspect of this in their relationship with.

And I think of this as avoidance through activity.

So this is workaholism, like wanting to just Kind of keep, keep from having to deal with your emotions through this feeling of productivity.

Could be a shopping or a gambling something that you're doing.

It could be doom scrolling on your phone.

It could be something that you are or doing to like I'm doing this instead of, of dealing with my money, you know, organizing your debt or whatever, whatever it is that you need to do.

When you're avoiding that through action, that would be a flight response.

And then the freeze response is where we're avoiding through inaction.

So kind of a shutdown response.

We're sort of not, not really interacting with the world in a healthy way.

It's, it's overwhelming right to our system to just even deal with it.

And then the fawn response is where we are, you know, the, the connection hormones come into play and we're trying to placate or appease.

We'll, we'll do something that will, okay, I, I will give in in this way and I'll make it seem like this is actually what I want to do when it's really not what you want to do and that will harbor resentment.

That's not ever gonna, you know, it's not, you're not actually living according to your, your values.

You're just keeping safe by keeping the others around you in an appeasement type of a frame of, frame of mind.

So you know, we look at it most of the time.

I can tell from the way that people, how they grew up with money, like I can already say like, okay, it's probably going to show up this way or I can look at your, your balance sheet and your cash flow statement and kind of have a pretty good idea of how you respond to stress and what trauma response looks like for you.

Exactly.

I, I agree.

And, and you, you know, like I would love to ask you that.

So when you are working with someone or maybe you start to see a pattern.

Maybe they overspend under stress or they hoard money out of fear or they avoid the financial conversations with their partner entirely.

What are you actually looking for underneath that behavior?

Like what are the roots?

Yeah.

So we're, we're going to try to uncover the subconscious belief that is driving those behaviors.

I mean there's Nobel prize winning research that tells us that our money behaviors are emotional and yet, you know, all everybody's trying to attack it from this logical, you know, knowledge frame of mind and yet we know that we're, we're really reacting emotionally.

And those subconscious beliefs, they came out of our experience in childhood where we were trying to make sense of the world.

Our poor little immature brains were trying to, you know, create the stories and the narratives that we could figure out.

And because we haven't explored them or vetted them, they're still driving our behaviors as adults.

So that's one of the first places we start, is we diminish shame by saying, hey, there's so many things at work here beyond just your own self control or your intellect.

And then we really get into those beliefs, how the trauma response shows up in your relationship with money to normalize that so you can start to recognize, oh, this is what's happening right now, and make sure that you understand, you know, do, do some self soothing, look for some cues of safety before you make a decision or you try to react in that, in that state.

So what we'll do is, you know, what is that belief?

Is that belief around your value, your worth?

Is that, that belief around, you know, sometimes it can be around an identity, a family identity that if you feel like, if I, let's say you grew up in a, in a household with a lot of insecurity and then you want, you know, everybody says they want to rise above that, but then you can actually feel like I'm losing my connection to my roots and to, you know, my family identity where we, you know, we had these struggles, but we had them together.

And so, you know, do you want to act according to that value or, or that belief?

Or are you gonna, you're gonna say, hey, I've got a new way, I wanna look at things.

I agree.

I mean, obviously it's a grounding thing about it.

So the behavior is not the problem, it's the signal.

And obviously the nervous system is just doing what it was trained to do.

So.

Yeah, and for someone who is listening right now, they recognize the shame spiral, they recognize the avoidance as well.

They also know something is off, but they don't know where to begin.

So what does that starting point actually look like?

Well, it's, it can be really hard to see your own issues.

You know, it's kind of like you're inside of a jar or something and somebody else can kind of see what, what's going on and, and you're looking from the outside in and you can't really see it.

So, you know, because this is a new field and there aren't a lot of us in this space, I mean, my first thing, I'm just trying to help people out with the 20 minute call where I can usually pinpoint the root issue and if you know, we can start from there.

And that's just a 20 minute call that doesn't cost any money.

If you want to continue working with me, then we find ways to do that.

But mainly it's starting to gain some awareness.

So if, you know, you want to just start with something, I would get out your notes app or a voice memo.

Everybody's got a phone or a watch or something on them at all times.

And if you can just start to say, what am I feeling right now?

Where does this come from?

If it's, I'm about to go into a shop and I really don't have anything that I need, that I'm just doing this to numb some pain, or I'm doing this because this is just a pattern of behavior my body has learned.

After work we go shop, you know, whatever the thing, or on Saturdays, this is how we spend our free time.

Even if it's costing you your financial security.

It mostly starts with just getting that awareness that something is happening.

And it begins in the subconscious.

And you have to start to ask yourself the question of why am I doing this?

What am I actually seeking with this behavior?

Am I seeking connection?

Am I seeking safety?

Am I seeking recognition?

Am I seeking a sense of agency or power?

Am I seeking other people's approval?

What.

What is it that that is driving this behavior?

What is that I'm actually needing that unmet need that's inside.

Exactly.

And also you mentioned about the nervous system regulation as a part of this book.

So.

Which definitely I find it genuinely fascinating because it's not a language we are associated with financial planning.

So if you can just give us a window into what that actually looks like, practically, like, what does it mean to regulate your nervous system before or during a financial conversation or the decision also.

Well, think of nervous system regulation as the thing that you need to be doing when you're not in a state of stress.

So a lot of people will think, okay, I have my trauma response techniques, which are really just coping mechanisms that I will pull out when I feel stressed.

But it's more of a healing that has to occur during the times when you're feeling settled.

We can deal with that stuff.

The problem is that it can feel uncomfortable.

And so people are like, hey, I'm finally feeling comfortable.

I don't want to get into this state of uncomfortableness.

But what it is is it's stress responses that have not resolved and they've built up over time.

And so your nervous system is kind of vibrating at a really fast level.

And it's, it's like not, it's not in the, what we would call the ventral vagal or the safe and social aspect of being, you know, where, where you can feel calm, right?

Where you can feel safe and social and you can do things like rest and digest and all that kind of stuff.

So it's kind of important.

I, I used an analogy.

I don't know how many of your, your listeners will have seen the, the Christian Bale Batman movie, but there's this point at which he is trying.

His, his house is on fire and he is fall, he's fallen down and he's got this big beam across him and if he can't get out of it, then he's going to get swallowed up in these flames.

And so his butler Alfred says he's trying to lift it, but he's old, he can't make it.

He can't lift up that beam.

Earlier in the movie we see Christian Bale pumping out some push ups, right?

He gets up every morning and he's, you know, he's trying to stay strong, right?

He's a superhero.

So in that moment, Alfred says to him, what's the point of all those pushups if you can't even move the bloody log, right?

So it's, it's during that moment when he needs to move the log that all of the exercise before he did that comes into play and starts becoming effective.

So if you can learn to regulate your nervous system to heal those wounds in times when you're not actually activated, then that, that's going to be the most effective thing.

Mindfulness yoga, you know, when you have a stress response, you're going to quickly try to look for a cue of safety.

I teach my clients to pick one or two cues of safety that can bring them out of that stress spiral and into, okay, wait, I have some agency here, I have some power.

And, and now I'm going to choose how I respond.

But you have to, you have to practice that that has to be done, you know, at that moment of awareness.

So we talk about bringing that moment of awareness so that the stressor comes.

And then the moment of awareness may be much later, like you may have just over shopped.

And four, four days later you're looking at all the packages coming and you're like, what was I thinking?

And then you do that work right then and you bring to mind like, what was I thinking when I was doing all that shopping?

Oh yeah, this was back when I was in, in grade school, people would make fun of me because I didn't have the fancy clothes that everybody else had.

Maybe you went to a prep school, you had a scholarship.

This wasn't your, you know, your normal demographic, socioeconomic demographic.

And so you recognize that and then you bring that to your wellness.

And then you look for safety in that moment.

You figure out if it's a, you know, you're going to have some calming music, you're going to find your look for the sunshine, you're going to take some deep breaths, you're going to shake your body out, you're going to scan your room, whatever it is that you're going to do.

You're going to tug on your, your ear has some vagus nerve stimulation you can use.

You're gonna, you know, tap on bilateral tapping, something like that.

That's going to bring you out of that stress response, tell you you have some choices to make and then you can do a stress release and then get to the point where you can actually, you know, have choice.

Exactly.

Lovely.

And if you have to give one advice to the listeners today, what that.

Will be, don't sweep it under the rug anymore.

It's not going to get better, it's only going to get worse.

Okay.

And I mean what I'm carrying from this conversation is this, that dear listeners, your relationship with the money is not a reflection of your intelligence, your worth or your character, but it's a reflection of what you learned to feel safe doing.

And the moment you understand that, the moment that literally lands, everything becomes possible.

Right?

So Jennifer, if Jennifer, for everyone who is listening, who wants to go deeper with your work, whether they are an individual trying to make sense of their own patterns or a couple of navigating money together, then where can people find you and connect with you?

So the easiest place is just my website.

Our company is called Breakthrough Financial wellness.

So just breakthroughfinancialwellness.com you'll see some links there to book that 20 minute call with me.

You can download our free Money beliefs exercise, get started on that if you want to, but that's, that's really the best way to get in touch with me and let's get going.

Amazing.

Amazing.

So, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links and the details into the show notes for easy reference.

And thank you, Jennifer.

Genuinely, this is kind of the conversation I think a lot of people needed permission to have and I hope that today felt like that permission.

And so, dear listeners, if something in this episode started something in you, even just a small kind of recognition or tiny shift in how you see your own relationship with the bunny, that's worth paying attention to.

Don't scroll past it, sit with it.

Maybe a little also.

So with this.

Dear listeners, this has been mind meets machine.

I'm your host, Avek, and if this episode found someone who needed it, share it with them and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you so much.