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If you have endured one or more life-threatening events in your life, you may be more likely to make destructive money decisions.
Traumatic experiences affect your brain causing it to overreact. They force your mind and body into stress mode, which activates us to take action as a protective measure. Abuse of money can become a common coping mechanism. Neurologically, we defend against uncomfortable truths. Denial is normal.
Trauma may lead a person to use money and objects to self-medicate emotional pain. It can lead to excessive spending, excessive saving, over-working, or perpetual debt. It may have led to self-esteem issues that convince you that you are not worthy or deserving of wealth which leads to sabotage with overcharging.
It can lead to impulse purchases made to fill an emotional void or to soothe emotional triggers. The problem becomes that the burden of debt often reinforces negative beliefs, which the spending was supposed to diminish. It creates a vicious cycle of stress, spend, debt, stress, and spend.
We live in a materialistic society and, now, shopping is literally at your fingertips with technology such as Amazon.
It is very easy to go overboard with your shopping habit and hide it from other people. It even has a name. Some playfully call it, “retail therapy.”
Shopping or creating debt can become a coping mechanism for someone who has suffered emotional trauma.
If you ever watched the show, Hoarders, the people who were excessively shopping or collecting materials could often link it back to some type of traumatic experience.
The loss of money itself can become a trauma that triggers PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) (link: https://goop.com/work/are-you-struggling-with-financial-ptsd/). Losing a job, foreclosing on a home, filing bankruptcy or suffering a life-changing illness are all traumas that can involve the loss of money. Poverty itself is a traumatic experience. Constantly worrying about money or how your bills will be paid causes the nervous system to remain in a heightened state of stress.
This trauma or PTSD can lead to making negative decisions with your money either to alleviate the emotional pain or in avoidance of the circumstances. It can also lead to being risk-averse and more cautious in your financial investments. This means, where you need to take chances to increase your net worth, you may choose to be conservative out of fear of future loss.
The first step is awareness. If you know you have suffered trauma or feel that you may be suffering from a negative life event, understand that it is okay to not be okay. And, there is no shame in seeking out or receiving therapy if it can help you to handle what you have endured.
The next part is to accept that a traumatic life event has changed your relationship to money. However, identifying deep-seated issues can be challenging. The mind often buries trauma in an effort to protect our psyche and allow us to continue to function at the level necessary for daily life.
The easiest way to figure out if something is wrong is if something feels wrong.
If you feel the compulsive need to shop for things. If you find that you have duplicates of things that you don’t need in your closet. If you recognize your own fear and how you reach outside of yourself to purchase something to calm your nerves. If you are treating yourself more than you are caring for your needs, you may have money trauma.
It might be time to look at what is driving that compulsion. Do not feel ashamed.
It is normal for financial issues to follow when your life is turned upside down by an accident, job loss, or emotional loss. But, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay stuck there.
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