🟣 Pearls of Wisdom About Financial Shame From the Founder of the Trauma of Money Method™
🌬️ And a breath of fresh air on the money discourse
⏱️ The program for your weekly dose of financial self-care:
Why financial literacy is not always the answer.
The most common misconception about financial trauma.
A practical strategy to start healing our relationship with money.
The key principles to healing using the Trauma of Money Method™.
And pearls of wisdom about shame, scarcity & society from her founder.
Hello there 💜
I hope you had a restful night and are opening this newsletter ready for a breath of fresh air!
Because I’m taking you to Canada to meet someone who talks about money differently than anyone I’ve met before.
She won’t pressure you to be “financially literate”.
She won’t tell you your money behaviors are “bad” or “negative.”
She won’t make you feel guilty for how you react to what life throws at you.
She’s called Chantel Chapman, and she’s the founder of a unique program that bridges the gap between finance and mental health and disrupts all the classic discourses around money:
🧹 A bit of housekeeping before we start.
This edition is mixed-media, which means you can:
Listen to everything Chantel has to say, just like a podcast. (I highly recommend it!)
Or choose to listen or read the parts you’re most interested in.
If you want to make the most of your experience with Money Feelings, I suggest giving Substack a try. It's a fantastic platform for those who enjoy reading, and it's the only social media platform I truly enjoy. Give it a shot!
🟣 But first, if someone forwarded you this email, Money Feelings is your weekly dose of financial self-care designed to:
Kiss your limiting money mindsets and behaviors goodbye.
Grow your financial wisdom in style: less jargon, more emotion.
Increase your financial well-being, one feeling at a time.
If you don’t want to miss one:
You can also make yourself visible by sponsoring the free monthly newsletter or offering discounts on your services/products to Money Feelings readers:
If you want more information about Money Feelings, follow this link.
You can also follow me on Substack or LinkedIn.
🟣 Chantel’s full interview:
🟣 What’s your story, Chantel? And what inspired you to create "The Trauma of Money Method™"?
Originally, I created The Trauma of Money Method™ for myself.
I experienced trauma in my childhood.
I'm a survivor of various types of abuse.
I grew up in poverty.
I grew up with two very strong narratives around money:
I would be safe only if I had money, and I didn't deserve money.
That laid out the trajectory of my career and personal life.
I was very ambitious, wanting to surround myself only with people who had a lot of money and worked all the time.
Every time I acquired money, I couldn't keep it. I wasn't able to save or create long-term sustainable wealth for myself.
I always used money like a “please, love, and accept-me-fund.”
I was racking up credit card debt as I was seeking external validation.
I had trouble saying no and setting financial boundaries, which also manifested in my role as an entrepreneur. I was always giving things away for free or undercharging and, therefore, underearning.
I was healing from some events in my personal life when I realized the link between some of my childhood experiences and these behaviors around money.
So I started seeking out trauma therapy, and I worked with various trauma therapists.
Whenever I brought up money, I noticed a reaction, almost like them pulling away from me.
Then, they would return with some advice about budgeting or willpower, which was funny because I worked in that space.
I was a financial literacy educator for many years.
I knew that stuff in and out, and I realized that there was a lack of training in the mental health space around money for many psychotherapists who work in trauma.
So I went on my exploration journey studying trauma, the neuroanatomy of trauma and how it impacts the brain, researching scarcity and how it mirrors a trauma response.
I did some training in community economic development. I did a lot of research and personal work around addiction, codependency, or fawning as a trauma response.
I noticed that all of these areas I was exploring to help myself on my healing journey around money were disconnected.
I started testing, bringing some of these different modalities together, and bridging the gap between the finance world and the mental health world.
I tested this in various workshops and sessions with one-on-one clients, and it became very popular.
Many mental health and finance professionals became curious.
What is this method that you're teaching?
What are you teaching here?
That led me to create a training program called The Trauma of Money Method™ based on a model of six layers that we believe impact the relationship with money.
I was not an expert in all those layers, so it was very important to me to find different experts, trauma therapists, psychotherapists, psychologists, philosophers, and folks working in economic justice.
I brought together this amazing faculty team and launched our first-ever trauma of money cohort.
We're now into our 10th cohort, helping individuals and training many professionals, such as mental health professionals, finance professionals, and HR professionals, in this method.
🟣 How does your method differ from traditional financial education or therapy? How does healing collective financial trauma contribute to individual financial well-being?
The method differs from traditional financial education because we believe financial literacy is one of the last steps.
If you're in a trauma or scarcity-activated state, financial literacy is just not accessible.
For us, the first step is working with the narratives surrounding money and your nervous system.
In The Trauma of Money Method™, we have four steps before engaging in financial literacy.
Another major difference in our approach: we also root in the impacts of collective trauma.
We're not trying to make your financial behaviors a disorder.
We’re not looking at what's “wrong” within you.
We look outside and at some of the systems and environments we live in.
We identify some of those unhelpful financial behaviors as more of a natural response to trauma.
This approach helps the person depersonalize some of the shame they might feel around their behaviors.
It empowers them to create change.
It contributes to individual financial well-being while also placing the burden on the systems or toxic dominant economic culture we live in.
🟣 What key frameworks or principles guide your approach to healing financial trauma?
One of the main principles of the Trauma of Money Method™ is a tagline—or you could even call it a mantra—that we use repeatedly:
Decreased shame and increased discernment.
Much of our work is rooted in this approach:
What can we do to depersonalize the shame you might carry around money?
And how can you increase your discernment?
Because being more discerning essentially empowers you to make a different choice, to reclaim your choices around money.
We find that in the world of consumerism that we live in, or even extractive capitalism, we can lose the ability to connect to choice.
We also use our six-step Trauma of Money Method™, which we call a “living framework,” meaning it's non-prescriptive.
It outlines different steps you can take while interacting with your relationship with money.
You can also apply it when making small decisions like:
Do I want to buy this thing?
Or how should I engage in this money conversation?
What we mean when we say it's a “living framework” is we'll give you the steps to explore, but how you execute those steps can be on the modality of healing of your choice.
We will not tell you that you specifically need to do cognitive behavioral therapy or EMDR therapy.
We'll help you identify what your nervous system needs, and you will decide the healing modality you want to use.
It could be taking off your shoes, walking in nature, or connecting with a friend.
This is what we mean when we say it's “living”.
It can be adapted to any type of healing modality that the person might use, which is really important from a cultural standpoint as well because:
Just like there's not one right way to be around money, there's not one right way to heal around trauma and money.
🟣 What are some common misconceptions about addressing financial trauma that you encounter?
One thing that we hear a lot is this expectation that you can be fully healed when it comes to financial trauma.
A lot of the behaviors that we have around money are encouraged by the dominant economic culture that we live in.
So it's hard to fully move away from some of the behaviors you have around money that might be unhelpful or from the desire to act out those behaviors.
But what you can do is develop the ability to create more pause or more space before you act.
In that space you create, you encourage more agency and choice regarding whether to act out the unhelpful behavior or make a different choice.
The point is that the activation might not fully go away, but it'll be minimized.
You'll be able to have more choice around the pathway that you're gonna go forward.
The journey of healing is ongoing. We just get faster at our responses.
🟣 What practical strategy could someone already aware of their money traumas implement to start healing their relationship with money today?
If someone is already aware of their money traumas, one strategy is to ask:
Whose shame is this?
Whose pain is this?
Whose imposter syndrome is this?
Whose anger is this?
We want to do that because we want to create some space between the rising narrative around money, the narrative that might activate the trauma, and our innately worthy selves.
This is the depersonalization step we use in our Trauma of Money Method™.
Once we do that, we want to follow it up with a soothing new experience for our nervous system that helps bring us into the window of tolerance.
Like going outside in nature, laughing, singing, and moving your body.
And do that repetitively.
The way we can heal our subconscious and trauma of money is through a repetitive approach.
Thank you, Chantel!
Et voilà
Well done to you for dedicating the past 8 minutes to your financial self!
What did you think of this session?
I hope you found some value for yourself or someone you know. If you did, let me know by clicking on the 💜 at the bottom of the newsletter.
It means a lot!
I research and write Money Feelings for you 🫡, so never hesitate to share your feedback, ideas or ask questions.
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You’ll receive one more email on the topic of 🟣 Trauma 🟣 this month:
[Week 1] 🧠 Discover ⏱️ 5 minutes ✅
[Week 2] 🎙️ Deepen ⏱️ 6 minutes ✅
[Today] 🎧 Master ⏱️ 8 minutes ✅
[Week 4] 🪞 Reflect ⏱️ 4 minutes
But for now, take good care of yourself, and enjoy the rest of your week.
Pauline 💜
PS: If this session is useful to someone you know, please forward this email or click the share button below.
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