Unveiling the hidden connection…
In our pursuit to understand human behaviour (within psychotherapy and beyond) and to unravel the “traps” of the mind, we frequently encounter unexpected connections that bridge seemingly unrelated aspects of life. One such interesting correlation lies in the characteristics of our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with money. Although on the surface they may appear unconnected concepts, a deeper examination reveals striking parallels that shed light on our values, beliefs, and emotional well-being. This article explores the fascinating intersection between our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with money, offering insights into their shared qualities and their implications for personal growth and financial success.
At the core of both our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with money lies the concept of value. Just as we attribute value to ourselves based on our self-esteem and self-acceptance, we also attribute value to money in terms of its importance, power, and influence in our lives. Understanding and cultivating a healthy sense of self-worth is crucial for fostering a positive relationship with money.
Many years ago, when I began my personal psychotherapeutic journey, I came face to face with a paradox that took me several years to explain. The paradox was that while I struggled to haggle over any price on any product or service I wanted to buy, the urge arose within me to ask for the cost of the session to be reduced by my very first therapist. So how is it that I, who for so many years struggled to blurt out something like: “could you please give me a better price?”, find myself now in my therapist's modest office in Kifissia haggling? The explanation began to unfold from that very moment and was perhaps completed after at least five years.
The explanation I give now, which will probably take on a different form in the future, is that back then I did not know how to evaluate the emotional care that a person could give me. Through the haggling I was doing, a deeper, very wounded part of me was questioning whether I am capable of receiving emotional care and whether I am in dire need of it. Back then I lived in a pseudo-self-sufficiency where I struggled to connect with my lacks, so in order to bring balance within me, the easy solution was to underestimate the value of the care I was about to receive.
As you can understand, a secondary reading of how we communicate with others through money sheds light on how we communicate with ourselves.
I believe that the fundamental principle in life is perpetual motion – as our philosophers have said – where energy is constantly transformed into a continuous give and take. To understand this, simply observe your breathing: to remain alive you must inhale and exhale. You have no other choice. You must take and you must give. You must take in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide. As a song says, “whatever we drink, we treat [others to]”. In whatever part of your life you have felt fear, and that fear has “taken your breath away” as we say, there is a holding back, and wherever there is “holding back” there is a blockage. Conversely, when there is a free inhalation and exhalation, the body is in connection with its environment and others, in a flow. After all, this is one of the goals of psychotherapy: to learn to live without internal “hold-backs”.
I can understand a lot about my clients by looking at their relationships with money. Someone might spend a lot of money on their children but very little on themselves, someone else might have a lot and hold onto it without spending on themselves, someone else wants to give more and if the session runs five minutes over, they pay for that too. Why all this? And the million-dollar question I ask myself: what is this person trying to tell me about themselves and about how they want to connect with me through money?;
Therapy, you know, begins not by getting the right answers but by asking the right questions, which is why I bring you into contact with some questions that may stimulate other questions within you, or some temporary answers that will lead you to get to know yourself a little better:
Questions for reflection on receiving money-care:
- how is it for you to ask for money for the work you produce?;
- how is it for you to ask back for money you have lent?;
- when you go to a new job, do you ask for the money you are worth?;
- How do you earn the money you live on in your life? Do you beg for it? Is it the result of the value you offer to others through your work? Do you ask your parents for it? Does it come passively from some property you created yourself? Or from some property that you did nothing to create?;
- How do you feel at the moment you ask for money? Is it pleasant for you, unpleasant, or awkward?;
It is very likely that just as someone feels guilty about receiving care and trusting it, they also feel guilty when they receive money for their effort, for the value they have offered to another human being. Very often I hear people struggling to ask for money they have lent to friends, as if they have no right to expect others to keep their agreement too, passively waiting for the other person to understand them and take care of them while remaining in a more immature and childish rather than adult position. When someone goes out looking for a new job, the stress is magnified, and unfortunately this is very common because we have grown up and are raising our children in a society where a person's worth is heavily tied to their knowledge, their skills, and the value they offer to the capitalist system we live in. Consequently, in every interview, the candidate carries the trapping belief that if they are not accepted, it is not their skills that are being rejected, but their entire self!
Finally, very often I encounter people who live in an adult body and unfortunately are still codependent, mainly emotionally, on their parents, and this is also evident in the fact that they are not financially independent themselves, or even the reverse—working two or three jobs to financially support their parents. Whether the parent financially supports the child or the child financially supports the parent, the common denominator is the emotional codependency between them.
Questions for reflection on holding onto money and care:
- are you in the habit of keeping money aside?;
- do you observe/track your income and expenses?;
- How do you feel about having money in your pocket or wallet?;
Quite often during the therapeutic process, there emerge huge survival fears which drive a person either to hoard money for a “rainy day” or, as soon as they get money in their hands, to spend it on services, experiences, and goods as if there were no tomorrow. Here again we can say that a “puffed-up”, “immobile”, “numb” bank account might be an indication of a fear of life and its unexpected turns, just as a sparse bank account might be.
Establishing healthy boundaries is vital for maintaining balanced relationships, whether with ourselves or with money. Boundaries protect personal well-being, prevent exploitation, and cultivate self-respect. In the context of money, setting financial boundaries translates to exercising financial discipline, distinguishing between needs and wants, and cultivating responsible habits.
Although money is a subject that concerns all of us with a huge impact ranging from our emotional security, our mental health, and our dreams, all the way to the wars happening on the global stage, I have the feeling that very few people monitor or even record their income and expenses. I wonder, of course, how someone who has not learned to recognise when others are violating their boundaries, or when they are violating the boundaries of others, could possibly observe and record their income and expenses. I believe that a person who can stand in the moment and wonder how they feel—that is, to perceive at that very moment what it is they are giving and what it is they are receiving from their environment and naturally within their relationships with other people—is then much more likely to be able to also put their income and expenses in order. If, for example, someone rushes to tend to the needs of others—what we non-scientifically call the good boy/girl syndrome—and at the same time forgets to tend to their own needs, then it is impossible for them to observe where they are spending their money because they are unable to recognise where they are spending their emotions.
Finally, unfortunately, I believe that people who have a massive need to hold onto money and control others (deeply traumatised ones) are the ones who occupy very high positions in political and managerial ranks, with disastrous consequences for the well-being of the entire planet...
Questions for reflection on how you utilise your money:
- what do you do with the money you have put aside? Do you keep it until it gathers dust? Do you put it to use? If so, in what way?;
- Write down on a piece of paper roughly where your money goes; this way you will get an initial picture of your personal values. What values are reflected through where you spend your money?;
- do you use your money to buy more objects or experiences?;
- do you use your money to buy time for yourself?;
- do you use your money to buy something that will make you feel good now or years from now?;
Η επίδραση των πρώιμων εμπειριών και ανατροφής εμπλέκονται στην ανάπτυξη της σχέσης με τον εαυτό και της σχέσης με τα χρήματα. Τα συναισθήματά μας τα οποία τα υπαγορεύουν οι βαθύτερες μας ανάγκες μας οδηγούν σε πράξεις. Συνεπώς ένας τρόπος για να κατανοήσουμε τις βαθύτερες μας ανάγκες είναι να ρίξουμε μία ματιά τριγύρω μας και να καταλάβουμε από τι περιτριγυριζόμαστε. Κάποιος άνθρωπος περιτριγυρίζεται από καλλωπιστικά αντικείμενα, ρούχα, καλλυντικά πιθανόν μέσα του να έχει έναν φόβο για το τι θα πουν οι άλλοι για την εικόνα του. Τώρα που γράφω το άρθρο αυτό παρατηρώ πως εγώ περιτριγυρίζομαι από βιβλία και διάφορα πτυχία στον τοίχο. Για μένα αναγνωρίζω πως το να δίνω χρήματα σε βιβλία και εκπαιδεύσεις ήταν, και είναι, η εκδήλωση της ανάγκης μου να μεγαλώσω συναισθηματικά και να καλύψω τις ελλείψεις μου.
Άρα, ρίχνοντας μία ματιά σε ότι έχεις μαζέψει γύρω σου μπορείς να αναγνωρίσεις τις αξίες σου αλλά και τις βαθύτερες σου ανάγκες.
Ο τρόπος που κάποιος αξιοποιεί τα χρήματά του φανερώνει και τη σχέση με την αυτοφροντίδα του. Σαφώς είναι φροντιστικό ένα μαγειρεμένο φαγητό σε ένα εστιατόριο, ένα ωραίο μασάζ ή ένα τριήμερο σε ένα μαγευτικό μέρος, ταυτόχρονα όμως είναι φροντιστικό και κάτι που θα φροντίσει όχι μόνο τον σημερινό σου εαυτό αλλά και τον εαυτό σου μετά από 5 χρόνια (πχ ένα βιβλίο, η ψυχοθεραπεία, μία εκπαίδευση κλπ). Φροντίζεις και τον σημερινό σου εαυτό και τον μελλοντικό; (ο παρελθοντικός σου εαυτός είναι και αυτός σημαντικός να φροντιστεί αλλά αυτό είναι μια άλλη ιστορία…)
Μια ακόμα διάσταση η οποία συνδέει εαυτό και χρήματα είναι η αυτοσυμπόνια. Όπως η αυτοσυμπόνια δίνει τη δυνατότητα στον άνθρωπο να ανθίσει την καλοσύνη και την κατανόηση προς τον εαυτό του σε δύσκολες στιγμές, η οικονομική συγχώρεση επιτρέπει στα άτομα να ανακάμψουν από οικονομικές δυσκολίες, να μάθουν από τα λάθη και να προχωρήσουν χωρίς υπερβολική ενοχή ή ντροπή. Η εξάσκηση της αυτοσυμπόνιας και της οικονομικής συγχώρεσης προάγει την ανθεκτικότητα, ενθαρρύνει την ανάπτυξη και διευκολύνει τη θετική αλλαγή.
Θυμήσου εκείνες τις φορές που παρατηρείς την αναπνοή σου, που έρχεσαι κοντά με έναν άνθρωπο, που εξετάζεις την σχέση σου με τα χρήματα τις εξής σκέψεις:
Η ροή βρίσκεται στο “παίρνω και στο δίνω”. Ζούμε για να παίρνουμε και να δίνουμε, έτσι κυλάει -ρέει η ζωή, οι σχέσεις και τα χρήματα. Δίνουμε για να πάρουμε και παίρνουμε για να δώσουμε. Όπου δεν υπάρχει ροή – υπάρχει θάνατος. Ό,τι δεν κινείται – πεθαίνει…είτε η σχέση μας με τον εαυτό μας είτε η σχέσεις μας με τους άλλους, είτε ο τραπεζικός μας λογαριασμός!