'Whether they have it or don't have it, save it or spend it, people experience a lot of shame around money'

A Q&A with therapist Shulamit Ber Levtov about the entrepreneurial mental health crisis and our relationships with money

Our relationships with money are as varied and complex as any relationship in our lives. But the way we approach money as a culture often doesn’t acknowledge that. While typical therapy might delve deep into your histories with your parents and siblings, your friendships, and your marriage, “financial” therapy is still often a separate field that’s ultimately focused on your net worth.

I was excited to meet a therapist who sees and addresses our relationships with money alongside other mental health challenges and traumas.

Shulamit Ber Levtov

, “The Entrepreneur’s Therapist,” is a trauma therapist specializing in entrepreneurial mental health. She works with business owners and organizations to educate entrepreneurs about the mental health challenges inherent in their work. She lives in Ontario, Canada, she’s a registered social worker, and she has an MA in counseling and spirituality from Saint Paul University (Université Saint Paul).

Shulamit joins us today to talk about her work with entrepreneurs, how financial trauma fits into her field and how her own history with money informs her approach with others.

Note: Responses have been edited for space and clarity.

Dana: You refer to your work as “addressing the entrepreneurial mental health crisis.” What is unique about working as an entrepreneur (and/or being a woman with an entrepreneurial mindset) that requires a unique approach to mental health?

Shulamit: There are many aspects of the work we do as self employed folks that have an impact on our mental and emotional well being, but one is unique.

The isolation entrepreneurs experience is unique in its multilayered aspect. Isolation is an issue for everybody, but how isolation will impact us is different. One reason is that “it's lonely at the top.” We are holding space for lots of people in the course of our work. We see people all day. So we're exposed to people, but we're still lonely, because when we want to find folks who can support us, it's hard to find peers.

It's also hard to find mental health support from providers who can respond to that unique nature of the work [of entrepreneurship] in ways that are helpful to folks who are self employed. For example, therapists might say things like, well, you're stressed out because you have too much to do, then take some things off your list. Or you find typical sleep hygiene, while good in principle, is not necessarily doable in practice all the time for every person who's self employed. One of the other things a therapist might recommend is to take time off, take a vacation, take a rest day, and those are not always possible.

Although I hold that we can build businesses that support us and that are structured to support our mental and emotional well being, at the same time, some of the popular blanket prescriptions don't fit well for folks who are earning their own income.

Entrepreneurship, especially for solo practitioners, freelancers and folks running tiny businesses, adds a layer of complexity to our relationships with money that doesn’t exist as often for employed workers. Our personal histories and beliefs around money drive business decisions, and our business’s performance affects how we feel about our personal finances, and on and on. Is it important to draw clear boundaries between personal and business? How do you address this relationship with clients?

Yes, it is definitely important to draw clear boundaries between personal and business finances, if only because the tax man does not like them mixed.

I work with clients on the mental and emotional issues, the cognitive, the thinking around money, and the emotions that feed the thinking around money. I do a lot of psycho education with folks around the implications for them if they don't keep things separate, because even if they are inattentive to things like taxes, when the time comes, having things separate will in the long run, make things easier.

But all the information in the world doesn't make any difference if people have emotions or beliefs that lead to or underpin their behavior. It's important to be curious, to be a compassionate scientist, and with warmth and curiosity take a gentle meander down the path of the thoughts and feelings that are underlying the behaviors. And see what holding them with kindness can do in terms of shifting holding the thoughts and emotions with kindness, what that can do in terms of shifting the behaviors.

You have a masters degree, are a registered social worker, a certified clinical trauma specialist and a certified resilience coach. On top of those credentials, you have a Trauma of Money certification. With the depth of training you already had, what does training specifically focused on money add to your understanding of trauma?

I wouldn't say that it adds to my understanding of trauma. It adds to my understanding of money issues and how they show up for us. For me, as a therapist who works with women in business, I had a very clear understanding of the nature of the work and its mental health impacts. And I knew that people had struggles with cash flow or beliefs around money. But I really was frustrated with the traditional money mindset stuff, because, as a therapist, I know so-called mindset work the way it's popularly understood — while possibly effective in the moment — doesn't necessarily have a lasting impact. The connection that the Trauma of Money certification made for me was the impact of the two aspects of trauma related to money.

One is how childhood trauma shows up in your relationship with money. This is just childhood trauma in the widest sense of the term. But then also there are money traumas. For example, growing up in poverty is traumatizing; losing a job can be traumatizing. These are things that are directly money related that obviously have an impact on people's money experience.

But it's the nervous system response that’s evoked by shocking events or ongoing undermining events that has an effect on your sense of value or safety, and has an impact on your relationship with money. Because in a capitalist society, money is a proxy for safety and worth. Because if you don't have money, you can't pay your bills, and how you are with your money, how much you have or don't have, and how you behave with it — there are many narratives that link those things to our worth. And shame is very prevalent for many folks around money. Whether they have it or don't have it, save it or spend it, people experience a lot of shame around money.

Those are the understandings that supported me in working better with clients around their money. And this could be said if I were just a therapist working with clients in general, because money problems show up in therapy. But for entrepreneurs who deal very directly, very close to the bone, with issues of money, worth and survival, the Trauma of Money certification empowered me to support them far more deeply.

How do you define resilience, and where does resilience fit within our relationships with money?

My understanding of resilience is informed by the Predictive Resilience six-factor scale (PR-6), where resilience is conceived of as a series of skills. It's not something we're born with, it's not innate. It's a series of skills that can be understood and developed. So for me, resilience is being prepared ahead of time, because if you haven't got the skills at your disposal when the crap hits the fan, it'll be a struggle for you to respond well. And I think resilience gives us tools and support.

And since there are so many areas of stress and vulnerability emotionally in relationship to money, when we have resilience skills, we can bring those to bear to support us in better caring for ourselves around what comes up emotionally in our relationship with money. And also once we care for ourselves, then we're able to engage our creative problem solving and strategic thinking, long term planning capacities that help us then take the kind of action that's aligned action with our money.

As someone who’s received welfare benefits and lived in a domestic violence shelter, how do you see these kinds of community resources fitting into a person’s lifelong financial plan? How can we reduce shame and stigma around these resources to ensure more people have access to them? (For context, here’s how I frame these as resources; feel free to share your own take!)

I related to these things as being there for me because I had contributed and because my belief is how Marx said it: From each one according to their means and to each one according to their needs.

Canada supposedly has this idea of a social safety net. We all contribute, and some of us need it sometimes more than others. And some of us never need it and can contribute, and our contributions vary over a lifetime and capacity, and our use of this social safety net also varies over our lifetime and with our capacity. So I really looked at these things as my right. They were there for me as anyone's right.

However, what I really appreciated when I took your course is that you listed these things like the food bank, like welfare, like shelters as being resources that people can consider as part of their financial plan. It kind of amplifies what I was thinking to begin with. And, man, if somebody had sat down with me and did some “financial planning” with me at that time and just included these matter of factly, like they were resources like any other, like loans and like, getting money from friends and family or, like a job or any of those things, wow, man, what a different experience I would have had at the time relating to those things!

And I think the way to reduce shame and stigma around these resources is to treat them exactly as you teach, so that perhaps in financial literacy programs folks can include that point of view when people are doing their financial planning just like you do in your approach. I think it's very powerful.

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Which personal finance or business-related books or podcasts do you most recommend and why? Who are they best for?

Finance for the People (Finanzas Para Todos) by Paco de Leon is another book I recommend. Paco is a Trauma of Money alumnus as well.

But honestly, other than that, I find most money books are not helpful. What I have learned is that most blanket advice doesn't apply and that what I needed was to work with folks who could help me work with money in my own context.

For business owners, I really like the Profit First methodology, from the book; and Bari Tessler’s The Art of Money Workbook. And Lindsay Bryan Podvin has a podcast called mind money balance and a book called The Financial Anxiety Solution.

Instead of talking about the weather, what do you wish strangers would ask you about when you meet on the street?

I would love to talk about what I'm knitting. I get a great deal of pleasure from the textures and the colors of yarn and the fantasies around, oh I could make this and oh, I could make that, and just the handling of the yarn and the actual process of knitting.

The other thing we could talk about is just asking, What are you excited about these days?

OK — what are you excited about these days?

Other than my knitting — I'm super excited about the book I'm working on about women, entrepreneurship and mental health. The basic premise of my work is that mental health challenges are inherent in entrepreneurship. In business, how we identify, address and mitigate risk is by having a business plan that includes, for example, a financial plan and a marketing plan. And because mental health risk is inherent in entrepreneurship, business plans should have a mental health plan for the founder as an integral part.

So I teach folks how to create their own mental health plans and work with them and to be accountable for them. That's kin the teaching work I do. And I run virtual retreats and teach this material in incubators and university business programs and in private business coaching programs. So I've taken that material and am writing a book so everyone can have access to this support for their mental and emotional well being and so that, as entrepreneurs, they can integrate this into their business planning and processes. Because most entrepreneurs don't have time. That's the first complaint, I don't have time for self care. So this methodology helps them address that.

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