Welcome to the Healthy Rich podcast, a show about money for misfits!
I’m Dana Miranda, a financial educator and author of You Don’t Need a Budget.
In this episode, mental fitness coach and I discuss:
🥑 How to manage the shame that drives so many money moves
🥑 Incorporating mindfulness practices into your financial habits
🥑 How to approach money when it all feels overwhelming
Mentioned in this episode:
The full conversation at Somatic Wisdom with Cristy de la Cruz
Cristy’s
newsletterBrené Brown on listening to shame
Cristy’s book Unleash, Unlearn, and Enliven: Seven Mirco-Practices to Engage Your Somatic Wisdom
You can always follow the podcast right here via email or Substack, or you can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. The transcript is below. Enjoy!
Transcript
Welcome to the Healthy Rich podcast, a show about money for misfits! I’m Dana Miranda, a certified educator in personal finance and author of YOU DON’T NEED A BUDGET: STOP WORRYING ABOUT DEBT, SPEND WITHOUT SHAME, AND MANAGE MONEY WITH EASE.
In today’s show, I’m talking with my friend Cristy de la Cruz, who hosts the Somatic Wisdom podcast. Cristy is a mental fitness coach who helps people tap into the wisdom in their bodies.
I’ve learned a lot in conversations with Cristy over the years about listening to our bodies and using that information to calm our minds and guide our decisions. Cristy has also done a Q&A for Healthy Rich, so I’ll link to that in the show notes, and I quoted her guidance in my book.
In today’s show, we’re answering two reader questions that I brought to Cristy specifically to get her thoughts on how to tap into some of that body wisdom to deal with stress and shame around money. The first question is about how to acknowledge and manage shame around money, and the second is about how to approach managing money when the whole thing just makes you feel overwhelmed from the beginning.
This episode is an excerpt from a longer interview I did this week with Cristy for her Somatic Wisdom podcast. I’ll link to that in the show notes, as well, and you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts.
In that conversation, we talked about my experience writing You Don’t Need a Budget and what it feels like to come down from a book launch; and we talked about why budgeting doesn’t work for most people, the money map method I recommend instead, my head-heart-health approach to money and much much more!
So please listen to the full conversation at Somatic Wisdom, and send Cristy a big thank you for having me!
Cristy
Now Dana, you had a couple listener questions and I love the fact that your podcast has room for questions that come in. So I wondered if you wanted to let us know what listeners are thinking about and what they're asking questions about.
Dana
Yeah, Cristy, I wanted to bring these to you because I want you to bring some somatic wisdom into how we approach our relationship with money and go beyond, like we have been talking about beyond the numbers.
I have two questions from listeners. The first one is: Shame underpins just about every bad relationship I have with money. It's why I am in debt, why I am struggling to get out from under it, why I spend recklessly sometimes. How do we acknowledge and manage shame so that it stops affecting us so negatively.
Cristy
That is such a juicy question. I love that one. I would say first of all, acknowledge you're not alone. Shame is a big part of how most of us were socialized around money. And I know you covered this quite a lot in your book, Dana. So recognize the fact that we are living under systems that used shame, ironically, as a motivating force, even though it doesn't motivate anyone.
And as a way to really create these stories about you're not good enough if. If you can't invest money or if you have debt. There's all kinds of ways that people feel shame and it's somewhat societally imposed, but then we're sort of internalizing that feeling of shame.
Brené Brown talks about... she's a shame researcher. That was her major area of research and she talks a lot about really knowing what shame feels like for you. And she has a, this is a hard one, so this is advanced practice here, but when shame comes up for you, and it often does for me when I'm working with money, even though I've been working with this for a while, the first thing I like to do is just close my eyes and take a deep breath and then just feel where it's coming up for me.
And I'm just thinking of a scenario right now where I felt some shame about money. And I'm just noticing actually, in my shoulders, my shoulders are a little tight. I notice there's actually a little bit of pain in my hips. You know, some people feel it in their jaw. Some people feel it in their stomach, a little clenching.
It's gonna be different for everyone. So, once you have a chance to do that, just locate it in your body. And as you do that – it typically takes about 60 seconds or so for an emotion to move through our bodies – just taking a couple of deep breaths and noticing where it is, that simple action can really just say it's not me.
I'm not the person who's wrong. There's just an emotion that's lodged somewhere in my body. So I think it depersonalizes a little bit. Some of that comes from cultural stories. It comes from places that aren't you. And just acknowledge it's there. I would bet a good 98% of people have it, and then allowing yourself to just move through that.
Because I think part of what we do is we clamp down on feelings we don't like, so we just push it away and then it sort of grows. Brené Brown likes to say it's like a Petri dish. Anything that you surround in secrecy and that you're pushing down, it grows like it's a Petri dish, and so if you just acknowledge it, let it move through you and then take it slow.
If you're working on a particular financial goal, you might not do it all at once. I think to me that's the best somatic way to move through shame and recognize it's not yours.
Dana
Yeah. I love that finding it in your body to disconnect it. It feels like it disconnects it, not just from you and who you are, but also from the thing that feels like it's causing that shame.
And so you can start to acknowledge it outside of the spending or the debt or the income or the balance sheet that you're looking at that sort of triggers that shame. But it probably doesn't really come from that. It comes from the messages that you're getting from our culture about what those things mean in your life. So finding that. Yeah.
Do you find also, find this with some mindfulness practices that doing that regularly, I think you said in our last conversation too, when you sit down to do your money date or to look at your money map or whatever it is, reviewing or talking about your finances, taking that time to feel what is coming up in your body? Do you find that doing that practice regularly can help you then recognize that without the formal practice as you go through your daily life, increase that mindfulness of that feeling?
Cristy
I think it gets much quicker. I think in the beginning it takes a little time because we're not familiar with it.
Nine times outta 10, we're gonna push it away because the emotion we'd least want to feel is shame.
Biologically shame was a way that we, as a society, kind of kept people in the tribe, so to speak. And so you were ashamed if you were outside of that.
It has an important historical evolutionary function, but it isn't really that useful for us anymore. But we still have it. We're still mammals. We developed this a long time ago.
The other thing I would say about it is to be super kind to yourself. I didn't mention that part the first time because the tendency can be, oh, I'm feeling this feeling and oh, why am I so, you know the story can just build. Why am I so useless at this? You know? These are things I've said to myself in the past, but when you're recognizing it there and being really kind to yourself and realizing, yeah, money's hard for people, for everybody, and that's okay. I can be with myself through this challenge and just acknowledge and it gets quicker. It gets quicker as you practice too.
Dana
Gets easier to be kind to yourself. And that's actually something that I see in this question is I would encourage this person to be kinder to yourself. Because you're saying shame underpins every bad relationship I have with money. It's why I am in debt. It's why I am struggling to get out from under it. It's why I spend recklessly sometimes. I think that I am still hearing a lot of self-blaming in that.
And so one thing that I recommend too, outside of the somatic practices to acknowledge and manage shame, is to understand that there are forces that have nothing to do with you that keep you in those situations, right? Like you are in debt because we live in a culture where we allow a very small percentage of people to own the resources and we have to pay them to access those resources. That is why we're in debt, right? It's not because of something that you did wrong and the same thing struggling to get out from under it because that's how it's designed.
It's designed to be hard to get out of and why you spend recklessly. There could be so many things going on to why you spend the way you do. And so, to address that shame also try to see where you are putting blame on yourself as an individual and take that outside of yourself and see what else is going on.
Cristy
Yeah, that's such a great point, Dana. I hadn't even recognized that, because this person may be blaming shame for that. But you're right, our systems are designed in a way to kind of keep people trapped and so it's, bigger than you, and so don't take on all that blame.
It doesn't belong to you really.
Dana
And that's why it doesn't feel good in your body. It's invasive.
Cristy
Of course. And It may take some time to loosen that story, but I do think that that's part of what this work does, is it loosens that story.
Dana
Yeah. I love that. All right, let's look at the second question then. This is one that can go in a lot of directions, but I wanted to bring it to you on mindset because I think that there's a lot of work we can do here somatically and getting in touch with ourselves.
So: How do I even begin managing money without feeling overwhelmed and shutting down out of panic? How do I improve my mindset so that I don't give up about my finances?
Cristy
Yeah. Oh gosh. I love this one so much. One thing I love about this is that I've been doing a little bit of training in what's called positive intelligence framework. And one of the things we realize is that a reason that a lot of us put off things is we have these internal saboteurs.
The one that's the most prominent you'll recognize is probably the inner critic or the judge. Everyone has that. That's a pretty universal feature. Maybe sociopaths don't have it, but if you're a pretty normal human being you have a judge voice or a critic voice. So that's another place where we might need to recognize that we have a voice coming up.
When you even begin to think about managing money without feeling overwhelmed, what are those stories that are running through your head like, oh, I'm not good at this, or, numbers haven't ever been easy for me. Just recognize there's a little ticker tape. Again, that's not you, that's a saboteur part of you.
The wiser part of you knows, even if you're asking the question, you do wanna manage your money in a way that feels more joyful to you perhaps, or more in line with your values. Recognize yourself for wanting to do that. You know, there's a part of you that wants to be responsible. I call it the sage part of you, where it's like, Yeah, I wanna be responsible. I wanna make good decisions about my money. Most of us do want to do that.
And when we recognize that critic voice, sometimes we have to set it on the shelf. I have a little exercise. I call mine the dictator because it is mean. And I can sometimes set my dictator on the shelf a little bit, and so I'm like, Yeah, I know you think I'm really bad with money, but I still wanna spend 10 minutes on my money map, you know, I'm gonna still spend 10 minutes on my money map. Just to get started on something and to make it very small. So make this step extremely small. If five minutes is all you can do, if one minute is all you can do, make it something that you feel sufficient.
I'm gonna spend five or 10 minutes working on the money map or listing out what my assets are or whatever it is. Then allow yourself to celebrate that step. Because very often people will put it off and put it off and put it off and then it's sort of a mountain of shame grows on top of that.
If you just take that 10 minute step and you're like, Hey, I promised myself I'd do that today, now I get to go walk in my favorite park or whatever it is, you gotta reward yourself a little bit. And it doesn't have to be something financial, although it could be. Allow yourself to sort of build that habit of taking the small step.
And what I found is usually when I say, Okay, I'm just gonna work on this for 10 minutes, I wanna get started with my money map for the week, very often the momentum grows and you don't really wanna stop that 10 minutes. So if you still feel like working on it, then keep working on it. Be sure to reward yourself though, because you wanna build a positive habit around taking a look at that and not feeling overwhelmed.
There's a principle we learned in yoga school too, about titration. So when you're new at it, don't expect yourself to spend hours and hours on it. Start small. Start small and build on that habit so that it might increase over time. And once you realize it's not so scary, like you do your money dates, maybe weekly or twice a month, you start to realize, I can keep going back to it and the judgment gets less over time.
Again, it's a practice, but to me, I can go into full on avoidance mode if I don't wanna see the numbers or whatever and just give yourself some grace. Don't pile it onto a day that's already full of other stressful things.
But yeah, just take the smallest step. Make sure you're rewarding yourself. And again, money is hard for people. Acknowledge that it is for a lot of people. So, you're probably not unusual. And yeah, give yourself a lot of grace.
Dana
That's great. This is exactly why I wanted to bring these questions to you, Cristy, because I can come at these questions with some processes and some worksheets and maybe some statistics and some information for folks. But I feel like you're so good at getting really into the depths of who we are and how we can tap into that and understand it a little bit ourselves. Also having some specific exercises to be able to do that, because I can say that that's important.
You know, listen to your intuition, let's get in touch with your inner voice. But really knowing how to do that is where the trick is. That's why I quote you in the book. That's why I keep coming back to you with these conversations because that is something that is so ignored in personal finance.
We treat it like it's this totally siloed, separate part of our lives and it's just not, it's part of all of those things. Like you said, if you're already having a stressful day, dealing with something financial is gonna be that much more stressful. It's just this integrated part of the lives that we live and just like any other relationship in our life.
So we need to think of it that way and take this kind of approach that helps us in those other relationships, in those emotional parts of our life, in those psychological parts. 'Cause money is all of that. It's not just the numbers.
Cristy
Yeah, totally. As you were speaking, I thought about too, like making fun accountability partners, too, with someone.
Either a spouse or a friend or something to promise that you're going to work on something and then celebrate it with someone else so that you're getting that extra encouragement. That can also be helpful too, if you just have a hard time getting there.
Dana
Yeah. Yeah. And having someone to remind you of all the things that you were saying here, that you do care about achieving your financial goals. You can just take these little steps. Here are the small things. Here's the list of very small, achievable steps that you determined that will help you reach your goals.
You are capable of doing this. I think those reminders are helpful. There's so much information coming at us about the right ways to manage money. So much of that is not right for any individual person. And so trying to square that in your life is so overwhelming. So when you say money is hard for people, that's why.
So try to quiet that noise and think about what are the steps that you wanna take, moving forward and just take those baby steps.
Thank you so much for that.
Cristy
Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm glad we brought those forward.
Huge thanks to Cristy de la Cruz for being willing to share her wisdom with us to address these questions! Again, catch the full conversation, where Cristy interviews me about writing a book and about my countercultural approach to money, over at her podcast Somatic Wisdom.
What one financial topic do you wish you knew more about? What would help you have a better relationship with money? Submit your question to guide a future episode!
Check the show notes at healthyrich DOT co for a form to submit your questions. And while you’re there, sign up for the Healthy Rich newsletter to be the first to know when we drop something new.
This post contains affiliate links for Bookshop.org, so if you buy a book mentioned here, you support the author, local bookstores and Healthy Rich!
Share this post