Linzy Bonham [00:00:00]:
I’m going to encourage you to stop now. I mean, if you’re driving your car, don’t actually stop. Pay attention to the road and be curious about what comes to the surface for you when you think about money. Welcome to Money Skills for Therapists, the podcast that helps therapists and health practitioners in private practice go from money confusion and shame to calm, clarity, and confidence with their finances. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by numbers or avoided looking at your business money, you’re in the right place. I’m Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of Money Skills for Therapists. Before we jump in, I want to remind you of something really important. Most of us highly skilled and competent therapists and health practitioners were never taught about money.
Linzy Bonham [00:00:44]:
Not in grad school, not in supervision, not anywhere. And yet here we are running businesses that need to take care of us while we’re busy taking care of others. It is a lot of pressure. So if part of you feels anxious about money, Avoidant, or like a bit of a hot mess financially, I want you to know that you are not alone and I am here to help. Through my free live workshops each month, I teach practical financial skills to help you feel more grounded, calm, and confident with your private practice money. You can see what’s coming up and save your spot to join live or register for the replay at moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops. Let’s get started. Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
Linzy Bonham [00:01:24]:
Today’s episode is a solo episode where I’m going to be digging into emotions and money. When I first made the decision to shift out of being a therapist specializing in complex trauma into starting to teach therapists about money, I remember talking to my own therapist at the time about that and saying, the trauma work is feeling really heavy. I’m really excited about this work with money. I’m going to help people with money. And I remember her laughing a little bit at the time and saying, money is trauma. You’re just gonna be working with trauma in a different context. It was not what I wanted to hear, by the way. That was not, not the analysis that I wanted to receive, but she was right to an extent.
Linzy Bonham [00:02:08]:
And I’m gonna talk about that today. When I first dove into teaching therapists about money, I was really excited to focus on all of the actual skills that I can see that my colleagues around me lacked, right? Everybody I knew was so immensely talented and competent in these areas of helping, helping folks with trauma, helping folks to create stability in their lives, create internal safety, external safety. So skilled. And yet for them, the thought of having to figure out how much to save for taxes or to have to keep track of their receipts to file taxes, those things were completely overwhelming. So I was really excited to teach them how to do those things because those are things that come more easily to me and things that I enjoy. So when I dove into teaching the very first session of Money Skills for Therapists, which is my course for solo therapists, in 2018, the lessons that I built out focused on creating that financial clarity, understanding your numbers, building your system, learning how to direct your money. And those are still the same lessons that I taught today. But what I soon realized is that, of course, my therapist at the time was right in that all the conversations we were having in the coaching calls were all about feelings, right? It was about the overwhelm that comes up when people would, would go to work on these things.
Linzy Bonham [00:03:27]:
And it’s about what happened when they were a kid and money was really scarce and how it’s hard to trust now that the money is really there, right? It was all the emotions that were really needing to be named and held and tended to so that folks could learn how to use a spreadsheet and could learn how to figure out their tax rate. And over time, over the years that I’ve been working with therapists, I’ve come to really realize and name that it’s the emotions that stop us from being able to just learn these skills on our own. It’s really the overwhelm that we experience. It’s shame, it’s anxiety. It’s maybe the pressure that we’re putting on ourselves or that is on us in terms of our need to earn. And it’s so scary to think about how much pressure is on us now that we’ve gone to private practice that it’s easier to just want to put our heads down than actually try to like stop and look and figure out how much money do you actually need to make. It’s easier just to kind of run. And those are all emotions, right? These emotions around money can absolutely run us, but also these emotions around money are the reason why so many therapists, when we sit down to try to figure this out on our own, or when we sit down to work on taxes, find it so immensely overwhelming and have a hard time thinking straight, even though we’re able to think straight incredibly, incredibly confidently when we’re facing complexity in the emotional space, right? And that is because of our own feelings around money.
Linzy Bonham [00:04:56]:
We know from trauma perspective, just from our nervous systems and how they work, when we are flooded with emotion, our thinking brains go offline. Right? You can’t think your way out of getting away from a tiger. You just have to run. And that, that is a system that’s there to keep us safe, you know. Thank goodness we have it because it keeps us from, you know, falling down the stairs and all these things. There are systems that are much faster than our ability to think. But when we’re so activated, when our nervous systems are in these survival modes, we can’t learn, we can’t understand what a spreadsheet is telling us, we can’t think straight about our tax rate. Because our thinking brain is not available.
Linzy Bonham [00:05:34]:
So I’m going to invite you now to stop and be curious about your own emotions related to money. And this might be something that you’ve done a bunch. Maybe we’ve worked together, maybe you’ve done Money Skills for Therapists or Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. Maybe this is something that’s new, but I’m gonna encourage you to stop now. I mean, if you’re driving your car, don’t actually stop, pay attention to the road, and be curious about what comes to the surface for you when you think about money. We’re going to start with a word. When you think about money, what word comes to mind? Don’t censor yourself. This is just in your own head.
Linzy Bonham [00:06:10]:
You don’t have to say it to anybody else, but I’m going to ask you to just notice what word came to mind. And even if you have judgments about that word, or there’s another part of you that’s immediately jumping up and saying, “Yeah, but da da da da da,” we’re just going to go with that first word because that’s the part of you that dominated, right, when this money came into your your mind. So thinking about that word that came up, maybe it’s a couple words, then I’m going to ask you to notice what emotions go with that word. And then once you’ve noticed and named those emotions a little bit, notice what’s happening in your body. What are the body sensations that go with that emotion? This is what is being cued up for you whenever you’re having to deal with money and whenever you’re thinking about money. Right? And if it’s an emotion that you’re noticing that’s not in the regulated range, if it’s not in your window of tolerance, if it’s not an emotion where you can really stay online, if the emotion that came up is anxiety, fear, if it’s like an overwhelm, if it’s a shutdown, right? If it’s outside of that window of tolerance, then this emotion is gonna stop you from being able to make grounded strategic decisions around money because this is your nervous system going into survival mode and this is your brain, therefore, going offline to a certain extent, right? So if you have noticed that your emotion that came up is an emotion that’s either not how you want to feel about money, you’re like, no, no, no, that’s not how I want to feel about this thing that I have to deal with all the time. Or if you’ve noticed that it’s an overwhelming emotion, whether that puts you into a state of hyperarousal or hypoarousal, then the first thing I’m going to remind you is, as we know, you have to name it to tame it. Now you’ve named something that maybe you already knew.
Linzy Bonham [00:07:46]:
Maybe you already knew you’re anxious about money. You’re like, no shit, Linzy, I’m anxious about money. That’s why I listen to your podcast. Or maybe an emotion that came up is surprising to you. You’re like, oh wow, that was fear, and fear is not what I expected at this stage in my career where I’m making more money than I ever have. Whatever it is that you notice, start to name it to tame it, right? Realize that this is what’s running under the surface when you’re trying to deal with money and when you’re trying to learn around money. Once we name it to tame it, there’s some steps that we can move through to help you shift your relationship with money. And I want to tell you, I am going to be helping folks walk through these steps in an upcoming series that I’m doing in April called Overcoming Money Shame.
Linzy Bonham [00:08:25]:
This is a workshop series that I’ve run before. I love running this workshop series. It’s free. It’s open to everybody because it gives you the experience of walking from the beginning to the end through learning and being together to start to shift your emotions around money and start to connect with what’s possible on the other side. Of whatever this emotion is that came up for you. The first thing that we do is put this in a larger context. You having big feelings around money is not a you problem. Usually it’s a societal problem, right? We don’t get education around money.
Linzy Bonham [00:09:00]:
As therapists, we get certain messaging around money and our worth and if we even deserve to make money or if it’s okay to make money for helping others, right? We’ve got society, we’ve got our profession, we’ve got specific messages that we receive from family about money. There’s so many layers that contribute. So the first thing that we do in the Overcoming Money Shame series, our first workshop, is understanding why money is so hard for therapists and helping you to put your own experience in a larger context. Because it’s not about you. You know, we all end up inheriting these problems. We have to still like work on it internally. But you’re not, you’re not the reason that you feel this way about money. The next thing that we do is we talk about the 3 keys to feeling empowered about money.
Linzy Bonham [00:09:40]:
Therapists who have actually changed their relationship with money and have been able to build a positive relationship with money so that they can get that brilliant strategic brain online and think about what actually matters to them and build a business that actually takes care of them and get money going where they actually want it to go in their lives. What are the 3 things that they do to get to that empowered space? The next day we’re talking about breaking down isolation and shame around money. You are not alone in struggling with money, you’re not alone and maybe feeling conflicted around money. But shame, of course, tells us that we are alone, right? So we talk next about how to break down that isolation and shame, the importance of connection and community, whatever that looks like for you, in shifting your relationship with money. And then the final day, we talk about the roadmap to move from a place of overwhelm and shame to total calm and confidence, shifting your relationship with money, but also building the skills and the tools to just have money working for you as just a neutral, if not positive, part of your business, right? And I’ve helped hundreds of therapists do this, so I know it’s absolutely possible, and I would love to lay out that roadmap for you. So if you are interested in joining me for this free workshop series, you can check out the link in the show notes or go to moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops. It’s going to be a live workshop series. If you can’t join live, you can always get the replays.
Linzy Bonham [00:11:02]:
If this is brand new work to you, welcome, it’s going to be awesome. If this is work you’ve done before, come with that curiosity of where are you now, right? We know that healing is not like, boop, I’m healed. We know there’s new things that come up as we go through new levels of business growth, or as new things come up in our life, you know, that bring up new challenges, new feelings, new stories. So the link will be in the show notes. I also want to plant the seed here for those of you listening that I am going to be increasing the price of Money Skills for Therapists. I’ve been teaching Money Skills for Therapists since 2018. We’ve helped hundreds of therapists move from money confusion and shame to calm and confidence, and I haven’t increased my price since 2023, which is a problem, friends. If you have also not raised your fee since 2023, you should think about doing that because life has gotten a lot more expensive since 2023.
Linzy Bonham [00:11:51]:
Um, so we will be raising the price of our course in May. The Overcoming Money Shame workshop series is a way for you to both have that experience of working with me, but you’ll also be able to join Money Skills for Therapists at our current price. We’re also moving into a cohorted model. So we’re going to be rolling out that we’re teaching money skills only at specific times. Right now, we’ve worked on a model where folks can join at your time, you know, and we, we hold you wherever you are in the course. We have weekly calls to meet folks where they’re at. We are going to be moving to a cohorted model. So if you want the opportunity to do this work together, in the next 6 months, pay attention because the doors are going to be open for Money Skills for Therapists this spring, and they won’t open again until next fall.
Linzy Bonham [00:12:31]:
So that’s all my information for you. Go to moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops to register for Overcoming Money Shame. And, uh, if you haven’t done Money Skills for Therapists, the course, yet, now’s a good time to, uh, to think about doing it before we increase the price by $500. And going back to where we started, just know that Emotions are changeable. We know that. That’s what we do as therapists. We are in the business of helping folks shift their emotions, developing a whole new relationship with food, sex, their partner, their family, all these things. And likewise, you can develop a whole new relationship with money, and I would love to help you do that.
Linzy Bonham [00:13:08]:
Thanks for listening today. Living in shame is a lonely place be, especially when it comes to the shame, overwhelm, and anxiety we feel about money. But I want to help you change that. That’s why I’m inviting you to join me for my free 4-day workshop series, Overcoming Money Shame, from April 20th to 23rd. I’ll be going live on Zoom with you for 1 hour each day, offering the tools and support that you need to go from money shame and confusion to calm and confidence in your private practice finances. Over our 4 days together, I will show you how to flip flip the script on money shame, understand the secrets of money success, break down isolation and silence around money, and take the right steps to finally get your private practice finances working for you. And even if you can’t join me live, replays will be available each day to those who register. If you’ve been waiting for your chance to get my support to change your relationship with money, this is it.
Linzy Bonham [00:14:02]:
And you could even win $500. Register today for the Overcoming Money Shame Workshop Series by clicking on the link in the show notes or going to moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops. That’s moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops. I look forward to supporting you
