Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Are Your Money Problems Psychological?

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Money intersects with every area of our lives: our self esteem, romantic relationships, mental health, family ties— everything has a money trail. And because of that, money can get intertwined with our psyche in interesting, and sometimes challenging, ways. Nicole wanted to dig deep into this, so she called up Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a financial therapist who combines financial literacy with the emotional and psychological side of money. To learn more about Lindsay, check out: Her website: https://mindmoneybalance.com/ And her book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Financial-Anxiety-Solution/Lindsay-Bryan-Podvin/9781646040070  

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself.

Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, GameStop. Are you ready for some money rehab? Wasting our time. I will take a check, like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. Earlier this month, I did an episode with Avis Cardella, a recovering shopping addict. It was a really fascinating conversation.

And if you're interested, you should check it out. It's episode 298. But one of the most striking parts of the conversation is that Avis's shopping addiction had very little to do with what she actually bought. She wasn't obsessed with getting her hands on the latest and greatest shoe from her favorite designer. Her mom died, and she was trying to fill the void with products. This is not a rare story. There is a lot of shaded area on the money and psychology Venn diagram. I didn't get interested in financial literacy because I am obsessed with money. But because of how money intersects with every area of our lives, Our self-esteem, romantic relationships, our mental health, family ties, every aspect of your life has a money trail. And because of that,

money can get intertwined in interesting and sometimes challenging ways with our psyche. So I called up Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, a financial therapist who combines financial literacy with the emotional and psychological side of money. Lindsay, welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks, Nicole. I'm really happy to be chatting with you. So happy to be chatting about this topic in particular. It is one we talk a lot about on the show, and I'm excited to double click on all the things that you do with financial therapy. How did you come to specialize in it? I came to specialize in financial therapy

because I'm basically my own client. Like a lot of people who start online businesses or start in the business space, we try to solve a need that we have had. And so I sought out to become a mental health therapist because I'd struggled with anxiety and depression and had a strong family history of mental illness. And then when I finished my grad training, I got my first job, which I was super excited about. And then I got my first paycheck and my first paycheck gave me

less than I earned as a waitress. And it was this whole kind of identity crisis. I felt like I had squandered my privilege. My parents paid for my higher education. I was struggling to make ends meet. And it was making me not just mentally stressed, but physically sick. I developed chronic insomnia. I was getting anxious all the time. I was getting sick. I was catching every cold and flu. This was many years before the current pandemic that we're in.

And as I was working with my clients, I specialized in anxiety and depression. I saw them bring up money stuff. And I had my own personal experience of struggling with money stuff and also feeling like it's about so much more than a budget or than line items. And the way that much of the personal finance industry

operates is just figure out a budget, spend less than you earn, and you'll be fine. But we know that information alone doesn't lead to transformation. And so I was consuming personal finance information on my own, trying to reduce my spending as much as possible. But what really moved the needle outside of cutting coupons and being smart about where I brought my produce was getting a job that paid better. And it was this aha moment that we have to first feel comfortable and confident asking for more and negotiating for more. I'm in a field that

traditionally tells you things like, oh, you should be thankful you have a job or, you know, you didn't go into that field because money's important to you. And so I just came at it from this place of personal experience and then seeing my clients stress out about money. And in grad school, we weren't trained to talk about money, but we were trained to talk about other hard things like trauma and abuse and neglect. And I just felt like it was a missing piece in our work. And money impacts all of us. Every single one of us has to earn it, spend it,

loan it, lend it, you name it. We engage with it all. And I just felt like it was a huge missing part of our psychology to ignore money. So I sought out training in financial social work and in financial therapy, did a, you know, not a full hard pivot. I think it's all intertwined and really made it a point to be clear that I help people with their anxiety and money shames. Amen to all of that. I think that if you want to get to the heart of any story, you follow the money trail. And I totally agree with you that information is not power. Action is power. And, you know, the enemy is sometimes between our ears. So when we can tell that mean girl to take several seats, then action can happen.

So it's all intertwined. And in my experience, the relationship between finances and mental health can also be cyclical, right? You know, like I'd been in a bunch of credit card debt. It made me feel anxious. And then because my debt made me feel anxious, I didn't want to face it, which made the debt worse and the anxiety worse and so on and so on. Is that cycle something that you see often in your practice? Yeah. Even if it's not debt and anxiety or debt and feeling down, we know there's a bidirectional relationship,

which is a fancy way for saying two-way relationship between mental health and money. So we see this all the time. And so a lot of people try to, again, enhance their knowledge through financial literacy. But if they don't address what's going on in their minds, they can often say like, well, geez, I have everything right on paper. I'm out of credit card debt. I've started saving an emergency fund, but I still feel stressed or I still feel anxious or I still feel worried that it's going to happen. So yes, of course, getting out of debt and creating a stronger financial safety net is so important and dialing down that anxiety and worry, but also addressing like what that spending or

kind of procrastination around engaging with your money was around in the first place. procrastination around engaging with your money was around in the first place. Right. Getting to the heart of where that trauma stems from. And, you know, we every time I go into, you know, different therapists over my life, I was like, none of that Freudian shit. Like, I don't want to talk about daddy issues, whatever, whatever. And ultimately, it comes back to a lot of that, whether we want to fight against it or not. A lot of the things that had happened to us as kids, whether it's crazy financial trauma, as I talk about in my last book, you know, bailing my mother out of jail with cash or, you know, watching your parents clip coupons or spend frivolously or your friend group getting into debt or hiding stuff from their significant others.

How much does that upbringing affect how you face money in your adult life? It makes a huge difference in how we engage with our money. Our childhood brains are doing the bulk of their development, which is why therapists, as irritating as it is, as you mentioned, Nicole, they often ask you, tell me about your childhood. And the same thing goes with money. Depending on the study you look at, by the time we're about seven or eight years old, we've more or less formed our money story or our relationship with money. And when I say money story, I'm just not talking about like scarcity abundance mindset. I'm talking about what are you allowed to earn?

What are you allowed to spend? Are you allowed to have debt? Is debt good? Is it bad? Et cetera, et cetera. So when we go back to what was going on in childhood, it's because we're learning different ways to keep ourself safe. And so we go back to childhood to say, what was going on financially?

What were the messages that you got around money? And that informs why we do what we do as adults. And sometimes people will say to me, well, Lindsay, my parents or my caregivers never talked about money. And to me, that's just as valid and important as growing up in a household where there were a lot of consistent money arguments. The avoidance of money is just as impactful to say like, oh, we don't talk about money or it's rude or that's not for kids to know about. That also kind of shapes our relationship with money for it to be rude and

embarrassing and not something we talk about. So it's not just growing up in those households where there is financial tension. It can also be those households where money was or is a taboo. It's the ultimate mindfuck, I think. I mean, money is a problem, whether you have it or you don't. You have shame if you have a lot of it. You have shame if you don't. I am no diet or health expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it really bothers me when there's this mindset around getting thin, like this think thin to be thin. It's like, no, go to the gym and eat less. Not that I have any expertise here. When it comes to money, though, I think mindset matters a lot. I think approaching your mindset actually makes a difference. Have you found that people go into this type of therapy

reluctantly and say, like, no, just teach me about what you'd mentioned, line items, spreadsheets, blocking and tackling and like forget all this other, you know, childhood stuff? What's interesting is by the time they get to me, they've already kind of done all of the legwork. A lot of my clients, they have a budget spreadsheet. They have a five-year projection. They've done all the things they think they're supposed to do. And they're coming to me saying, I still can't tell my partner how much credit card debt

I have, or I still can't tell my kids that we don't have money to send them to college, right? They're still struggling with the what next. Oftentimes it's impacting their interpersonal relationships or like me, their physical health. They're not sleeping at night. They're feeling stressed out. They're grinding their teeth. They're getting stomach aches. So it could be one of those two things where like they're trying to do the right thing and they're following all the books and they're following all the 12 step plans and all these different things out there. But it just doesn't feel right. And that's the most common thing I hear is like it just feels so uncomfortable. Yeah. I mean, the body does keep score. That's a famous psychology book. And I hear the issues as well about financial infidelity, like hiding debt from your partner or trying to tell your kids whether they can afford college or not.

Or like I mentioned, my debt and anxiety. What are some of the other common issues that folks approach you with? Yeah. So for sure, anxiety and shame come up a lot. And when I say shame, people are like, shame? Shame about money. What do you mean? But if we just take it a step back and go, let's think about guilt versus shame, because we often use those terms interchangeably. Guilt is external. I did something bad. And shame is

internal. I am bad. And so when it comes to money, I often hear shame by way of a statement that sounds like, I'm just not good at money. I just don't get credit cards. I've never been able to negotiate a raise. Right. So a lot of these internal beliefs that they are somehow inherently bad with money and that there's nothing that they can do about it. So a lot of shame. And then there's also when I do couples work, there's a lot of confusion about spenders and savers being partnered. You know, everyone will say like, well, I'm a saver and they're a spender. And that's why we fight all the time. But it's usually much deeper than that. And I often find when you have

the language to communicate healthily about money, spenders and savers can really balance each other out really well. So those are a couple of other things that I see come up in my work. Yeah, totally. We had a spender and a saver on the show and they actually seemed really compatible to balance each other out with their family finances. When people come in with stories like that, that they tell themselves, I'm not good at math. I don't have enough money. I'm not good at numbers. I'm just not a money person. How do you coach them out of that and change that story? So usually I ask them for evidence of that being 100% factual, right? So I'm just terrible at money. Okay. Let's, let's take that statement and just see what proof we have that that is true and what evidence we have that that might not be true. And oftentimes what they'll say to me

is, well, like I can't stick to a grocery budget, but I've actually never missed a credit card payment or I've always been able to pay my phone bill on time. So what I'll start doing is kind of eliciting some proof from them that they're not as bad as they think they are financially speaking. So we start to kind of gather some evidence and go, well, maybe you're not so great with this particular thing, but we've got a lot of evidence that you know how to manage your bills and you know how to stay organized and you understand the importance of paying for things on time. And it might be about something else. So kind of separating out what we think is true versus what is really true. And that's where

having a financial coach or a financial therapist can be so helpful because it's a neutral third party that isn't in your brain to help you kind of see how true is it, those statements that you're telling yourself. And you talk a lot about four money archetypes that shape the way people think about money. Can you share what those are? Yeah, sure. So those four financial archetypes were born out of money scripts that were developed by some financial therapists to focus on money disorders. My training and my background is in social work. And in social work, the discipline is really meant to be strengths-based, which means every time you approach

a client, if they have a quote unquote problem behavior, we're trained to go, how is that supposed problem behavior helping them? So we'll come back to the money in just a second, but let's say I have somebody who has a problem behavior of like biting their nails. Well, I could just say like, put nail polish on it and go about your merry way. Stop biting your nails. That's so bad for you. Or I could say, what is biting that your nails do? When do you notice that you're doing it? And what we learn often is like, oh, I do it as a nervous habit. I started doing it in kindergarten when my teacher picked on me and I didn't know the shape or the color that we were talking about and became a coping mechanism. So coming back to the money archetypes, I've taken

kind of what those researchers have done. And instead of looking at it through the lens of this is what's bad about them, or this is what's disordered about them. I've said kind of what those researchers have done. And instead of looking at it through the lens of this is what's bad about them, or this is what's disordered about them, I've said, what are some of the strengths? What are some of the gifts that are inherently embedded in the way in which we look at money? And so over time, what I have seen is that there are these four different types that really help us to see why we do what we do and how those things are protective for us. So they are doomsday prepper. That's the person who holds on tightly to their money. And, you know, we can all kind

of think of a stereotypical person. I think back to my grandma when she was living, anytime we'd go out to eat, she'd take home like, um, fruit garnishes and lettuce garnishes and bring them all home because she was a great depression kid. Right. And so as she grew up into an adult, a safety mechanism for her was saving every single thing and really making the most out of everything. So she would have also probably financially been a doomsday prepper, saving a lot of money, making a dollar stretch, all of that stuff. Another one is the blissfully ignorant, which tends to avoid engaging with their money because it feels really uncomfortable and overwhelming. But a protective mechanism there is it's procrastination, right? We all have been in a situation where we procrastinate and it protects us from having to deal with something that is uncomfortable. archetype. I am a blissfully ignorant. If it was up to me, I would never look at my finances, which is why I have everything on autopay. And then I just check in and make sure we're chugging along so I don't have to deal with it too much. And then we have the free spirit.

That's the person who really gets a rush out of spending. I often think of these folks as kind of the life of the party. They always bring a gift. They're always willing to go on a last minute trip. They get a lot of joy out of the spontaneity of money. And then finally, it is the money admirer, the person who really associates having or earning money with positive self-worth. And as we can imagine, the downfall of that is overworking, workaholism, and kind of laser focused on earning money at the expense of other areas of our lives. So interesting. As you were talking, I was like, no, that's me. is overworking, workaholism, and kind of laser focused on earning money at the expense of other areas of our lives. So interesting. As you were talking, I was like, no, that's me. And then the

next one I was like, nope, that's me. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have

time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Now for some more money rehab. And on the show, we get a lot of emails, of course, from people who feel like they're repeating some of the bad financial patterns of their family. You know, I'm first

generation American, and I can totally relate to the taking home the fruit garnishes thing. You know, my extended family would bring home like salsa packets and things like that, like in this sort of scarcity mentality. Is there something that you see in your practice regularly that's really helped people break that cycle? It's a really good question. And what I usually say, going back to the example of nail biting, is asking clients, how does this particular behavior keep you safe? And more often than not, when we're engaging in some sort of behavior with our money that some might say is harmful or too intense, there's a reason that we're doing that. And the

reason that we do that is because it keeps us safe, right? So my grandma held on to those fruit scraps because there was a point in her life where she didn't have access to food as readily available as other times, right? So that's a safety mechanism. So first, we acknowledge the safety mechanism and be really compassionate and generous with that safety mechanism. And then we shift into the here and now. And the way that might look is like, you know, thank you, brain, thank you, body for being so concerned about my financial well-being. The good news is I'm no longer that eight-year-old girl. The good news is I'm no longer that eight-year-old girl. The good news is I'm no longer that 25-year-old kid struggling to make ends meet, right? Whatever it was that you were

doing then, acknowledge that, honor that, and then come to what's going on now. I know that I have the capacity to engage with my money, or I know that I have more than enough to be able to go out to eat and it will be safe. And of course, these only work if it's true, right? It doesn't work if you're like, oh, you know, me when I was younger, of course, that was really anxiety provoking, but now I can do whatever I want because I have a $20,000 credit limit if you don't have the capacity to pay it off. That's different. But when we are working through moving through some of those unhealthy behaviors, we really want to acknowledge why we did what we did, extend a little bit of grace and compassion to that younger version of ourselves, and then tell our brains,

hey, we're not there anymore. Yeah, I did a DBT program, a dialectical behavioral therapy program that I really enjoyed because it taught me so many great skills about everything in life that I wish we learned in school but did not. That's another topic, another episode. But it showed this idea of two things can be true at the same time. And it's really helped me think about money stuff too. And this idea of forgiving your former self for what she or he didn't know and also giving your future self a little tough love and being like, okay, well, now that you know more, it's not okay moving forward. What do you think about that? Yeah. I think that can be really helpful when you're in a safe enough space to essentially another way I've heard what you're talking about referred to is like now that you know better, do better kind of a thing. can cause some anxiety because behavior change is just hard. For anybody who has tried to wake up

10 minutes early or go to bed without looking at their phone, we all know that behavior change is really hard. So just extending yourself a little bit of grace to do like maybe one thing at a time. Maybe you're not going to take your credit score from 600 to 820 in three months, but you might be able to bring it up by 20 points in three months, so setting kind of achievable goals also helps your brain to understand that you have the capacity to make positive change. It proves to you, oh, I can make change. I know how to make change and I'm capable of doing it because oftentimes we tell ourselves like, oh, I'll never be able to fix it. This is just the way that I am instead of going, oh, I actually can make some progress within a month or within three months.

Yeah. And getting curious about it, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I know that, of course, that can manifest sometimes into disordered behaviors. We recently had a shopping addict on the show. If someone came to you with a shopping addiction, how would you help coach him or her around their spending behaviors? She had come on and talked about how this was like a coping mechanism for her that she was hiding from like the death of her mother and a whole bunch of other stuff. Yeah. Well, my heart goes out to them.

It is real and it's hard, especially because shopping as an addiction, a lot of times it kind of comes with a side eye or a little bit of an eye roll, like, oh, how can that really be an addiction? But it can be incredibly debilitating. And when it comes to a lot of addictions, the way that they're treated in our country is through a 12-step program. And a lot of those 12-step programs really rely on eliminating whatever that problematic use is, whether it's drugs or alcohol or whatever. But the thing with money is we can't just stop earning it or spending it or saving it. We have to engage with it all the time, which is why money stuff and food stuff is so challenging. We can't just stop eating.

We can't just stop spending. So we have to cultivate a really healthy relationship with our money because we're going to have to engage with it almost every day, if not daily in our life. So first I would just extend a lot of understanding that this is a really hard thing. It is a real thing. And that I'm sorry that they're struggling. And then when it comes to what do we do about that? Um, I think it can be helpful just to understand a few quick things about the brain, um, and that there's three hormones that oftentimes we're chasing when we are doing something like shopping. We're chasing dopamine, we're chasing serotonin, or we're chasing oxytocin. And those three things we need in order to feel really healthy and happy and connected to others. So when we think of dopamine, that's like quick hit, super exciting, quick high that we get when we eat something like sugar or when we go shopping,

social media, getting that, like, you know, boom, boom, boom, all, all the bells and whistles that lights up, you know, that, that really helps with that dopamine. Um, then serotonin is another kind of happy hormone. That's oftentimes when you think about like chemically, a lot of antidepressants, their selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, nobody listening has to memorize that. Just know that that might be why you've heard that term before. And serotonin is really responsible for making us feel grounded and relaxed, um, in safe in terms of our brain. And then finally, oxytocin is also known as the love hormone that makes us feel connected

to other people. It can be released when you give a significant other a big hug or when you pet your dog or cat for a while or when you see a little baby smile. That is the hormone that we're going after. So when I'm working with somebody who's struggling with spending, oftentimes they'll say things like, oh, well, I just get a rush. And I really want to dissect what of those three things they're really looking for when they're shopping. Um, and then we try to see, are there other places that you can replace that need to get that need met? Um, so instead of shopping, if we're going after an oxytocin thing, we're looking

for connectedness, we're looking for community, we're looking for love. Where can you find those things elsewhere? Do you need to maybe pick up the phone and call a friend and go for a walk together? Do you maybe need to tell your partner we need more date nights? You maybe need to reach out to a family member and have that long awaited call. It could be any of those things, but we can't just pull away somebody's coping mechanism without extending to them something else. And so that's why it can be helpful to think about what of these three things am I really looking for and what are healthier alternatives to try and get those needs met? Yeah. I mean, some of those, I assume, can just replace, you know, the dopamine hit that

you're getting, right? Or the cage match that you might be in. You know, and I think that, as you mentioned, the 12-step plans, for the most part, you know, take away the thing and we can't do that with money. As you know, there's a couple of them that relate to money with the Gamblers Anonymous and the Debtors Anonymous. How would you coach somebody if they might be nearing needing those types of programs? Really good question. So I think it depends on how distressed that person is. It's not my job as a therapist to say, oh, you've checked these five boxes. Now you have to go to a 12-step program. It's about asking them whether or not our work together is working for them and what else they might need. And then I would extend those programs just as like information. I would say, you know, is it okay for me to tell you about these programs? What questions do you have about them?

And for some people, they are a total lifesaver. And for other people, they go and they're just like, it's not for me. So they've really been touted as being the end-all lifesaver. And for other people, they go and they're just like, it's not for me. So they've really been touted as being the end-all be-all. And for some people, they are, and they're not a fit for every single person. So I think it's worth just kind of exploring. In recent years, there's been a lot of work in the world of psychology and of social work around harm reduction. So it's instead of engaging in this behavior all the time, can we reduce the amount of times you're engaging in that behavior? Because abstinence does not always work, especially when it comes to things like

gambling, shopping, things like that. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Even on your darkest days, remember, you are not alone. The fact that there are people like Lindsay who has made a career of helping people that are working through challenges at the intersection of money and behavior should show you that there are many, many people out there who have asked for help. So you should, too. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoie and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our mascots are Penny and Mimsy.

Huge thanks to OG Money Rehab team Michelle Lanz for her development work, Catherine Law for her production and writing magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.