Lately I have noticed that people are always talking about money, and yet no one is talking about money. A day doesn’t go by without people having conversations about “taxes” or “the economy.” But it is rare for people to speak at all about what money means to them personally.
Money is a mental construct. It doesn’t have a value beyond what we give it. Our minds make us who we are, and I believe we may be inadvertently letting money control our thoughts and actions by not talking about it on a personal level.
As a clinical social worker, I use cognitive behavioral therapy in my work. The premise of cognitive behavioral therapy is that our thoughts affect our actions. I have discovered a great many people have never wondered about their personal understanding and relationship with money. So, they do not know their thoughts about money and how their thoughts may affect their actions with money.
Our first memories of money are a great place to start. How was money discussed — or not discussed — in your family when you were a child? The question has nothing to do with having money, and it often starts a person simply wondering what they learned about money when they were young. This can be illuminating and helpful for people almost immediately.
For example, one person told me her parents were educators, and she realized her parents never spoke to her about money. It wasn’t taboo, but looking back at her childhood she believed it was because her parents did not think working for money was a lofty goal. She grew up with a sense that to work for money alone should never be a motivator. By talking about this, she realized her parents had not known how to talk about money with her and that she did not know how to talk about money with her children. Finally, she realized she wanted to talk about money with her children — what they knew and what they might want to know.
Another person told me his father talked to him a lot about money, and he was grateful because it helped him make some very good decisions in his 20s. Yet, he was the youngest of three children, and he realized his father had not talked to his older siblings about money, which may have explained why they had had a much harder time managing their finances. Their father had been too busy working when his older siblings could have benefited from such conversations.
In another case, an older man told me his parents only ever spoken about money when they worried about it. This, he thought, had left him with a feeling of greed, as though he never had enough even when he did. This gentleman realized he didn’t need to have such fear and that brought on new sense of compassion for himself and his parents.
Money has extraordinary power over our minds. We invest in it the promise of so many things that we value. If we are to understand ourselves and how money helps us to get the things we need and want, then I believe we benefit by talking about it. Simple memories of what one learned as a child can be a gentle and fascinating place to begin.
Money is a tool. People use it to get the things they most want and value in life, such as freedom, opportunity, comfort, good health, safety and pleasure. They also use it to avoid the things they want the least, such as poverty, fear, stress and hunger. Having money, of course, won’t necessarily make you happy, but knowing how to use it wisely can help you build a life that will.
Money influences how we see other people and how we see ourselves. The decisions we make about it may have more to do with emotions than with math. By talking about money on a personal level we can discover a better understanding of our psychological relationship with it and that can help us lead happy lives.
Robin Barstow is a clinical social worker for Maine Behavioral Healthcare, primarily at Spring Harbor Hospital in Westbrook.