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Let’s talk systemically about money.

How many of you inwardly cringed or otherwise perked up at the mention of money? Discussing money is a difficult thing for many individuals to do, however, it is a systemic emotional family issue that desires greater attention. Many families don’t discuss their relationship with money and this practice tends to travel down from generation to generation. My family system was no exception and the discussion of salaries or wages was considered a private matter. That may indicate that money holds an emotional relationship to identity. How much did you make in comparison to others? The amount of money you made was associated with self-worth or self-identity. As we all know, money comes and goes, waxes and wanes, shifting from day to day and month to month. It is such a taboo topic in many family systems that many individuals enter deeply into intimate relationships with others without feeling their way through the emotional “minefield” of money.  It doesn’t have to be that way. Get to know your emotional relationship with money and you can transform the inner image you carry about it. Your financial actions and transactions are frequently driven by emotion.

Mountains of Money

After a few decades on the planet, I learned that money can create issues whether you have it or don’t have it. I learned that money doesn’t in and of itself bring happiness. It can ease financial burdens, but it can also create more burdens. Money can greatly complicate your life if you haven’t done your inner emotional healing work. If you suddenly acquire a windfall at a time when you haven’t already stepped onto your emotional and spiritual journey of life, money can lead you into a variety of destructive temptations. We witness the many addictive escapes used by the extremely wealthy and those paid lucratively in the entertainment, professional sport, or corporate worlds today when they have mountains of funds at their disposal. These issues occur at any level of financial accumulation, or lack thereof, but with the role of media and the advent of reality television and the Internet today, these public displays are there for the whole world to witness.

Emotional Spender or Saver

Our perceptions about money rise out of our family systems of origin. Monetary currency is used in most societies on the planet as a means of exchange, so most of us have an emotional relationship with money. I was innately a saver. My early hard-earned dollars were meticulously saved in order to purchase that much-yearned for item. Some of us unconsciously save and some unconsciously spend. You likely have a good sense of which group you belong to. Fortunately, I studied business and economics at university right after high school so I had a working knowledge about the material dynamics of money at a relatively young age. When my own sons were young, I diligently taught them about money at an early age. I somehow knew that the capacity to understand the value of money could be taught to the child by the mother or father. At that time, I was totally without an understanding of the emotional relationship we pass on through the family system about money.

Money Emotional Response Patterns

I have since learned that our money behaviours develop long before we reach adulthood, whether the child is taught the skill by a parent or not. The child will emotionally absorb the money behaviours of the parents and hold them in the cells of their bodies, just as they carry the imprint of any other emotional response pattern of early childhood. Our money relationships develop along with the emotional relationships with our mother and father. Was mother the spender or saver? How about father? Quite often a spender and a saver will come together in a relationship. Do you fit into your family system through your money spending habits?  It is just one more way to emotionally understand our world. There may be an issue around money wanting to be healed in the family system. Our money emotional response patterns are no different than any other emotional response. We push each other’s buttons and it triggers an emotional response. It is often difficult to shift money behaviours because they have a deep emotional response pattern holding them in place. Contemplate who you are like financially within your family system and feel free to go back more than one generation.

Recognizing Money Wounds

Once you understand the emotional underpinnings of your money behaviours, you can shift them like any other emotional response pattern that is no longer serving you well. Your relationship with money actually reveals much about your emotional wellbeing. Your relationship with money may be reflecting or carrying the transgenerational unresolved emotional traumas and wounds of your family system.

Consider the following list of questions to help you decide how you are emotionally involved with money. Be sure to journal your answers to get a profile of your money emotional wellness.

Money Emotional Wellness List

Do you feel like you have a healthy relationship with money?

Are you a saver or a spender?

Is money about safety, security, and protection for you?

Is money about power, self-worth, identity, or perhaps guilt?

Was it mother or father who controlled the purse strings?

Was it mother or father who earned the money (or who earned the most money)?

Did you receive an allowance when you were growing up?

Did your family talk about money?

Did you grow up with little available money?

Did you grow up with an abundance of money?

Did you grow up financially poor and end up with great wealth?

Did you grow up financially wealthy and end up financially poor?

Besides the mortgage of a home, do you spend funds that you don’t possess and continually put yourself in debt?

Do you take risks with money that you can’t afford?

Do you gamble?

Are you a shopaholic? (Pay attention to what you like to buy, it will tell you much about yourself and emotional wounds in your family system.)

Do you immediately have to spend any funds you do acquire?

Are you a hoarder or overly stingy with your money?

Did family members struggle during difficult times like the depression or go without material wellbeing in some significant way?

Do you feel like you don’t deserve the money you have?

Do you have difficulty discussing money with others?

If you receive a sudden quantity of money, do you feel like you have to do something to earn it?

Are you driven to give money away? Are there guilty feelings involved?

Even if you have enough money to be comfortable, do you feel driven to make more and more and more?

Do you go through life without a bank account or investments because you can’t trust anyone with your money?

Do you tend to be overly concerned with money, whether you have too little or too much?

Are you usually broke or scrambling to make ends meet?

Have you ever filed for bankruptcy?

What are your charitable giving behaviours? When you give away money, does it make you feel good about yourself? Do you want your name attached to every donation you make?

Do you have a problem putting a value on the services or work you do for others?

Have you made a great deal of money and consciously or unconsciously blame it for ruining your life?

Do you tend to use phrases that involve money? “This money is burning a hole in my pocket.” “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “Money is the root of all evil.” “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” “Money can’t buy love.”

Have you earned or inherited money and turned around and lost the fortune?

Has anyone in your family system ever gained or lost fortunes?

Are you trapped in patterns of consumerism and materialism?

Have you had a midlife crisis spending spree?

Do you feel like the world owes you something?

Is money the central theme of your work (banking, investments, etc.)?

If you’re a saver, did you match yourself up with an intimate partner who is a spender, or vice versa?

Do you bicker with your intimate partner or other family members about money?

Have you ever forgotten, refused, or avoided the discussion of money before getting seriously involved with an intimate partner?

Do you control your intimate partner with money?

Do you control the behaviour and decisions of your children with money?

Does your family have a deep financial secret?

Do you have an abundance of funds yet keep it from your children for fear of ruining their lives?

Do you use your funds to create a family legacy?

Did your family ever have its possessions or wealth taken away?

Were your family’s possessions or land taken or confiscated in wartime, conflict, or violence?

Was your family the victim of theft or looting?

Did your family suffer oppression during colonization?

Did your family suffer oppression under aristocratic or wealthier individuals?

(This list is from the book Source of Life, Source of Healing by Patricia Kathleen Robertson, pending publication)

Your responses to these questions will provide you with much food for thought related to your relationship with money and the emotional dynamic of money in your family system. How are you entangled with money emotionally through your family system? Is your relationship with money entangled with power, safety, fear, guilt, self-worth, identity, impressing others, addictions, yearnings, or other emotional dynamics?

Systemic Constellation

If you happen to be a family constellation facilitator working with a client with any number of relationship or work issues, set up a systemic constellation with two representatives or markers initially: one representative for the Client and one for Money. After a time, add a representative or marker for Mother and a representative or marker for Father. What is revealed to the client about the money emotional response patterns of the family system and their relationship to money? Where does this emotional relationship with money originate? What is it that the client is carrying for their family system that is showing up in their relationship with money or other life relationships? What inner image about money needs to shift?

The issues we have around money in our relationships with others is something that deserves close attention. Our relationship with money usually reflects something back to us about what might desire to be healed or balanced in our family system.

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