Financial healing means reclaiming your autonomy and trust, and building confidence with money and spending. When you understand where your spending behaviors come from—whether it be childhood, adult relationships, or capitalist consumerism—you unlock the freedom to change them.
Because shame played such a large role in my relationship with money, I’m learning to reframe my opinions on spending and earning. I’m learning it’s okay to spend money on items that enrich my life, and to stop spending from a scarcity mindset. No one needs 32 bath towels, Ash. 😅
But trauma-informed financial literacy isn’t just about numbers and spending habits—it’s about nervous systems. It’s about building safety and trust with money in emotionally paced, shame-free environments.
Budgeting and saving can seem like punishment, especially if you’ve only ever done it in survival mode. But it can actually be a form of self-care and empowerment. It helps us reclaim our autonomy, exhibit control in ways that feel nourishing, and reduce stress.
How I’m Actively Healing My Relationship With Money—
Pausing Before Purchasing
I ask myself: Is this a need, investment, or treat? Am I trying to soothe an uncomfortable emotion with retail therapy? Am I in it for the long-term benefit or the dopamine hit?
Interrupting Incessant Worrying
The spiral sounds like: “What if we run out of money? What if we lose our job and can’t afford to live? What if I don’t have enough?”
I interrupt it with: “What if we don’t? What if we don’t lose our job? What if we do have enough? Are we open to that?”
This isn’t toxic positivity, it’s nervous system regulation. It’s practicing emotional neutrality in the face of financial fear.
Buying Myself the Damn Coffee
If $5.62 a day breaks me, so be it. I deserve to enjoy the smallest comforts without guilt. I will soak up every vanilla sweet cream cold brew I can until I can’t anymore. Because joy is not irresponsible. Pleasure is not betrayal. And comfort is not a luxury to me—it’s a requirement.
Repetition
Healing takes practice. I still catch myself hoarding, over-tipping, or panicking over small purchases. But now I pause. I reflect. I reframe and I redirect.
I’m done surviving scarcity. I’m learning to create abundance; with integrity, with authenticity, and with a nervous system that feels safe enough to receive it.
Budgeting is Self-Care
Ultimately, financial healing is an act of courageous self-care—it’s a commitment to moving from a state of scarcity and shame to one of safety and abundance. The real work isn’t just balancing a ledger; it’s regulating your nervous system so that you can approach your money with clarity, trust, and autonomy.
Ready to take these principles and apply them in a way that feels supportive, not stressful? My next post, Practical Financial Tips for Trauma Survivors: Budgeting as Self-Care, includes free, downloadable PDF worksheets designed to help you organize your finances from a place of emotional safety. Click here to download your templates and begin building a budget that truly empowers you.
As trauma survivors, typical financial tips and budgeting may not work for us. That’s because developing a new relationship with money after trauma requires more than budgeting apps and financial advice; it requires emotional safety, nervous system regulation, and tools that honor your lived experience.
At least, that’s what’s true for me, and I can’t help but think it’s also true for others. That’s why I’ve put together some practical budgeting tips and created free trauma-informed guides for approaching money.
Trauma-informed practices to help you build financial resilience
Practice Emotional Pacing
Before making financial decisions, pause. Check in with your body. Ask: Am I regulated right now? Is this decision coming from fear, urgency, or self-trust? Creating space between impulse and action is one of the most powerful tools for financial healing.
Instead of rigid budgets, try building a flexible safety map: Identify your non-negotiables (housing, food, emotional care, coffee 😉). Set up a small emergency fund—even $50 can create a sense of control. List backup plans and support contacts for financial stress moments. This isn’t about perfection, it’s about preparation that feels emotionally safe.
Seek Trauma-Informed Support
You deserve help that sees your whole self—not just your spending habits. Look for financial therapists or coaches trained in trauma-informed care. You can find excellent resources at the Financial Therapy Association or through specialized guides like our 🆓 Trauma-Informed Financial Literacy PDF ✨.
Reframe Budgeting as Self-Care
Budgeting doesn’t have to be punishment. It can be a ritual of self-respect. Try naming your budget categories with emotional language: “Nourishment” instead of “Groceries,” “Comfort” instead of “Miscellaneous,” or “Creative Expansion” instead of “Education.” Let your numbers reflect your values—not just your expenses.
Healing our relationship with money isn’t just about balances, it’s about nervous systems, memories, and meaning. It’s about reclaiming our right to feel safe, supported, and secure in every financial decision we make.
We don’t have to hustle our way into worthiness. We don’t have to budget our way out of shame. We get to build a financial life that honors our emotional truth.
And if you’re ready to go deeper, download the free resource below.
It includes affirmations, journaling prompts, boundary scripts, and support maps to help you build emotional safety around money—one gentle step at a time.
After childhood, many trauma survivors find themselves in adult relationships that mimic the financial exploitation, abuse, or shame from their childhoods. It’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern. And it’s more common than most people realize.
According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, financial abuse occurs in 99% of domestic violence cases [1]. It’s one of the most powerful tools abusers use to maintain control, and one of the top reasons survivors stay or return to abusive partners.
Restricting access to money or accounts, even your own
Sabotaging employment or educational opportunities
Creating debt in your name
Using money as leverage, manipulation, or punishment
“I’ll let you buy that if you let me do this.”
The Devastating Consequences
Sharing finances is scary for me. I’ve never shared a bank account with another person for this reason. If I can be exploited and used while keeping a separate account, why would I trust someone to have full 24/7 access? Those are the thoughts that go through my head when a partner suggests a joint checking account.
The consequences of financial abuse can include:
Loss of financial autonomy
Erosion of self-worth and confidence
Feeling trapped or unable to leave due to economic dependence
But it’s not just people. Institutions, banks, and companies have also been known to prey on the financially vulnerable—especially those with limited financial literacy or trauma histories.
Take student loans, for example. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has uncovered illegal practices across student loan servicing, including:
Misleading borrowers about protections
Denying rightful benefits
Deceptive billing and unauthorized debits
Exploitative refinancing that strips federal protections [2]
And the Student Borrower Protection Center reports that for-profit colleges have disproportionately targeted low-income communities and students of color with predatory financial schemes; promising opportunity but delivering debt and disillusionment [3].
It’s personal, and it’s systemic. Financial abuse lives in relationships, yes. But it also lives in policy, in profit models, and in the fine print.
Why The Beliefs We Hold About Spending Matter
Financial abuse can also be self-induced. It comes from the way we talk to ourselves and our own beliefs. Many of us were raised in environments where money was tied to survival, shame, and sacrifice. Where spending, even on happiness, was seen as betrayal.
When we were younger, my brother bought a scooter with cash he earned helping our uncle. My mother threatened to leave because he didn’t contribute to the household. Because, “no one thinks of anyone except themselves”.
That moment stuck with me. It taught me that spending money on yourself, even when you’ve earned it, is dangerous. Selfish. Risky.
This is scarcity mindset in real time. It’s the belief that there’s never enough, and that any personal abundance must be punished or redistributed. It teaches us:
To feel guilty for spending on ourselves
To equate worth with sacrifice
To fear joy, pleasure, or autonomy when money is involved
Scarcity mindset is cultural, generational, and systemic. It’s reinforced by trauma, poverty, and survival conditioning. And it shows up in our adult lives as:
Shame around buying things we love
Fear of financial independence
Over-giving or under-earning in relationships
Feeling undeserving of rest, pleasure, or abundance
“I am allowed to enjoy my time. I am allowed to do things I love. I am allowed to buy items necessary to explore a new passion. I don’t have to “perform” in a certain way to deserve this time and opportunity. I am allowed to invest in myself, my mental health, and my life.”
Moving Forward After Financial Trauma
Before we can reclaim financial safety, we have to name the stories we inherited. The ones that taught us fear, guilt, and silence around money. Healing begins with truth.
The most powerful question we can ask—of ourselves, of others, of the world—is deceptively simple. That question is:Why?
It’s the question that births clarity, disrupts conditioning, and reclaims autonomy. And ironically, it’s one of the first questions we’re punished for asking.
You know how three-to-six-year-olds are—relentless, curious, unfiltered? Their questioning quickly escalates.
Why?
Why?
But whyyyy?
If you were lucky, your early “whys” were met with thoughtful answers. There was someone there to explain—maybe not all of the time, but most of it.
Unfortunately, for many of us, our “whys” were shut down with a sharp, finalizing:
“Because I said so!”
This is where the conditioning begins. We learn—consciously or not—that someone else’s word is law. That authority equals truth. That questioning is defiance.
Usually, this message comes from someone we love and depend on—a parent, grandparent, teacher. They’re the boss. It’s their house, their rules, their game. And so we adapt. We stop asking why—at least out loud. We internalize their truth and try to mold ourselves around it.
My Journey to Reclaiming Autonomy and Truth
I stopped trusting my own truth around age 14. I just wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be shamed anymore. I wanted to fit in, so I forfeited my autonomy and began to blend in with my environment.
I laughed at jokes that made my stomach turn. I stayed silent when someone’s behavior felt off. I dated people I had little in common with—but you wouldn’t have known it. I mirrored their interests, their language, their worldview. I made their preferences mine.
By the time I moved out at 18, I was primed to accept the truth of any perceived authority figure. That’s part of what makes trauma survivors such easy targets for manipulation, cults, and coercive systems. Thankfully, I was spared from the cults—but I still experienced manipulation and was affected by coercive systems.
Before long, everything started to feel wrong: misaligned and uncomfortable. Depression crept in.
Daring To Ask
One day, as I was lying in bed, marinating in my despair, I dared to ask myself the forbidden question:
“Why am I feeling this way?”
At first, the answer was vague, though mildly annoyed:
“I don’t know!”
Which, in that moment, sounded a lot like “Because I said so!”
But I didn’t stop there. I was tired of feeling miserable, and I needed to know the reasons behind it. So, I channeled my inner four-year-old and kept asking:
“But why?”
It took a few tries and convincing, but eventually, something shifted. I cracked through the surface. I heard the defeated voice say:
“I guess I’m lonely.”
And that sparked a revolution. It felt like there was hope after all: “If I can understand it, I can fix it.” (As a side note,that mindset is actually another one of my trauma responses and isn’t always helpful, but in this case, it happened to be the drive I needed.)
So, I leaned into it with compassion and curiosity.
“Why are you lonely, Ash?”
“Because nobody understands.” I heard the voice say.
From there, I kept peeling back the layers. Each “why” unearthed another truth. Another wound. Another unmet need. And with each answer, I reclaimed a piece of myself.
Why Asking “Why?” Is Essential for Self-Trust
When we forget to ask why, we surrender our lives to someone else’s narrative. We outsource our discernment. We trust their judgments, their opinions, their feelings—over our own.
This creates a rupture in our inner compass. It makes us vulnerable to gaslighting, manipulation, and emotional abuse. It erodes our autonomy and places our sense of self in the hands of false authority.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying we’re above the law or immune to consequences. I’m talking about the everyday figures we’re conditioned to obey without question—bosses, parents, friends, political leaders, celebrities, doctors, CEOs.
No one has authority over our inner truth. No one is authorized to tell us what to believe in, what to like, or what to care about. That authority is ours and ours alone.
Reclaiming the Question: An Act of Self-Trust and Rebellion
Asking “why” is an act of rebellion, of healing, and of self-trust.
It’s how we unlearn the scripts we were handed, write our own, and begin reclaiming our autonomy. It’s how we stop performing and start living. It’s how we move from survival to sovereignty.
So ask it. Loudly. Quietly. Relentlessly.
Why do I feel this way? Why am I tolerating this? Why do I believe that? Why did I stop trusting myself?
And when the answer is “I don’t know,” ask again.
Because somewhere beneath the silence and frustration, your truth is waiting to be heard.
As always,
Be Gentle. Go slow. Peel better. 🍊
If any of this resonates with you, know that healing is possible. Here are a few places to start:
In simplest terms, Childhood Trauma Responses are how the body and mind begin to react as a result of abuse and/or neglect. When exposed to dysfunction and harm, our body’s defense system steps in. It finds loopholes—ways around the discomfort—and develops new mechanisms to keep us safe. Those loopholes can later become trauma responses. For example:
Dissociating
The ability to detach from the present was helpful in highly dysfunctional homes where tensions remained high. Not so helpful as an overwhelmed adult in the workplace.
Isolating
Hiding in your room, under the bed, or escaping to the outdoors kept us safe from harm in childhood. But it’s not so useful when conflict arises in our adult relationships.
People-Pleasing
Putting the needs of others above your own was a way of keeping the peace in childhood. Now it’s burning you out as an adult.
It’s important to understand trauma responses because they’re more prevalent than most people realize. And much of it gets chalked up to personality traits.
She’s just shy. Is she? Or is she afraid to speak up because when she did so in the past, it resulted in punishment?
He’s an asshole. Is he? Or were his needs never met, and he still feels the sting of abandonment?
They’re so driven! Driven by what? Fear of failure? Fear of feeling?
Trauma responses are more than just fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Sometimes it’s overworking, overeating, or overspending. Other times, it’s trauma dumping, over-explaining, and hypersexualization. There’s no limit to the ways our bodies and brains try to keep us safe or regain control.
Below, we’re going to explore the impact of trauma responses on health, society, and the individual, including my own experiences.
Understanding Childhood Trauma
Abuse, neglect, and witnessing violence are only a few examples of childhood trauma—and they can feel vague, especially for survivors who are unsure if they’ve experienced it. I didn’t consider trauma a part of my story until I was 28 years old.
Prior to that, I could tell you that my father was an addict and alcoholic and that physical altercations occurred when substances and tensions combined. My clothes smelled of mildew and cigarette smoke, and my backpack… sometimes of dog urine. There was the occasional hairbrush across the face, but that was just motherly frustration, and everyone experienced that, right?
It took about three therapists over the course of three years to finally convince me that some of that might have something to do with how I was feeling. They led me to support groups that further confirmed what I experienced wasn’t normal. Maybe it was affecting my current behaviors and attitudes. Maybe I wasn’t going to be depressed forever.
How Traumatic Experiences Shape The Developing Brain And Nervous System
Early trauma doesn’t just affect our emotions; it rewires the brain and nervous system [2]. When we experience chronic stress without protective relationships to co-regulate, our brain’s development and design are disrupted and altered [1]. This is especially true in regions tied to learning, memory, and emotional regulation.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as growing up around addiction, physical abuse, or poverty, can alter how the brain processes threat, leading to heightened reactivity, difficulty concentrating, and long-term health risks [3]. The American Psychological Association adds that trauma-exposed children may live in a state of hypervigilance—where the nervous system remains stuck in survival mode, even in safe environments [4].
The key regions affected include:
Amygdala: Heightened fear response
Prefrontal Cortex: Impaired decision-making
Hippocampus: Disrupted memory and learning
Fortunately, supportive relationships can buffer these effects, helping the brain rewire toward safety and resilience. Unfortunately, that can take time. It’s taken years if not decades for your brain and body to learn to perform, react, and behave the way it does. That can’t be undone overnight. However, understanding that you have a choice, and it can be done, can offer motivation.
The science can sound overwhelming, but for me, it was a breakthrough. It gave me a new way to understand myself. The depression I couldn’t shake wasn’t a flaw; it was a consequence of my brain trying to survive. The fragmented memories weren’t because I was “forgetful,” but because my hippocampus had been working overtime to protect me. I began to see that my struggles weren’t personal failings but physiological responses to experiences I didn’t have the tools to process.
This shift in my thinking was the first step toward healing. It allowed me to stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking, “What happened to me?” and “How is my body still responding?” These responses are the complex, often misunderstood ways our bodies and minds try to keep us safe—and they’re what we’ll explore in detail next.
What Are Trauma Responses?
Trauma responses are the ways a person’s body and mind react to distressing or dangerous experiences. Sometimes they are subtle, internal reactions; other times, they are blatantly destructive. These reactions are rooted in natural survival mechanisms, commonly referred to as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. They are protective patterns developed in response to past threats.
Trauma responses are not a representation of weakness, but adaptivity. They are evidence that we survived frightening and distressful situations. But fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are just terms—and people, myself included, are often underinformed as to how they present. Let’s look at the commonly accepted and lesser-known ways these responses show up—
Fight
What people think it means:
Yelling, aggression, physical confrontation
“Standing up for yourself” in a loud or forceful way
It also looks like:
Overworking or overcontrolling to feel safe
Hyper-criticism of self or others
Emotional rigidity or refusal to compromise
Defending boundaries with an intensity that feels disproportionate
Flight
What people think it means:
Physically running away
Avoiding conflict or leaving the room
It also looks like:
Chronic busyness or perfectionism
Escaping into work, hobbies, or planning
Intellectualizing emotions to avoid feeling them
Feeling trapped in “go mode” with no rest
Freeze
What people think it means:
Shutting down or going silent
Feeling stuck or paralyzed
It also looks like:
Dissociation or zoning out during stress
Feeling numb or disconnected from the body
Difficulty making decisions—even small ones
“Spacing out” in conversations or forgetting what was said
Fawn
What people think it means:
People-pleasing
Saying yes when you mean no
It also looks like:
Mirroring others’ emotions to stay safe
Over-apologizing or minimizing your own needs
Avoiding conflict by becoming overly agreeable
Feeling responsible for others’ comfort or reactions
These trauma responses aren’t just bad habits; they’re our body’s brilliant, if sometimes messy, way of staying safe.
The “Why” Behind the Responses
At its core, your nervous system is always asking, “Am I safe right now?” When a child grows up in an unpredictable environment, their nervous system learns to stay on high alert, even when the threat is gone. Think of it like a car, stuck, with the gas pedal floored and the brakes applied at the same time. This is why you might feel the need to always be busy (flight) or why you shut down completely when overwhelmed (freeze).
Our early relationships also teach us how to react to stress. When a child’s sense of safety is tied to pleasing an inconsistent or volatile parent, they learn to prioritize others’ needs over their own (fawn). These behaviors are deeply ingrained survival skills. They’re a map of what your nervous system learned to do to protect you. And while these rules are true for everyone, they show up in each of us in completely unique ways. In the next section, I’ll share how these responses have appeared in my own life.
Personal Experience: My Own Trauma Responses
My trauma responses are mostly rooted in childhood. I grew up around alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness, and was abused emotionally, physically, and sexually. I witnessed a lot of conflict that sometimes turned into domestic violence. Though there are large gaps in my memory, my body and nervous system still remember.
The reactions I typically exhibit can primarily be categorized into flight, freeze, or fawn responses. I don’t usually put up much of a fight. I spent much of my childhood and early adulthood bouncing between the remaining three, relying heavily on fawning. I masked to avoid abandonment, and I always tried to be “easy going”.
I prioritized the emotions and needs of others, and when I became overwhelmed by the busyness, I dissociated. I did this in different ways; sometimes it was as simple as spacing out, and other times it was drug or alcohol induced.
These responses show up in my life nearly every day. Something as simple as a hormonal shift can send my body on high alert, leading to increased anxiety, or leave me feeling numb and disconnected. I still struggle with conflict in relationships, often shutting down or finding ways to avoid.
When I’m in the firm grip of my survival responses, my entire self-opinion changes. The self-compassion and confidence I’ve gained suddenly disappear, and shame, blame, and hate take center stage.
Why and How Trauma Responses Appear
These responses aren’t character flaws; they’re a testament to how tough we are. From a biological standpoint, they’re the brain’s way of protecting us from danger. When you’re a kid and the world feels unsafe, your nervous system learns to stay on high alert. That survival mode becomes our default setting.
As Bessel van der Kolk, a leader in trauma research, explains, your brain actually rewires itself. Your amygdala (your brain’s alarm system) gets overly sensitive, so you react strongly to things that might not be a threat. The part of your brain that handles logic, the prefrontal cortex, struggles to keep up. And the hippocampus (your memory center) can shrink, which is why so many of us have foggy memories of our childhoods [2].
Living in this constant state of “on-guard” drains you. It can lead to anxiety, physical pain, and a whole host of other issues. As Dr. Gabor Maté puts it, “trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you” [5]. These responses are a direct reflection of that internal reality.
Healing and Moving Forward
The good news is, we’re not stuck. Our brain can heal. My own journey started by slowing down and paying attention to my thoughts. From there, I realized I couldn’t do it alone and committed to therapy.
Therapy has helped me challenge the negative thoughts that had been running my life. From there, I’ve been able to build internal safety, which has opened the door for processing past traumas. One of the most significant shifts for me was in somatic experiencing, which taught me how to reconnect with my body and release the trauma stored there.
Beyond therapy, simple practices have made a huge difference. Things like mindfulness, gentle movement like yoga, and just spending time in nature have helped calm my nervous system. I’m also learning to create a safe home and surround myself with people who are kind and supportive.
If any of this resonates with you, know that healing is possible. Here are a few places to start:
SAMHSA National Helpline: A free, confidential resource for mental and/or substance use disorders. Call 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Childhood trauma leaves a mark, but it doesn’t have to define you. The behaviors you once saw as flaws—the overworking, the people-pleasing, the emotional numbness—are simply the clever strategies your body and mind developed to keep you safe. They are proof that you are a survivor.
Healing isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about acknowledging what you’ve been through and learning to build a new, peaceful future. It’s about being kind to your younger self and giving your adult self the tools to finally move from just surviving to truly thriving. It’s a long journey, but it’s one that will lead you home to yourself.
