Financial Planning for Women and Men After Religious Trauma

This is a loaded topic. I feel my heart race as I prepare to write about it. 

I don’t want to offend anyone. This is a core narrative of my own life and development and my own young interpretation of what it meant to be a Christian. I will start this post by saying that if you find your religious or spiritual community to be helpful and fulfilling in your life, relationships, and money, we support you. As an adult, you get to choose which groups you belong to. 

I write this now as someone who does not affiliate with any particular religious group.

Having worked in church settings, professional therapy settings, and as a financial planner, I have heard many stories of religious trauma. There is a growing movement of people who use the term Religious Trauma Syndrome to talk about the adverse impacts of religion on psychological, relational, and moral development. 

I invite you to reflect on what you’re thinking and feeling as you read this. What is your initial reaction to this blog post? There is no right or wrong answer. Your reaction and response will determine how you read this article. 

Even with years of reflection, healing, and growth through my own religious trauma, it can still be unsettling to think about its implications both in my life, the people we work with at Healthy Love and Money, and society at large.

Books and academic journals are filled with ideas about the relationship between religion, psychology, and well-being. Religion and its many expressions, practices, and beliefs address foundational human questions. This is what makes it both a force for good and hurt in the world. It is complex and dynamic, making it very challenging to reduce the impact of religion to simple generalizations. 

Let this blog post be a time of reflection, discomfort, and peace as you sort through your own experiences of how religion has shaped your relationship with yourself, others, the Divine, and money. 

Understanding the Impact of Religious Trauma on Women’s and Men’s Finances

Religion sets the stage for how we see ourselves, others, the Divine, and money. Within religious teachings, there are ideas about self-worth, patterns of thoughts, the role of emotions, the value of our bodies, and what is morally appropriate. 

Psychology (and by extension therapy) also tries to define and direct how we understand these building blocks of being human and what to do when these realities of being human are “not working.”

Some common experiences that fall under the umbrella of religious trauma are:

• An undermined sense of inherent self-worth
• A belief that we must subscribe to a set of certain beliefs or be at risk of being excluded from the promised future
• An inability to trust our own thinking, instead turning to others in authority to answer questions about what is appropriate in our lives
• Emotional manipulation that either suppresses the role and importance of emotion or takes it to ecstatic states
• A narrow definition of what it means to be a male or female
• Moral standards unachievable by humans 

Religious trauma can also pop up in how we view or interact with money. Here are some of the financial impacts of religious trauma:

• Obsessing about or avoiding the topic of money
• Feeling morally shameful or superior for your particular approach to money
• Fear of or avoidance of looking at objective financial realities because of a belief that God will provide
• Hierarchical relationships that put one gender in a position of power over another, undermining financial agency and autonomy
• The under-accumulation of wealth and income to not raise the judgment of the religious community or the Divine
• The massive accumulation of wealth to show God's favor in your life
• The inability to perform financial tasks outside of prescribed gender roles or significant distress while doing so
• Only explaining financial realities through God’s impacts, denying personal desires and agency 
• Forced charity, tithing, or generosity  

Reflecting on Financial Independence from Religious Trauma

Reckoning with the impact and influence of religious trauma is a hard and painful journey initially. Our own psychological defense mechanisms and psychological development can blind us to the impact of adverse impacts that religion has had on our lives. 

There is a complex intersectionality between our financial trauma from childhood and our experience of religious trauma. This is why simple solutions to our common money challenges often do not lead to sustainable change. 

Part of the journey of recovering from religious and financial trauma is claiming our own independence psychologically and financially. Just the mere idea that we have agency to make decisions about where our self-worth comes from, the value of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and the role of our own moral development can be a powerful act of liberation from the grip of religious trauma. 

As children, we need adults to teach and model these realities. This is an inescapable reality of childhood development. We need family and social systems as part of our neuropsychophysiological development, which is a huge word to describe how our brain, mind, and body shape each other through our lived experiences. This process is much like a tree that is shaped by where it grows; the same type of tree on the side of the mountain versus on top of the mountain can look very different. 

Our quest for financial independence is embedded in the reality of what our minds, brains, and bodies have internalized up to this point in our lives. What can make claiming our own financial independence so challenging is that we have likely internalized messages such as “This money is not ours but God’s,” with an imperative to manage it “God’s way.” 

An additional challenge is that independence is not the final stop on the developmental continuum—it is interdependence. It is a return to relationality but in a fundamentally different way than dependence, in which one person counts almost fully on another. 

Steps to Rebuild Financial Security

Rebuilding your financial security will take you through looking at your own belief systems.

Step 1: Questions To Ask Yourself

What internalized beliefs do I hold? 

Which ones do I choose to continue to hold? 

Which ones can I let go of over time? 

We will have to question our assumptions of what it means to be in a healthy relationship with ourselves, others, the Divine, and money. There are guides and books to help you along the journey, but in the end, it becomes your responsibility to define this for yourself. 

Before you can rebuild financial security, it’s helpful to take a long look at where you are and what beliefs got you there. Chances are there will be a mix of positive and negative beliefs or mindsets you’ve absorbed surrounding money. Take some time to ponder on and journal about which beliefs have served you and that still hold true in your life and which ones may need to be rewritten.

Step 2: Build Your Groundwork on Psychological and Relational Health

Read and learn about attachment theory. While it may seem unrelated, how secure we feel in our close relationships determines a lot of how we relate to others when it comes to finances as well as our relationship to money itself. Whenever we build something, it’s critical to start with a sound foundation.

Step 3: Grow Your Financial Knowledge

Read and learn about the foundations of personal finance. This encompasses not only the math of the matter but also the mindset element of money management. Discover diverse views on how to manage money. There are many voices in the personal finance space, and you’re bound to find a few that resonate with you.

Step 4: Meet More People

Find online communities of different people who talk about money. You’re unlikely to gain much knowledge from people who see money as a taboo topic or who shy away from financial discussions. It also helps to find others who have been through similar struggles to see what methods and strategies they have used to successfully overcome them. By interacting with others who have paid off debt, saved for retirement, learned to create positive cash flow in their business, etc., you instinctively believe that you can do it too.

For a good place to start, Sarah Carr, CFP® is a dear friend and colleague who joined me on The Healthy Love and Money Podcast to talk about her significant journey of healing from religious trauma and establishing financial security for herself. 

Step 5: Take Action On What You Are Learning

Learning is fantastic and feels good, but true progress is made when you implement what you’ve learned. There are of course many practical financial action steps that you will need to take in tandem with your psychological healing from religious trauma. 

Consider creating regular points of connection and accountability with your partner to keep yourselves on track. This may look like a “money date” once a month where you discuss your progress toward financial goals with your partner. It may also be agreeing to meet with a financial therapist to work through and heal your religious trauma to give you the capacity to make needed financial changes.

However this looks for you, just take the first small step toward your goal. 

Financial Resources and Tools for Women and Men Recovering from Religious Abuse

You will need to piece together different tools to help you in rebuilding your financial life after religious trauma. This can include getting outside of the normal people you have encountered in your particular context. Look for different sermons, podcasts, books, and social media to diversify the voices you listen to. 

I also encourage you to talk with people who approach money very differently than you do. They may think about budgeting, saving, investing, taxes, insurance, and estate planning in ways you never have considered. This will give you a wider option of choices to pick from, but not all will be great for you. It becomes your responsibility to sort through what works and does not work for you. 

By taking the time to go on this journey, you will be learning how to think for yourself and navigate the different emotional, bodily, and behavioral responses you have to money. In the end, you are working to reshape your sense of who you are in the world and to create a relationship with money that is authentic to who and how you want to be in the world, not based on your particular constellation of religious traumas. 

Overcoming Financial Anxiety and Guilt 

Financial anxiety and guilt are messengers. They are not bad inherently. Yes, they are uncomfortable, just like a shooting pain in your side may be indicative of overexertion or a kidney stone. 

We assign negative attributes to financial anxiety and guilt when in reality, they are an invitation to reflection, growth, and healing. Beneath the surface of financial anxiety and guilt are very real lived experiences that have left us with a range of uncomfortable emotions like sadness, fear, shame, anger, and disappointment.

By becoming more nuanced and attentive to our emotions, we create an empathic mirroring for ourselves, allowing our minds and bodies to process the emotions instead of being in denial about them. 

The other side of the coin about financial anxiety and guilt can also be true. When we have good things happen in our financial lives like promotions, receiving inheritances, receiving birthday gifts, going on trips, enjoying nice meals, etc., this can also evoke financial anxiety and guilt. 

The same is true for how to navigate this reality — we can acknowledge that we are feeling joy, excitement, acceptance, etc. Being able to be empathically mirrored by ourselves or others can allow us to internalize these comfortable emotions. 

Religious trauma teaches us that it is not okay to feel our feelings, that feelings are suspect, or they are not to be trusted. In this environment, emotions can overrun us. The psychological sciences help us understand that emotions are a part of our sense of self and decision-making process, whether we are conscious of them or not. The more we can become aware of our emotions and what they are connected to, the more freedom we can experience. 

How Financial Planning Empowers Women and Men to Move Forward

Financial planning done well incorporates who we have been, where we are now, and where we want to go in the future. 

When we develop financial plans, we are setting intentions for where we want our life to head and making reasonable assumptions about how to get there. Financial planning is part science and part art. There are math formulas to help us make predictions about how long our financial resources will last, but financial planning goes well beyond math formulas. It invites us to reflect on what we want for our lives and how we can align our current uses of money to meet present and future needs in a balance that feels right. 

The role of the financial planner is to serve as a guide and consultant to help you work through the math problems, explain financial rules (i.e., how Roth vs. a traditional IRA works), and be an exceptional listener to what you are saying (and not saying but need to say). 

Because financial planners work with many clients, they become attuned to both the common patterns and places that stymie people along their financial journey. They’re comfortable with the unique decisions each individual, couple, and family needs to work through, and they help clients find a solution that works for them. 

Seeking Support: Financial Advisors Specializing in Trauma Recovery

Healthy Love and Money is leading the industry in recognizing and working with the many and complex realities of trauma and its impacts on mental, physical, relational, and financial well-being. When it’s time for you to hire a financial planner, we would love to be considered. 

The journey of trauma recovery is full of nuance and complexity and requires an informed, compassionate, and empathetic professional to help clients blossom into a full and meaningful life. 

When we make financial decisions, they will be impacted by our level of resolution related to the wide range of traumas we have experienced. 

When a financial planner guides a client through any element of financial planning, from cash flow management to estate planning, old, unresolved trauma reactions can cause the client to dysregulate and distort perceptions of what choices are available.

Trauma recovery is about helping people live a rich and fulfilling life on their terms. It comes from a fundamental belief in the inherent worth of humans and their desire to learn, heal, and grow when provided with helpful environments to do so. 

Let’s schedule a time to talk about your experiences of religious trauma and how Therapy-Informed Financial Planning can help you. 

Wishing You Healthy Love and Money,

Ed Coambs - Founder

MBA, MA, MS, CFP®, LMFT, CFT-I™

Books We Recommend on The Topic of Religious Trauma

Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion

Permission Granted: Take the Bible Into Your Own Hands

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

Original Blessing

Why We Need Religion

Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and The Birth of A New Spiritual Awakening

If you would like more recommendations don’t hesitate to reach out.