From Tragedy to Triumph: How to Achieve Financial Well-Being After Devasting Experiences

He is ready to kill him, and he is lucky his stepfather didn’t come home that day. The murderous rage courses through Keeper’s veins as he prepares to confront his stepfather about sexually abusing his sisters. 

Meeting inspiring people has become a regular part of my life. It surprises me to acknowledge this to you. 

Keeper Catran Whitney is a guy you can not forget from the moment you meet him. His presence is felt before words come out of his mouth. Then he speaks, and you know he is a man of great conviction and has faced down some of the most challenging realities that life can offer you. 

In a recent Healthy Love and Money Podcast episode, I interviewed Keeper about his life and work. For many decades he has been trying to reconcile what happened to his sisters during their childhood and what it has meant for him as a brother. 

What I have come to understand as a trauma-informed couples therapist is that childhood sexual abuse does not just impact the person whom it happened to. It affects everyone connected. The experience of childhood sexual abuse only gets more complicated when it occurs within the family. 

Keeper’s story offers the reality and complexity of working through healing from such profound trauma and betrayal in the family. The full family impact of childhood sexual abuse is a topic that hits close to home for me. I, too have been on my journey of healing from childhood sexual abuse. 

Childhood sexual abuse is a topic that is relevant to everyone, even if it has not happened to you. From a statistical standpoint, the numbers are known to be underreported, but estimates come in that 20% of women and 5-10% of men recall sexual abuse or assualt. 

I can remember the first time I came across information about childhodd sexual abuse it startled me. I was taking the national exam to become a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. The exam had numerous questions about the prevalence and experience of incest and childhood sexual abuse in families. It confused me. I did not remember learning anything about this in my graduate training. 

Let’s take a minute to stop and check-in. 

What do you notice happening inside of you as you read this article? 

Is there denial?

Closing of shoulders?

Intrusive memories of past experiences of your own?

There is no right or wrong response to this article, but there can be a need to bring awareness and self-compassion.  

I invite you to take a few moments to reground yourself and connect with your authentic self, the part of you that is whole, worthy, and good. Untouchable by life’s adversities. We all have it, and it goes by multiple names. 

As a Therapy-Informed Financial Planner™ I now am regularly asking myself how are my own and my client's experiences of a wide range of different types of childhood trauma impacting their ability to show up fully around their finances and with their intimate partners around their shared financial life. 

Part of fostering financial well-being in your life is working with your wide range of responses to money in your life. 

How we respond to money is profoundly impacted by our personal constellation of experiences that we have lived through and how those experiences have shaped us. 

For those that live through the experience of childhood sexual abuse, it has profound impacts on many aspects of being human. Let’s look at three: a person's sense of self, ability to regulate their emotions, and family relationships. Each of these aspects of being a human significantly impacts how we relate to a wide range of money topics. 

Our Sense of Self

Do we have a generally positive view of ourselves? Or do we struggle with chronic low self-esteem or an inflated sense of personal worth? There are a wide range of different words that describe our sense of self. We all have some sense of self. For most of us, it is relatively stable over time. When we experience childhood sexual abuse it can leave us with a deflated sense of self or a grandiose sense of importance; sometimes they are two sides of the same coin. 

Our sense of self impacts our approach to money.

A low or negative sense of self will lead us to stay in jobs we don’t love, defer to others to make money decisions for us, avoid taking responsibility for our financial lives, deny when we have good things happen to us financially, and avoid difficult money conversations with significant others. 

An overly positive view of ourselves can lead us to miss important feedback from others about financial decisions we are making, take advantage of others, feel deflated when money mistakes happen, lack financial transparency, and take on unnecessary risks. 

A healthy sense of self lives in between a low sense of self and an overly high sense of self. With a healthy sense of self, we can consider what is good for us and others, we are open to feedback about financial decisions we are making, and we can take new risks with money and know we will be okay either way. 

Ability to Regulate Emotions

Our sense of self is part of what helps to regulate the flow of emotions and feelings through our lived experiences. Our sense of self works like a thermostat influencing how high and low we can go on the emotional register, which emotions and feelings we will allow through, and which ones we will block. 

A simple view of understanding emotions and feelings is that as humans, we exist on a continuum from rigid and dissociated from our emotions and feelings to chaos and consumed by our emotions. In the middle is integration and recognition. 

When we are rigid and dissociated from our emotions, we miss important information from both within ourselves and from others about what is essential. Emotions and feelings can help guide us toward what to approach and avoid regarding money. Without this information, we may be taking on too much or too little financially. 

When we have a chaotic and consuming relationship with our emotions and feelings, it makes it nearly impossible to make financial decisions that can benefit us and others both in the short run and long term. If we are flooded with emotions, it is hard to benefit from the logical part of our mind/brain. 

An integrated and recognizing relationship with emotions helps us to work effectively with this valuable part of being human. Emotions and feelings serve as a valuable source of information when we face the full range of financial decisions we need to face. 

As an example, my wife and I were working through our estate plan, which led us to talk about our brothers and become curious about their estate plans. When we turned to my brother, I felt this racing and heaviness show up in my chest. Instead of bypassing the feeling or being consumed by it, I noticed it and used it as information to move towards curiosity and compassion about how to have this vital conversion with my brother.

Family Dynamics 

Having the language to describe how families work is part of the process of being able to orient yourself within your own family. Sometimes language fails to help us understand ourselves and our families. I have come to appreciate having language and a model to understand both my own family and that of others that is based on family sciences. 

While each family may be unique, there are common patterns in how families organize themselves. I continually return to and appreciate the circumplex model of family functioning created by Dr. David Olson. 

The circumplex model looks at three major aspects of family life. Flexibility in leadership, Cohesion in Connection, and Communication. There is a very helpful chart that helps identify where our families land on these dynamics. 

The journey of healing is not just personal. It is family based. When we have been hurt in our families, it is even harder in the next generation to find our way forward to a healthy family. Taking time to use something like the circumplex model of family functioning can be a guiding compass to the overall health of your family life now and validate the experiences you had in your childhood. 

When families can balance the roles of flexibility in leadership and emotional connection, it makes it easier to navigate all the different topics of money that come up in the course of living life in our families. However, when families become more extreme in their approaches to either leadership or emotional connection, it impacts the family's ability to navigate money together. 

Financially when families are unbalanced, they can tend towards over-involvement and control in each other's finances. Creating unbalanced expectations regarding who provides and receives financial support. On the other hand, in some families, there can be a complete cut off of any financial support that blocks the family being a source of support to each other. 

Beginning and Continuing The Healing Journey 

Whether you have never considered the impacts of childhood sexual abuse in your own life or those you love, or you are on your journey of healing, please remember that it is an ongoing process. Leaning on and working with different healing professionals can be incredibly valuable. At the same time, as you progress along the healing journey you can take on more responsibility for your healing and growth. 

One aspect of your healing journey is facing and working with your financial life. Becoming more empowered and balanced in how you approach money for yourself and those you are connected to in your family life. 

Therapy-Informed Financial Planning™ helps individuals and couples move towards fostering a healthy sense of self, the ability to work with emotions and feelings, and a family life that is fulfilling and supports the money that flows through their lives. 

Supporting Healing and Hard Conversations,

Ed Coambs - Therapy-Informed Financial Planning™

MBA, MA, MS, CFP®, CFT-I™, LMFT