Don't read this if you've never been broke
Your shame about being broke is simultaneously not yours to hold and also completely okay to experience.
It’s okay to feel shame about not having money in a capitalist society. It’s sort of designed to make you feel bad about your lack of resources. But beating yourself up for feeling shame just creates a downward spiral. So, when it comes up, allow it.
But don’t pitch a tent there.
Understand that shame is a learned response and you have the ability to unlearn it and learn new responses in its absence. Understand that the opposite of shame is compassion and you can be transformed so faster and more powerfully by compassion than through shame and embarrassment. Shame inhibits growth, it does not promote it.
Understand that when shame makes decisions for you, it keeps your life small. And small can feel safe because of the lack of risk involved. So, also have compassion for what shame was trying to do in the first place, which was to protect you from getting hurt even more than you already have been. And then let it go. Remove it from the driver’s seat.
Your worth goes so far beyond your ability to make money and it is extremely stressful and traumatizing to never have enough money. Both things can be true.
Okay, but how do I let go of the shame? It seems to pop up all the time.
Growth is never linear and you will never be perfectly healed or completely free from shame. Just accept that now. And also accept that you have the power to loosen shame’s grip on your emotions and self-image. Shame, like any other emotion, is temporary and not indicative of who you are as a person. It may not be fleeting, but it is temporary. If you can treat shame like any other passing emotion (such as anger, joy, frustration, lust, etc), and not take actions based on that feeling, you will feel it begin to have less of a hold on you.
Another way to equip yourself against shame about money is to educate yourself on how money works. Knowledge is not a fix-all but it can increase your sense of empowerment about money. As much as it sucks ass that money is the governing force in our lives, we aren’t going to help ourselves or anyone else by continuing to be uneducated about how it works. Sticking your head in the sand and hoping it goes away will not work and it will not contribute to anyone’s liberation, not yours or mine or anyone else’s. When you equip yourself with knowledge and then go out and use it, shame has no choice but to melt away as it is replaced by a felt sense of empowerment.
