Poverty Mindset & Family Culture
Noticing the Origins of Frugality and Why Bother Addressing It in Therapy
Have you ever gone out shopping, intending to treat yourself, but you have trouble enjoying yourself because you can’t see past the price tags? Many of us have at some point, and it reflects our own relationship with money and spending. What is our own pleasure worth?
As you can guess from the photos here, I felt that way looking for a dress to wear to attend a wedding (these particular ones were found over at Camille La Vie within the Arizona Mills Mall over on Priest Drive and Baseline Road in Tempe). Even though I knew a dress that formal costs quite a bit, and I was purposefully searching for dresses in that price range, I was still stuck.
As a therapist, I often find that people who feel like I did, paralyzed just looking at those prices, often grew up in a family where there was a big cultural value around being thrifty and not wasting money, even if the money was actually there. And as kids, our pleasure is often seen as not worth investing significant amounts of money into. So, as we grow older, we tend to carry that same attitude towards our own leisure and money. We focus on survival and safety.
Focusing on security isn’t wrong. The reason why that feeling towards money stuck through generations is because it kept the family safe. It is a protective attitude! But as we heal generational trauma, we become more aware of these values and need to actively decide whether or not we want to keep them.
So why not keep this cautious perspective towards spending? If it saves money, which helps support stability and safety, is that not the wise way to handle our income?
That answer is entirely individual in nature, and it depends upon your life circumstances as well as what you value in your life. But perhaps the bigger question to balance that point of view with is: what am I missing out on by not spending? What is the cost of viewing my own pleasure this way? How much do I value fun, enjoyment, relaxation, and the comforts that money can buy?
It is easy to disregard our own feelings when we have been trained to do so our entire lives. A lot of people-pleasers (and most neurodivergent folks tend to fall into this category) tend to put others first, effectively ignoring their own needs, to the point that they are often satisfied with the bare minimum. While this can be helpful in the short-term, what happens to a person when their preferences, comfort, and pleasure are never attended to?
Burnout. Burnout happens. Depression, and a general feeling of, “what is the point?”, seeps through a person. A life feels wasted. We become dependent upon taking care of others’ needs, because there isn’t anything left there within themselves. We feel worthless because our own needs were so minimized that our own value was diminished in the process of attending to everyone else.
That wasn’t even necessarily done by others either! We tend to feel anger towards the world because we are actually angry about the neglect we have shown towards ourselves. But because we have stopped ourselves from feeling for so long, we can’t even let ourselves feel angry. We self-sabotage, develop pain and physical ailments, and do things to numb out the feelings.
This is where a lot of us end up looking for a therapist. So, if you are already at that stage, consider investing in therapy as a way to show yourself that you are worth the money. You feel good, and feeling comfortable is worth the money. Telling yourself that you are worthy only does so much, so prove it to yourself through your actions. Spend the money. Even if it isn’t spending it on therapy, spend it on something that makes you happy! Your happiness is worth it.
