Q&A: Why Can’t You Heal From Financial Trauma While Remaining In Poverty?

Why can’t you heal from financial trauma while remaining in poverty?

One, because poverty is an unnatural way of living. Poverty is a state of being that comes as a result of exploitation. Capitalism exploits humans and therefore perpetuates poverty. We aren’t meant to live in scarcity because there is always more than enough.

There always has been. The scarcity we experience is manufactured. It’s not the way humans are meant to experience life. We are meant to both have access to and be able to share our abundant resources. On a very simplistic level, the earth provides everything we could ever need. It’s the disrespect & depletion of earth’s resources by several systems of greed & (frankly) evil that has created the scarcity we see and experience on a global scale.

Two, because poverty is traumatizing (hence the term ‘financial trauma’). Poverty is not limited to a dollar amount; it’s the distance between your material needs and your ability to meet those needs. That’s it. And not being able to meet your needs, or the needs of those who rely upon you, creates within ourselves such deep wounding that there’s no way to undo, or even begin to examine and diagnose, while you’re still in that wounding. It’s pointless to tell people to save money when there’s often not even enough money between paychecks to keep the fridge stocked.

Of course, everyone has to start somewhere. Healing is not a prerequisite to escaping poverty, just as healing is not even really a destination that can be reached. It’s a constant process and it looks different for everyone. You can exit the cycle of poverty while still working on your worthiness wound, of course you can. I’m the last person who’s gonna tell you that your inner state of being is a prerequisite to having what you want. You can make money while you’re going through some shit. You can flourish financially and continuously have your needs met, and then some, even when you’re depressed or pissed off or feeling extremely alone. Negative emotions are not roadblocks to success or abundance or stability. They’re temporary, just like positive emotions, and yet we often expect ourselves to spend the majority of the time experiencing positive emotions (or at the very least, avoiding negative ones).

Healing from poverty and money-related trauma is not something you can do and still remain in poverty. We do not heal in the same environments that hurt us to begin with. You are worthy of having choices in your life, and the first choice you get to make is if you are going to remove yourself from the environment (whether physical or mental) that wounded you in the first place, the environment that led you to believe that you weren’t worthy of having more than you need.