Chantel Chapman

You may tell yourself that you are bad with money, that you lack financial literacy. You may be experiencing money shame. The key term to learn here is trauma. Chances are, you hold some sort of trauma, whether it be individual, generational, intergenerational, relational, societal or systemic. What does this trauma do? It shapes your beliefs around yourself and around money. Trauma writes scripts in our minds, embedding behaviours into our nervous system. These narratives lead us to different painful, disruptive behaviours and money disorders. Without healing that trauma and changing those scripts, financial strategies will only help superficially. In this topic, we will explore financial trauma, and we will also reveal how trauma in general impacts the brain and, in turn, our relationships with money and financial wealth. This will include an exploration of the narratives that arise out of the following layers: Generational/Intergenerational Trauma, Relational Trauma, Societal Trauma, Systemic Injustice, Laws of Nature and Financial Literacy. Along with this uncovery, we will introduce interventions for accessible healing.

Scarcity can impact the brain in a similar way to trauma. Here we will uncover what happens to the brain during scarcity or the belief of scarcity and how this state can reduce bandwidth, impulse control, and executive function. We can experience financial scarcity, time scarcity and even connection scarcity. We will explore how we can introduce scarcity-sensitive policies into our organization or within ourselves, enabling us to reduce shame and take steps forward to move out of scarcity or scarcity thinking.

A look at the intersections between consumerism, our unacceptance of pain, and the dopamine-seeking treadmill and how this can lead to many undesirable behaviours with money.