The Dynamics of Money in Treatment: Helping Your Clients

To help our clients with money issues, we need to address our own beliefs and behavior with money. The options for financial health are expanded when money is understood not simply as negotiable currency, but as a dynamic force in our lives that directly correlates to our positive and negative intentions. Money can be seen as energy, and energy is a force that we create from the core of our souls, our beliefs and our conditioning. We manifest money and abundance as a reflection of our beliefs, attitudes, self-imposed images and perceptions toward life.

WHERE THE ATTENTION GOES...THE ENERGY FLOWS

On a subtle and very powerful level, our thoughts create our reality whether they are conscious or not. This is also a form of energy. When we think a thought, be it negative or positive, we magnetically attract this into our lives. What we believe we attract. When we look at F-E-A-R (fantasy of expectations appearing real)...if we focus on everything that can go wrong, what do you think your experience will be? If we focus on everything that can go right, what do you think your experience will be? Through our awareness and intention, we can begin to create a positive cycle in our relationship with money for financial and emotional growth.

We need to become aware of our choices and the impact they have on our daily lives. Becoming mindful and exploring our feelings about money can help us transform the experience from being a victim to becoming self-responsible. We are victims when we are unwilling to take ownership and accountability for our actions, which many of us find comforting and familiar. We are self-responsible when we are willing to be accountable for our actions. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. Taking one microscopic step at a time is a beginning and this will change the energetic patterns we create.

Our relationship with money affects every aspect of our being: the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. How does our body react? What emotions come up? How do we think about and rationalize our money habits? What happens to our sense of being and the connection to the spirit of love and life? Using the model of the body, mind and spirit consciousness, when we integrate new information and feel more balance, this helps us to make healthier choices in all aspects of our lives.

Another key aspect to explore is how we form our images and beliefs about money and the impact they have in our daily lives. It’s important to know our clients’ history, which contributes to their negative behavior and thinking patterns with money (i.e., spending, worrying and hoarding). We are influenced by “Voices of the Past” from childhood, either through parents or parent figures, religion, friends, teachers, the mass media, and other circumstances. We can get stuck in images and money myths that impact our behavior patterns. For example, if we believe that money equals happiness, we might become workaholics. If we believe that money equals power, we might overspend or overextend ourselves in order to gain approval from others. It makes life unmanageable and we become powerless and feel like we’re victims. To change these patterns, we want to connect the image with the early memory that helped create it. This will bring a new consciousness and the ability to transform the experience.

Working with our clients to transcend self-defeating behavior patterns can be enlightening and create a positive momentum. This new energy helps our clients experience self-acceptance and greater self-esteem. We begin to experience life as the glass “half-full” rather than “half-empty.” The goal is to cultivate a new sense of financial health and self-empowerment and, ultimately, to live a more enriched and satisfying life.

Copyright © Judith Gruber 2008
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Click Here to learn more about Judith Gruber, LCSW, CCET.