Hey, guys. Are you ready for some money rehab?

Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player, Gamestop. And should I have a 401k? Because then I- You don't do it? No, I never- You think the whole world revolves around you and your money? Well, it doesn't.

Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. I got an old-school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. Earlier this month, I did an episode with Avis Cardella, a recovering shopping addict. It was a really fascinating conversation. And if you're interested, you should check it out. It's episode 298. But one of the most striking parts of the conversation is that Avis's shopping addiction had very little to do with what she actually bought. She wasn't obsessed with getting her hands on the latest and greatest shoe from her favorite designer. Her mom died, and she was trying to fill the void with products. This is not a rare story. There is a lot of shaded area on the money and psychology Venn diagram. I didn't get interested in financial literacy because I am obsessed with money. But because of how money intersects with every area of our lives, our self-esteem, romantic relationships, our mental health, family ties, every aspect of your life has a money trail. And because of that, money can get intertwined in interesting and sometimes challenging ways with our psyche.

So I called up Lindsay Brian Podfin, a financial therapist who combines financial literacy with the emotional and psychological side of money.

Lindsay, welcome to Money Rehab.

Thanks, Nicole. I'm really happy to be chatting with you.

So happy to be chatting about this topic in particular. It is one we talk a lot about on the show, and I'm excited to double on all the things that you do with financial therapy. How did you come to specialize in it?

I came to specialize in financial therapy because I'm basically my own client, like a lot of people who start online businesses or start in the business space, we try to solve the need that we have had. And so I sought out to become a mental health therapist because I struggled with anxiety and depression and had a strong family history of mental illness. And then when I finished my grad training, I got my first job, which I I was super excited about. And then I got my first paycheck. And my first paycheck gave me less than I earned as a waitress. And it was this whole identity crisis. I felt like I had squandered my privilege. My parents paid for my higher education I was struggling to make ends meet, and it was making me not just mentally stressed, but physically sick. I developed chronic insomnia. I was getting anxious all the time. I was getting sick. I was catching every cold This was many years before the current pandemic that we're in. And as I was working with my clients, I specialized in anxiety and depression. I saw them bring up money stuff, and I had my own personal experience of struggling with money stuff and also feeling like it's about so much more than a budget or than line items.

And the way that much of the personal finance industry operates is just figure out a budget, spend less than you earn, and you'll be fine. But we know know that information alone doesn't lead to transformation. And so I was consuming personal finance information on my own, trying to reduce my spending as much as possible. But what really moved the needle outside of cutting coupons and being smart about where I brought my produce was getting a job that paid better. And it was this aha moment that we have to first feel comfortable and confident asking for more and negotiating for more. I'm in a field that traditionally tells you things like, Oh, you should be thankful you have a job, or you didn't go into that field because money is important to you. And so I just came at it from this place of personal experience and then seeing my clients stress out about money. And in grad school, we weren't trained to talk about money, but we were trained to talk about other hard things like trauma and abuse and neglect. And I just felt like it was a missing piece in our work. And money impacts all of us.

Every single one of us has to earn it, spend it, loan it, lend it, you name it. We engage with it all. And I just felt like it was a huge missing part of our psychology to ignore money. So I sought out training in financial social work and in financial therapy. Did not a full hard pivot. I think it's all intertwined and really made it a point to be clear that I help people with their anxiety and money shame.

Amen to all of that. I think that if you want to get to the heart of any story, you follow the money trail. And I totally agree with you that information is not power, action, is power. And the enemy is sometimes between our ears. So when we can tell that mean girl to take several seats, then action can happen. So it's all intertwined. And in my experience, the relationship between finances and mental health can also be cyclical, right? I'd been in a bunch of credit card debt. It made me feel anxious. And then because my debt made me feel anxious, I didn't want to face it, which made the debt worse and the anxiety worse, and so on, and so on. Is that cycle something that you see often in in your practice?

Yeah. Even if it's not debt and anxiety or debt and feeling down, we know there's a bi-directional relationship, which is a fancy way for saying two-way relationship between mental health and money. So we see this all the time. And so a lot of people try to, again, enhance their knowledge through financial literacy. But if they don't address what's going on in their minds, they can often say, well, jeez, I have everything right on paper. I'm out of credit card debt. I've started saving an emergency fund, but I still feel stressed, or I still feel anxious, or I still feel worried that it's going to happen. So yes, of course, getting out of debt and creating a stronger financial safety net is so important in dialing down that anxiety and worry, but also addressing what that spending or procrastination around engaging with your money was around in the first place.

Right. Getting to the heart of where that trauma stems from. Exactly. And we Every time I go into different therapists over my life, I was like, none of that Freudian shit. I don't want to talk about daddy issues, whatever, whatever. And ultimately, it comes back to a lot of that, whether we want to fight against it or not. A lot of the things that had happened to us as kids, whether it's crazy financial traumas I talk about in my last book, bailing my mother out of jail with cash, or watching your parents clip coupons or spend frivolously, or your friend group getting into debt or hiding stuff from their significant others. How much does that upbringing affect how you face money in your adult life?

It makes a huge difference in how we engage with our money. Our childhood brains are doing the bulk of their development, which is why therapists, as irritating as it is, as you mentioned, Nicole, they often ask you, Tell me about your childhood. And the same thing goes with money. Depending on the study you look at, by the time we're about seven or eight years old, we've more or less formed our money story or our relationship with money. And when I say money story, I'm just not talking about scarcity, abundance mindset. I'm talking about, what are you allowed to earn? What are you allowed to spend? Are you allowed to have debt? Is debt good? Is it bad? Et cetera, et cetera. So when we go back to what was going on in childhood, it's because we're learning different ways to keep ourselves safe. And so we go back to childhood to say, what was going on financially? What were the messages that you got around money? And that informs why we do what we do as adults. And sometimes people will say to me, Lindsay, my parents or my caregivers never talked about money. And to me, that's just as valid and important as growing up in a household where there were a lot of consistent money arguments.

The avoidance of money is just as impactful to say, Oh, we don't talk about money, or it's rude, or that's not for kids to know about. That also shapes our relationship with money for it to be rude and embarrassing and not something we talk about. So it's not just growing up in those households where there is financial tension. It can also be those households where money was or is a taboo.

It's the ultimate mindfuck, I think. I mean, money is a problem, whether you have it or you don't. You have shame if you have a lot of it. You have shame if you don't. I am no diet or health expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it really bothers me when there's this mindset around getting thin, like this think thin to be thin. It's like, no, go to the gym and eat less. Not that I I don't have any expertise here. When it comes to money, though, I think mindset matters a lot. I think approaching your mindset actually makes a difference. Have you found that people go into this type of therapy reluctantly and say, No, just teach me about what you'd mentioned, line items, spreadsheets, blocking and tackling, and forget all this other childhood stuff?

What's interesting is by the time they get to me, they've already done all of the legwork. A lot of my clients, they have a budget spreadsheet. They have a five-year projection. They've done all the things they think they're supposed to do. And they're coming to me saying, I still can't tell my partner how much credit card debt I have, or I still can't tell my kids that we don't have money to send them to college. They're still struggling with the what next. Oftentimes, it's impacting their interpersonal relationships or like me, their physical health. They're not sleeping at night. They're feeling stressed out. They're grinding their teeth. They're getting stomach aches. So it could be one of those two things where they're trying to do the right thing, and they're following all the books, and they're following all the 12-step plans and all these different things out there, but it just doesn't feel right. And that's the most common thing I hear is it just feels so uncomfortable.

Yeah. The Body Does Keep Score. That's a famous psychology book. And I hear the issues as well about financial infidelity, like hiding debt from your partner or trying to tell your kids whether they can afford college or not, or like I mentioned, my debt and anxiety. What are some of the other common issues that folks approach you with?

Yeah. So for sure, anxiety and shame come up a lot. And when I say shame, people are like, shame, shame about money. What do you mean? But if we just take it a step back and go, let's think about guilt versus shame, because we often use those terms interchangeably. Guilt is external. I did something bad. And shame is internal. I am bad. And so when it comes to money, I often hear shame by way of a statement that sounds like, I'm just not good at money. I just don't get credit cards. I've never been able to negotiate a raise. So a lot of these internal beliefs that they are somehow inherently bad with money and that there's nothing that they can do about it. So a lot of shame. And then there's also when I do couples work, there's a lot of confusion about spenders and savers being partnered. Everyone will say, They're like, Well, I'm a saver and they're a spender, and that's why we fight all the time. But it's usually much deeper than that. And I often find when you have the language to communicate healthily about money, spenders and savers can really balance each other out really well.

Those are a couple of other things that I see come up in my work.

Yeah, totally. We had a spender and a saver on the show, and they actually seemed really compatible to balance each other out with their family finances. When people come in with stories like that that they tell themselves, I'm not I'm not good at math. I don't have enough money. I'm not good at numbers. I'm just not a money person. How do you coach them out of that and change that story?

So usually I ask them for evidence of that being 100 % factual, right? So I'm just terrible at money. Okay, let's take that statement and just see what proof we have that that is true and what evidence we have that that might not be true. And oftentimes what they'll say to me is, well, I can't stick to a grocery budget, but I've actually never missed missed a credit card payment or I've always been able to pay my phone bill on time. So what I'll start doing is eliciting some proof from them that they're not as bad as they think they are, financially speaking. So we start to gather some evidence and go, well, maybe you're not so great with this particular thing, but we've got a lot of evidence that you know how to manage your bills and you know how to stay organized and you understand the importance of paying for things on time. And it might be about something else. So separating out what we think is true versus what is really true. And that's where having a financial coach or a financial therapist can be so helpful because it's a neutral third party that isn't in your brain to help you see how true is it those statements that you're telling yourself.

And you talk a lot about four money archetypes that shape the way people think about money. Can you share what those are?

Yeah, sure. Those four financial archetypes were born out of money scripts that were developed by some financial therapist to focus on money disorders. My training and my background is in social work, and in social work, the discipline is really meant to be strengths-based, which means every time you approach a client, if they have a problem behavior, we're trained to go, how Is that supposed problem behavior helping them? So we'll come back to the money in just a second. But let's say I have somebody who has a problem behavior of biting their nails. Well, I could just say, put nail polish on it and go about your merry way. Stop biting your nails. That's so bad for you. Or I could say, What does biting your nails do? When do you notice that you're doing it? And what we learn often is like, Oh, I do it as a nervous habit. I started doing it in kindergarten when my teacher picked on me and I didn't know the shape or the color that we were talking about and became a coping mechanism. So coming back to the money archetypes, I've taken what those researchers have done.

And instead of looking at it through the lens of this is what's bad about them or this is what's disordered about them, I've said, what are some of strengths? What are some of the gifts that are inherently embedded in the way in which we look at money? And so over time, what I have seen is that there are these four different types that really help us to see why we do what we do and how those things are protective for us. So they are doomsday prepper. That's the person who holds on tightly to their money. And we can all think of a stereotypical person. I think back to my grandma when she was living. Anytime we'd go out to eat, she'd take home like fruit garnishes and lettuce garnishes and bring them all home because she was a great depression kid. And so as she grew up into an adult, a safety mechanism for her was saving every single thing and really making the most out of everything. So she would have also probably I've actually been a doomsday prepper, saving a lot of money, making a dollar stretch, all of that stuff. Another one is the blissfully ignorant, which tends to avoid engaging with their money because it feels really uncomfortable and overwhelming.

But a protective mechanism there is procrastination. We all have been in a situation where we procrastinate, and it protects us from having to deal with something that is uncomfortable. And that's actually my archetype. I am a blissfully ignorant. If it was up to me, I would never look at my finances, which is why I have everything on autopay. And then I just check in and make sure we're chugging along so I don't have to deal with it too much. And then we have the free spirit. That's the person who really gets a rush out of spending. I often think of these folks as the life of the party. They always bring a gift. They're always willing to go on a last minute trip. They get a lot of joy out of the spontaneity of money. And then finally, it is the money admirer, the person who really associates having or earning money with positive self-worth. And as we can imagine, the downfall of that is overworking, workaholism, and laser-focused on earning money at the expense of other areas of our lives.

So interesting. As you were talking, I was like, No, that's me. And then the next one, I was like, No, that's me. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Moneyrehab will be right back.

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And on the show, we get a lot of emails, of course, from people who feel like they're repeating some of the bad financial patterns of their family. I'm first-generation American, and I can totally relate to the taking home the fruit garnishes thing. My extended family would bring home salsa packets and things like that in this scarcity mentality. Is there something that you see in your practice regularly that's really helped people break that cycle?

It's a really good question. And what I usually say, going back to the example of nail biting, is asking clients, how does this particular behavior keep you safe? And And more often than not, when we're engaging in some behavior with our money that some might say is harmful or too intense, there's a reason that we're doing that. And the reason that we do that is because it keeps us safe. So my grandma held on to those fruit scraps because there was a point in her life where she didn't have access to food as readily available as other times. So that's a safety mechanism. So first we acknowledge the safety mechanism and be really compassionate and generous with that safety mechanism. And then we shift into the here and now. And the way that might look is like, thank you, brain, thank you, body, for being so concerned about my financial well-being. The good news is, I'm no longer that eight-year-old girl. The good news is, I'm no longer that 25-year-old kid struggling to make ends meet. Whatever it was that you were doing then, acknowledge that, honor that, and then come to what's going on now.

I know that I have the capacity to engage with my money, or I know that I have more than enough to be able to go out to eat and it will be safe. And of course, these only work if it's true. It doesn't work if you're like, Oh, me when I was younger, of course, that was really anxiety-provoking, but now I can do whatever I want because I have a $20,000 credit limit if you don't have the capacity to pay it off. That's different. But when we are working through, moving through some of those unhealthy behaviors, we really want to acknowledge why we did what we did, extend a little bit of grace and compassion to that younger version of ourselves, and then tell our brains, hey, we're not there anymore.

Yeah, I did a DBT program, a dialectical Behavioral Therapy program that I really enjoyed because it taught me so many great skills about everything in life that I wish we learned in school but did not. That's another topic, another episode. But it showed this idea of two things can be true at the same time. And it's really helped me think about money stuff, too. And this idea of forgiving your former self for what she or he didn't know, and also giving your future self a little tough love and being like, okay, well, now that you know more, it's not okay moving forward. What do you think about How does that?

Yeah, I think that can be really helpful when you're in a safe enough space to essentially... Another way I've heard what you're talking about referred to is like, now that you know better, do better, a thing. So once you have additional information, what can you do to change it? And oftentimes that can cause some anxiety because behavior change is just hard. For anybody who has tried to wake up 10 minutes early or go to bed without looking at their phone, we all know that behavior Your change is really hard. So just extending yourself a little bit of grace to do maybe one thing at a time. Maybe you're not going to take your credit score from 600 to 820 in three months, but you might be able to bring it up by 20 points in three months. So setting achievable goals also helps your brain to understand that you have the capacity to make positive change. It proves to you, Oh, I can make change. I know how to make change, and I'm capable of doing it. Because oftentimes we tell ourselves, I'll never be able to fix it. This is just the way that I am instead of going, Oh, I actually can make some progress within a month or within three months.

Yeah. And getting curious about it, it sounds like.

Yeah, for sure.

I know that, of course, that can manifest sometimes into disorders weird behaviors. We recently had a shopping addict on the show. If someone came to you with a shopping addiction, how would you help coach him or her around their spending behaviors? She had come on and talked about how this was a coping mechanism for her that she was hiding from the death of her mother and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Yeah. Well, my heart goes out to them. It is real and it's hard, especially because shopping as an addiction, a lot of times it comes with a side eye or a little bit of an eye roll. Like, oh, how can that really be an addiction? But it can be incredibly debilitating. And when it comes to a lot of addictions, the way that they're treated in our country is through a twelve-step program. And a lot of those 12-step programs really rely on eliminating whatever that problematic use is, whether it's drugs or alcohol or whatever. But the thing with money is we can't just stop earning it or spending it or saving it. We have to engage with it all the time, which is why money stuff and food stuff is so challenging. We can't just stop eating. We can't just stop spending. So we have to cultivate a really healthy relationship with our money because we're going to have to engage with it almost every day, if not daily in our life. So first, I would just extend a lot of understanding that this It is a really hard thing. It is a real thing, and that I'm sorry that they're struggling.

And then when it comes to what do we do about that, I think it can be helpful just to understand a few quick things about the brain and that there's three hormones that oftentimes we're chasing when we are doing something like shopping. We're chasing dopamine, we're chasing serotonin, or we're chasing oxytocin. And those three things we need in order to feel really healthy and happy and connected to others. So when we think of dopamine, that's a quick hit, super exciting, quick high that we get when we eat something like sugar or when we go shopping. Social media. Social media getting that like, boom, boom, boom. All the bells and whistles that lights up, that really helps with that dopamine. Then serotonin is another happy hormone that's oftentimes when you think about, chemically, a lot of antidepressants, their selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Nobody listening has to memorize that. Just know that that might be why you've heard that term before. And serotonin is really responsible for making us feel grounded and relaxed and safe in terms of our brain. And then finally, oxytocin is also known as the love hormone that makes us feel connected to other people.

It can be released when you give a significant other a big hug, or when you pet your dog or cat for a while, or when you see a little baby smile. That is the hormone that we're going after. So when I'm working with somebody who's struggling with spending, oftentimes they'll say things like, oh, well, I just got a rush. And I really want to dissect what of those three things they're really looking for when they're shopping. And then we try to see, are there other places that you can replace that need to get that need met? So instead of shopping, if we're going after an oxytocin thing, we're looking for connectedness, we're looking for community, we're looking for love, where can you find those things elsewhere? Do you need to maybe pick up the phone and call a friend and go for a walk together? Do you maybe need to tell your partner, We need more date nights? Do you maybe need to reach out to a family member and have that long-awaited call? It could be any of those things, but we can't just pull away somebody's coping mechanism without extending to them something else.

And so that's why it can be helpful to think about, What of these three things am I really looking for? And what are healthier alternatives to try and get those needs met?

Yeah. I mean, some of those, I assume, can just replace the dopamine hit that you're getting, right? Or the cage match that you might be in. And I think that, as you mentioned, the 12-step plans for the most part take away the thing, and we can't do that with money. As you know, there's a couple of them that relate to money with the Gamblers Anonymous and the Debtors Anonymous. How would you coach somebody if they might be nearing needing those types of programs?

Really good question. So I think it depends on how distressed that person is. It's not my job as a therapist to say, Oh, you've checked these five boxes. Now you have to go to a 12-step program. It's about asking them whether or not our work together is working for them and what else they might need. And then I would extend those programs just as information. I would say, Is it okay for me to tell you about these programs? What questions do you have about them? And for some people, they are a total lifesaver. And for other people, they go and they're just like, It's not for me. So they've really been touted as being the end-all be-all. And for some people, they are, and they're not a fit for every single person. So I think it's worth just exploring. In recent years, there's been a lot of work in the world of psychology and of social work around harm reduction. So it's instead of engaging in this behavior all the time, can we reduce the amount of times you're engaging in that behavior? Because Because abstinence does not always work, especially when it comes to things like gambling, shopping, things like that.

For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Even on your darkest days, remember, you are not alone. The fact that there are people like Lindsay who has made a career of helping people that are working through challenges at the intersection of money and behavior should show you that there are many, many people out there who have asked for help. So you should, too. Expand Money Rehab is a production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Our producers are Morgan Lavoy and Mike Coscarelli. Executive producers are Nikki Etor and Will Pearson. Our masc are Penny and Mimsy. Huge thanks to O. G. Money Rehab team, Michelle Lanz for her development work, Katherine Law for her production and writing, Magic, and Brandon Dickert for his editing, engineering, and sound design. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all.

You spend my money, money, money. You spend.