Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
We've spent our lives supporting people through the ups and downs, and we want to share these insights with you. Together, we'll unravel the layers of personal and building healthy relationships. Each week, we'll bring you engaging conversations, expert insights, and practical strategies to help you heal from the past, foster healthy communication, and develop enduring love.
This podcast is your guide to transforming adversity into triumph, healing wounds and past trauma, gaining wisdom and insight, and creating meaningful, fulfilling connections. So if you're here to heal, to better understand yourself or your relationships, you're in the right place. So sit back, get comfortable, bring your trauma and your drama, and let's start healing. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. Music. Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. We're very excited to have you here with us today.
Now we're going to be talking about something that everybody wants to talk about around Christmas time. We're going to be talking about finances. And so I know a lot of times that there's lots of expectations on what we should be buying for people and friends and family. And a lot of times people's finances get into a rough spot. As a matter of fact, I have a friend, he owns a car shop. And one of the times that people bring their cars in the least is right around Christmas time.
Because they are allocating their funds towards everything Christmas and towards buying presents and all that kind of thing. But also something that's really important to know is that financial crises and financial stress is a major difficulty for relationships.
And if you don't manage those well it can cause a lot of additional problems but finances is a very deep thing finances is definitely not just about numbers finances also comes to your feelings your past your traumas your expectations and it can become very very complex when you're trying to talk to your partner or even just on your own trying to manage your finances because like i said it's so much deeper than just numbers on a
page and that being said this is going to be a multi-part series that we're going to be doing about finances and all the nuances that go into it. So why are we even talking about finances and all of that? And what does that have to do with our podcast? We talk about trauma and relationships and communication. We talk about anxiety and depression. Finances really could play a role in all of these. And it's not the sole role in everything, right? But finances carries a lot of weight.
Because you need money to live. And I know it's not fun to talk about finances and money, especially around the holidays, despite Tim's introduction that everybody wants to talk about it. But it is important. And it's one of those things where it gets pushed under the rug. And it's not fun to have to go through it and clean it out. But it's going to keep popping up in your relationship. So it's something that
you guys have to go through. And it's better to sit down and plan it and hold your hands, grit your teeth and go through it together rather than turning against each other through it. And one of the things that's important to know is that a lot of times people come from very different perspectives. You may be more optimistic, so then it can make you think that finances are just going to work out.
Or you may be pessimistic and worrying about it all the time. or you may even come from a state of financial trauma where some experiences you've had with money may cause you to be hyper-focused or hyper-worried about it or you may even use spending as a emotional coping tool to help you manage how you're feeling in the moment and so when we're talking about finances like I said it's more than just numbers on a page it has a lot to do with how it makes you feel but then also when we're
talking to each other in our relationship those differences can cause some major conflict and one of the things that I've seen, and you may be in this situation, but a lot of times people will even have separate bank accounts because they have a hard time getting onto the same page with each other about finances. But I'll tell you, I work with plenty of clients who have separate bank accounts, and they still fight over financial differences.
And I totally agree with you that it's not just numbers, because a lot of times why people have separate bank accounts is because they don't trust other people with money. Maybe for you, finances are really a sense of stability and control at times. And so when it's not fully in your control, that can be so uncomfortable.
When we look at financial trauma, do you experience that chronic stress, anxiety, and a lot of the other symptoms that are related with trauma, resulting from maybe past financial hardships or negative money experiences that you've had, like Tim said, from childhood, or maybe in your past relationship, maybe at a job you're at? If you have and it's unresolved, it can influence relationships. It can influence how you trust people or how you don't trust people.
It can influence even your self-worth and the decisions that you make. So we're not making light of trauma at all, but specifically financial trauma can impact a lot of areas of your life. And so we want to make sure that we address that and we talk about how our past experiences that aren't processed or resolved, or you haven't really thought about, or you try to sweep under the rug, can really be limiting you now or changing the way that you deal with money.
One of the things we want you to know is that couples struggling with finances is a relatively normal thing that people run into. I'm not a financial advisor, but this is definitely something that I work with on a regular basis through counseling, is that helping people to get on the same page with that, because it is an emotional stress around the relationship. And one of the reasons why is it's what I like to call a forced agreement point.
You're either forced to agree on finances, or you're going to be fighting about finances on a regular basis. So if you don't take the time to talk through it, even though those discussions can be laden with disagreement, frustration, emotions, you're going to be having those conflicts or those problems all along the line if you don't get onto the same page about those finances.
And so if listening to this, you're getting anxiety with just the idea of bringing this up to your partner or even opening up your own bank account and taking a look at what's going on inside, if that's giving you anxiety, this is a normal course that most people struggle with with the finances. And so recognizing that you are not alone, that other people do struggle with this, but it is a beast that you do have to face up to it.
And especially in a relationship, collectively be on the same page to try to fight through this difficulty in order to alleviate yourself of all the future financial conflict. So if you are struggling or having financial conflict in your marriage or in your relationship, it is so common and it's not a sign of failure.
It's not a sign that you married the wrong person. But it is an opportunity for both of you to get on the same page and grow together in this and find deeper connection even in this financial realm. Because I know even for you and I, Tim, when we are not on the same page with finances, it is rough. We have some really hard conflict and really difficult discussions, impacts us both emotionally.
But when we are on the same page and we're walking and working toward the same goal it's exciting and there is a deeper connection i think as we do this together but we've experienced both we've experienced really difficult times and really hard conflicts where it did feel at times like we weren't going through it together maybe where we were against each other we weren't on the same page and those are really hard times but we've also had really great times where.
We both were getting excited because our goals were the same and we were walking toward it together. Oh, for sure. And I think that one of the things to know is that you are going to go through different financial seasons in your life. And there's going to be times where finances are going to be harder. There's times where it's going to be easier. But both of those times do require you to have a steady hand on the finances to try to navigate those.
Because if you're going through a financial difficult time, obviously it's like, OK, we need to make sure we're buckling down.
But also when you're going through more of a little bit of a financial boon that's not time to remove all constraint that's a time to try to fast forward towards your goals to take extra step towards your financial goals whether it's saving for retirement or paying off some debts or it's about saving up for a vacation or something along those lines when you guys get onto the same page it can be a very powerful and wonderful experience and i think one of the biggest
things we were on the same page with and it took a while to get there and like you were saying sometimes we had some conflict over it, but we wanted to pay off our student loans and we had a mountain of student loans and it was no fun. And once we finally clicked and we're on the same page, we're able to pay off our student loans, I think, within two years of being on the same page when we're struggling for multiple years before that, trying to pay down our student loans.
And just a side note, we clicked the final payout on our anniversary. Oh, yeah, I totally remember that. We sat down and we had the money and we're like, here's our final payment. We're going to put it through. And that was a wonderful experience of kind of conquering this massive mountain that we were trying to get over. And then when we were able to do that, because we were on the same page, it was a time full of joy.
Even though a lot of money was just about to go out of our bank account to make that final payment, we were excited because we had finally reached this major milestone goal of paying off our student loans. So over the course of the next several episodes, we're going to be talking about this. And I totally understand if you want to not tune in to the next several podcasts, but I would really encourage you to push through and even to prep for it.
I would take a look at your finances, sit down and everything you've been kind of pushing under the rug and not wanting to talk about. Maybe take a look at it and look at what are your goals? What do you owe? Where are you at in debt? Maybe take a aerial view of everything that's going on. You don't have to jump into the specifics of it, but look at where are you at and how much are you in debt? What are some of your bigger financial goals? And we'll talk about all of this.
We're going to start at the root causes of financial conflict. And so what I want you to do this week is to sit down and journal because as you look at all of your finances and you do that aerial view of it, You're going to begin to experience some of the emotions that come up with it, whether it's fear or anxiety. Maybe it's depression or sadness. Maybe you're experiencing resentment. Maybe you just have apprehension to even look at the finances altogether.
But what I would do with all of these things that you're experiencing, sit down and journal. You can bullet journal kind of thoughts and feelings that come up. You can free write about them. But I would sit down and really think through what comes up when you're talking about finances. Why are you so afraid of it? Why do you feel so resentful toward it? Why are you so fearful?
What has happened in the past, whether it's the childhood things that we will address or past relationships or just past experiences in general? You're going to take a minute and just write all that down, journal through and process some of that before we jump further into this series. We hope that you join us in the next episode as we start to talk about root causes of financial conflict and the effect that it could have on you now.
We hope you have a great day and remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode and found it helpful. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend? Also, we'd love for you to leave us a review on Apple Podcast. It lights us up to know that this podcast is helping you. If you have any questions or a topic you'd like discussed in future episodes,
visit our Facebook group. Just click the link in the description below. Although we are mental health providers, this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide diagnosis or treatment. If you are struggling with persistent mental health issues, chronic marital issues, or feeling hopeless or suicidal, you are not alone. Help is available. Please seek professional help or call the National Suicide Hotline at 988.
Thank you again for joining us on Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. Remember, there's always hope and there's always help. Music.