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.
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Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. We're very excited to have you guys here with us today. We're going to be continuing on in our series about money, and today in particular we're going to be focusing on tools for communication for addressing money conflicts. In the last episode, we talked about the four F's of money conflicts and how those trauma responses can negatively affect your ability to communicate about finances.
Now what we're going to be talking about today is just how can we make it easier to move through those money traumas, or even if you don't have money trauma, how can we just make what is generally a difficult conversation much easier for people to manage. And so the first one that we're going to be talking about today is establishing a safe place for money talks.
And one of the things about this is that if we're not talking about money regularly, it's going to regularly be an uncomfortable conversation. And so what I mean by that is that the things that we talk about less, we have less skill in talking about it or we have less understanding or expectation for how this is going to go. So if you only talk about money once a year, it's going to build up and be a more uncomfortable conversation in general.
But if you're sitting down and either twice a month or once a month you're sitting down and you're looking at and talking about the finances it becomes more of an expected conversation and can make it a much easier conversation because we've practiced it we know it's coming up it's not a long time in between and so then it feels less awkward and starts to feel more natural now it won't feel that way necessarily at the beginning but when you have a set regular time to sit down and talk about it
and engage in this, then it makes it generally feel better. But then also too, when we're coming into these conversations, we do want to have the idea that, okay, we want to come at it from a neutral and calm place. We're not here trying to fight. We're here trying to find answers and solutions and trying to come up with plans and dreams. And so when we talk about money, it doesn't have to have this heavy or uncomfortable feeling or sensation around it.
And I do think that the more regularly you have those conversations, the more likely that is to happen. But a part of it is sometimes you do just have to fight a little bit through that awkwardness. But the easiest way, again, to do that is by having these regular interactions where we're talking about it.
And a lot of these tools that we'll be talking about today as far as communication tools for addressing money conflicts can be applied to your relationship in general about almost any conflict or any daily interaction you have. They're just communication tools, but we're kind of gearing it and guiding it towards money and finances and the conversations that you're going to have around those topics. So these may sound like familiar communication tools that we've shared before.
So the next one after setting up regular conversations is to utilize the love method. And this is something we talked about early in our podcast. It was within the first two months and actually it's episode 14 if you want to go back and listen to that. But love spelled L-U-V just stands for listen, understand, and validate.
And so as you're having this conversation about money, which can be so uncomfortable, you want to make sure that you are listening fully all the way through to your partner without any interruption. You're not interrupting them when you disagree with something. You're just letting them talk. And then you're going to understand.
So in this step, you're going to ask clarifying questions. If there's something they said or maybe some numbers that you don't understand where they came from or why we're utilizing this budget, you want to make sure you're asking so you clarify and you can fully understand. And then you're going to validate. And this is just validating the other person's feelings.
Acknowledging maybe the fear the stress the shame and empathizing with each other's experiences and this piece of validation you don't have to agree with them but you can validate how they are experiencing that so you can say something like i can totally see how if that's your perspective that could be scary and i think even too this jumps into the idea of somebody's going to be more practical with finances and somebody might be the dreamer.
And the practical person's always going to want to bring the dreamer down to earth. But when you're first starting off this conversation, that's not the most important part. The most important part is engagement. Oh, wow, that would be really cool. Or that does sound very fun or interesting, where you can validate what they're saying, even if you might have an initial disagreement, like, I don't think we could do that, or that doesn't seem reasonable.
But even then, it's not about necessarily even saying that part, you can even just try to engage them where you say, like, hey, listen, like, hey yeah let's look at what we can do to see if we can make that a part of the budget and it might be something you actually could accomplish that you might be surprised about or it might be something where just the budget by itself ends up bringing them down to earth and as a dreamer
it's important to validate the practical person's experiences as well so even though you have these big plans and these big dreams for your family it's important to acknowledge and validate. Even something like, hey, Tim, I'm so thankful that you are the practical person and I know that carries a lot of stress and I know that carries a lot of weight because a lot of times I have these outlandish ideas or I always want to go out and do something.
But I know that we couldn't do any of that without you. And so I appreciate when you hear me out and I appreciate that you allow me to dream. But I also really appreciate that you ground me. And I think this kind of goes both ways where I always kind of joke with people that I'd be a hermit living up in the mountains, not doing anything fun or interesting without you. And so you help kind of pull me out of my shell and help me to be more willing
to try new things or to go out and do fun things. And so I do think that both parts in a relationship are important where it's like, OK, we have a practical person. Then we also have a dreamer type person and not looking at either one of those with disdain or disgust, but just saying, OK, there's some benefits to this. But it's about trying to strike and find a good, healthy balance between the
two. And I think as a dreamer, being responsible as well, it can't always be your responsibility because I know that gets exhausting and tiring to have to always be the one to say no. I think as a dreamer, it's also your responsibility to realize the practicality of your situation and what is possible and not in different seasons.
So that you don't feel like the financial police all the time, but that I'm having some restraint and being able to also, you know, tell the kids no, tell myself no, and make sure that we're being responsible with our finances. So that's a quick summary of LUV, making sure that you're utilizing that tool even in your conversations with money. So the next one we're going to talk about is collaborative versus confrontational language.
And so the first thing we're going to talk about along with that is using I statements instead of you statements. When you use you statements, you're going to come across as attacking versus when you use I statements, it's going to be more I'm sharing my perspective. And so people are more open to that. So when you're talking about money, you might say, I feel anxious when we only have X number of dollars in the bank account.
Rather than you're always spending and you're making us lose our savings. And so one is much more prone to cause a conflict between you two versus the other one is more likely to gain an ally where it's like, oh, I didn't realize that made you feel anxious. I don't want to make you feel anxious. Okay, what can we do to try to make sure we have this much money in the bank account?
Versus if you say you're spending too much money, that type of statement is more likely to make your partner defensive. And then it pushes you actually further away from your end goal of, hey, I would like to have more money in the bank account. And I also think what's important with this is that you want to make sure that you're focusing on a mutual end goal that benefits you both, as opposed to talking about all the reasons we haven't met our goal currently.
Because that's when you jump into those use statements. Well, we could have saved this much if you didn't spend and if you would have just listened to me as opposed to, hey, our goal is we want to save X number of dollars this year and we want to try to max out our 401k contributions or whatever it is. Right. But being able to say this is what our goal is and then now backtrack and say, OK, what can we do now to get there?
And when you make it more of a collaborative approach where it's we're both trying to get to the same end goal and we're both trying to work there, what can we do to accomplish that as opposed to looking back and trying to blame the other person for why we haven't reached them in the past? Because again, if our end goal is to get the other person on board, when we jump into that blame game, you're bringing out that defensiveness.
And then now we're not talking about the right thing that can help us get to our goal. We're being sidetracked and sidelined, and then we're getting further away from actually achieving that goal. Another language tool to help with that collaboration versus confrontation is practicing curiosity over judgment. And when you do this, when you ask open-ended questions, you're not stating your opinion, but you're looking for more answers for them. You're coming from a place of curiosity.
So questions like, where do you feel comfortable? How much money do you need in the bank to feel comfortable? Or what are your thoughts on this budget item? And being able to get their side of the story and ask them questions rather than those accusations where it's like, I hate that you spent so much money and now we're under this amount in the bank.
So when you're reaching out and you're asking that question of where do you feel comfortable in this, you're kind of getting on the same page and you're creating conversation that's healthy. Or that question about what are your thoughts on this budget item rather than saying, I don't think we need this budget item. This is so useless.
We're just wasting money here. It definitely shuts down that communication rather than figuring out what is their motivation behind wanting this budget item or how important is it to the other person? So you really are trying to minimize that judgment and work as a team, because when there's judgment, you're kind of turning against each other rather than understanding each other and going side by side and working through this together.
And so I think just a general important idea to know when you're coming into these conversations about finances, knowing that they do generally tend to be hot button issues. And so it really is important to mind your P's and Q's when you're trying to start these conversations, because it very quickly can devolve into a fight.
And when it devolves into a fight what happens is then we're more likely to kick this problem or this can down the road to be dealt with later but then the financial strife and difficulty only tends to build then and then what happens is okay now we're going to try to talk about again but now we're more anxious we're more upset about it and so it keeps decreasing the probability that this communication is going to go well and that we're going
to have more of a struggle or more of a fight the next time and so as much as talking about these finances might be uncomfortable.
Recognizing like hey there's no time like the present it's not going to get easier in the future to talk about it it's more likely to get difficult in the future to talk about it and if this is something where you feel like man i'm just at a standstill i have no idea how to talk to my partner we can't sit down, we get so angry, we get so frustrated about it all the time, then it might be time really to seek professional help.
And if you are in that state where you're like, man, we've tried and we just can't get this down, and you want assistance with being able to learn some more of these skills, or somebody who can come in and help you guys walk through these difficult conversations. Ruth and I started a program, Coaching with Truth, where you can set up either a consultation with us or you can book an appointment, and we can get started right away and just help you guys work through these difficult issues.
If you're interested, we have a link in the description down below. And as always, we want to remind you, 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. And 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.