Have you ever been sitting across from a long-time client and thought:
“This just isn’t like them.”
Maybe your normally thoughtful physician client suddenly becomes rigid.
She can’t seem to hear what you’re saying.
He keeps asking the same question even though you’ve answered it three different ways.
She wants to sell everything.
He refuses to spend money he can clearly afford to spend.
You pull out the financial plan.
You show them the numbers.
You explain why they’re going to be okay.
Nothing changes.
Maybe that’s because you’re trying to solve a financial problem when, at that moment, your client is experiencing a safety problem.
Financial reality lives on the spreadsheet. Financial safety lives in the nervous system.
Think about someone who grew up during the Great Depression.
Today, that person might have a net worth measured in millions of dollars.
There is plenty of money for food. Plenty for housing. Plenty for health care. Plenty for the rest of their life.
The spreadsheet says:
SAFE.
Yet spending money can still feel dangerous.
Why?
Because our financial circumstances can change long before our internal experience of financial safety changes with them.
This is one way to think about financial trauma.
I’m not using that term to diagnose your clients. And financial advisors shouldn’t become amateur therapists.
I’m talking about something much more human.
Trauma isn’t simply about the event that happened. What matters is also what happened inside us as a result of living through the experience—and what we carried forward.
Sometimes years later, something in the present touches one of those unhealed areas.
And suddenly, we’re not responding only to what’s happening today.
We’re responding to what today reminds us of.
I’ve watched the past become present in my own life
As my son was growing up, I occasionally bumped into what I came to think of as my own unhealed areas.
I remember when he wasn’t invited to a party in third grade.
Of course I was his adult mother.
But emotionally, something else happened.
Suddenly I remembered what it felt like to be the child who was excluded.
His experience touched something in me.
For a moment, the past wasn’t entirely in the past.
That’s not surprising.
Human beings are deeply social creatures. For our ancestors, belonging to a group had enormous survival value. Our brains take threats to belonging seriously.
And money can touch another extraordinarily sensitive human need:
Safety.
Money helps put food on the table.
It helps keep a roof over our heads.
It gives us options when something goes wrong.
It helps us protect the people we love.
So what happens when something threatens our sense of financial safety?
I had an experience during the pandemic that gave me a glimpse.
The day toilet paper felt like an emergency
I went to the grocery store during the early days of the pandemic.
I walked toward the paper goods aisle.
The shelves were bare.
No toilet paper.
And suddenly, I froze.
I felt the clutching in my stomach.
For a moment, I was like a deer in the headlights.
I’m a physician. I recognized what was happening.
My threat response had been activated.
Intellectually, I knew that an empty toilet-paper aisle wasn’t a life-threatening emergency.
My body apparently hadn’t gotten that memo yet.
So I didn’t start problem-solving.
First, I used square breathing.
Slow breath in.
Hold.
Slow breath out.
Hold.
As my body settled, I could engage the part of my brain that could assess the situation more rationally.
Then I told myself:
“You’re not going to die without toilet paper.”
It sounds funny now.
It wasn’t funny to my nervous system at the time.
Once I had regulated my response and reminded myself of my actual circumstances, I could make better choices.
And I’ve wondered ever since:
How often does something similar happen with money?
What happens when an unexpected bill arrives?
Imagine opening a $15,000 bill you weren’t expecting.
Or learning that your hours are being cut back.
Or watching your portfolio lose hundreds of thousands of dollars during a market decline.
Or being told that the retirement date you’ve counted on may need to change.
Or perhaps your advisor tells you the opposite:
“You’ve accumulated enough. You can spend some of this money.”
The event happens now.
But what if something about it feels familiar?
Maybe you’re eight years old again, listening to your parents fight because there isn’t enough money.
Maybe you’re the medical student staring at six figures of debt.
Maybe you’re the newly divorced parent wondering how you’re going to support your children.
Maybe you’re remembering 2008 and watching years of savings seemingly disappear.
Maybe you’re remembering the day someone you trusted betrayed you financially.
Your current financial circumstances may be completely different.
But your body recognizes the pattern.
Danger.
Your brain has more than one job
In The TrueWealth Way, I write about a simple way of understanding three different functions of the brain.
One is concerned with survival.
One carries emotion, memory and learned associations.
And one helps us plan, reason, evaluate choices and think about the future.
All three are useful.
But when your brain believes you’re in danger, survival gets priority.
That’s exactly what you want if a truck is speeding toward you.
You don’t need a spreadsheet.
You need to move.
But that same system can create problems when we’re trying to make a complicated financial decision.
When the internal alarm is sounding, the planning brain may not be running the meeting.
That’s why giving someone more information isn’t always the answer.
You can’t spreadsheet someone into feeling safe
Imagine a 68-year-old physician with a $7 million net worth.
She wants to take her children and grandchildren on a special family trip.
It will cost $20,000.
Her advisor has run the numbers.
She can easily afford it.
But she can’t bring herself to write the check.
So the advisor shows her another projection.
Still no.
He explains her withdrawal rate.
Still no.
He demonstrates that even under conservative assumptions, she’s extremely unlikely to exhaust her assets.
Still no.
From the advisor’s perspective, her behavior makes no sense.
But perhaps they’re answering different questions.
The advisor is answering:
“Can I afford this?”
The client’s nervous system may be asking:
“Am I safe?”
You can’t necessarily spreadsheet someone into feeling safe.
Financial trauma doesn’t have one financial personality
And don’t assume that financial insecurity always creates someone who hoards money.
It can produce seemingly opposite behaviors.
One person holds tightly to every dollar.
Another spends money as quickly as it comes in.
Another won’t open financial statements.
Another keeps far too much money in cash.
Another works years beyond the point at which work brings any joy.
Another panics whenever the market drops.
Another can’t bring herself to invest at all.
I’ve seen physicians make financial choices that look irrational until you understand the Money Story underneath them.
A physician I’ll call Dr. Joseph loved designer shoes, clothes and watches.
He and his physician wife decided they wanted to accelerate their retirement savings. Joseph agreed to reduce his spending.
Yet the packages kept arriving.
Eventually, their financial advisor stopped talking about the budget and asked Joseph:
“Tell me about money when you were growing up.”
Joseph described a childhood of feast and famine. His family lived paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes they ran out of money before the next paycheck arrived.
He had learned a survival rule:
Spend it while you have it, because tomorrow it might be gone.
His wife suddenly saw his spending differently.
So did Joseph.
The behavior hadn’t suddenly become financially wise.
But it had become understandable.
That’s a distinction that matters.
Seemingly irrational behavior often makes sense
This is one of the beliefs at the heart of my work:
Seemingly irrational behavior often makes sense once you understand the forces driving it.
That’s true in medicine.
It’s true with money.
And it’s why labels don’t help us much.
Cheap.
Irresponsible.
Stubborn.
Noncompliant.
Difficult.
Instead, get curious.
And one of the most important clues may be surprisingly simple:
Your client is just not themselves.
Pay attention when your client changes
You’ve known this physician for ten years.
Normally, she asks thoughtful questions.
Today she’s barely listening.
Normally, he takes a few days before making major decisions.
Today he insists everything must change immediately.
Normally, you can disagree and explore the disagreement together.
Today any challenge seems to make her angry.
Notice that.
Don’t diagnose it.
Don’t decide, My client has financial trauma.
And don’t immediately reach for another chart.
Instead, recognize that something may have changed in your client’s internal state.
You might simply say:
“You don’t seem quite like yourself today. What’s happening for you?”
Or:
“This seems to be bringing up something important. Tell me what’s going on.”
And sometimes, when appropriate:
“Does anything about this situation feel familiar?”
Then listen.
You may learn something that no financial statement could ever tell you.
NOTICE → REGULATE → REALITY-CHECK → DECIDE
Here’s a simple framework I use for thinking about these moments.
NOTICE
Recognize the change.
Maybe you’re the one who notices:
My client isn’t themselves.
Or perhaps you can help your client notice:
Something is happening in my body right now.
That awareness itself can interrupt an automatic reaction.
REGULATE
When the alarm system is running the meeting, this may not be the moment to make an irreversible financial decision.
Slow things down.
Sometimes that means taking a break.
Sometimes it means breathing.
Sometimes it means simply naming what is happening.
And sometimes the intensity or persistence of the response tells you that a mental-health professional should be part of the client’s team.
The financial advisor doesn’t need to become the therapist.
REALITY-CHECK
Now ask:
What is actually true today?
This is where the advisor’s expertise becomes enormously valuable.
The market is down—but what does that actually mean for this client’s plan?
The bill is unexpected—but what resources are available to pay it?
The physician wants to retire—but what does the financial plan actually show?
The client wants to spend $20,000 on the family trip—but what effect would that actually have on her long-term financial security?
Separate today’s reality from yesterday’s fear.
DECIDE
Now make the financial decision.
Not from panic.
Not from an old survival rule.
Not because someone is pushing you.
Make the decision that best serves the life you’re actually living today.
Sometimes yesterday walks into your financial planning meeting
Your client’s financial statement tells you what they have.
Their behavior may tell you something about what they’ve lived through.
And sometimes the person making today’s financial decision is responding to yesterday’s financial reality.
That’s why the best financial advisors do more than know what to recommend.
They know when not to recommend.
They recognize when education isn’t what the client needs at that moment.
They get curious about the human being sitting across from them.
And they understand something fundamental about financial behavior:
Financial reality may live on the spreadsheet.
Financial safety lives in the nervous system.
When the two disagree, don’t automatically reach for another spreadsheet.
First, find out what your client is responding to.
Because sometimes the path to a better financial decision begins by helping someone recognize:
That was then.
This is now.
And the decision in front of me belongs to today.