Money issues? The financial psychotherapist will see you now | Money

I I am surprised that Vicky Reynal, financial psychotherapist, is soft and reaffirms when I meet her. Maybe I shouldn’t be – she’s therapist after all. But something about his work line, helping people unravel their problems with money, made me expect someone, more clinical.

I am thinking of the number of business leaders she meets, how much her time should be prosperously and how strong her borders are. I even panic at the idea of connecting to our zoom meeting a minute late, because the time, after all, is money.

Reynal, I’m sure, would find it convincing. She believes that we often have thoughts and feelings about money that have nothing to do with colds and hard money and everything to do with our first emotional experiences, our deepest aspirations.

It can therefore be frustrating that Reynal does not talk much about her. I am really curious – especially when I ask questions about her fascination for Warren Buffett, which she has read a lot and once met in person. She admits that she was attracted to him as they grow up, but offers only waves of the why: references to formative financial experiences and the symbolic weight he has held within her family, although she refuses to develop.

As a psychotherapist, she tries to obscure her own life of her customers, to prevent this obstructing their process. It turns out that anonymity is a very good therapeutic tool.

“People try to guess where I come from, and their assumptions tell me so much about their internal world. Some people who have very strict and impartial parents guess that I may be Eastern Europe, because of the cold they perceive me. Others assume that I am Mediterranean or South American – by a warm country – because of love and gift and to give [they think] I am.”

When Reynal was younger and herself passed therapy, she had a transformative experience through some of the feelings concerning money. This, she thought, must be a ripe field for psychotherapeutic practice. But after almost a decade that studies psychology and psychotherapy, she was surprised to see that only a handful of research and manual articles are focused directly on this.

“I said to myself:” Wait a minute, we are talking about our relationship with food, with sex, with people, why don’t we talk about people’s relationship with money? ” It comes anyway in the therapy room, because it is part of the direction of a life and that people enter all kinds of damage because of this – and as therapists, we have the goal to understand it. »»

When Reynal began to market explicitly as a financial psychotherapist, she was suddenly overwhelmed by patients queuing to speak to her. Her reception box was full of e-mails of potential customers, telling her how relieved they were to find her. “They said,” I didn’t know that a money psychotherapist existed, and I need your help, “she said.

It sees some customers on concession fees or a reduced rate, as they can be unemployed or with debts. But others do not need it. These are patients who know what they should do with regard to a rational level, but they simply cannot resolve to do it: the customer who lives obsessively shoes, or the one who cannot resolve to buy basic things like a coat in winter, because he feels a deep and confusing desire to refuse beautiful things – despite deeper and confusing means. Others have more than getting money, but do not find contentment. They come to his thought: “Maybe you will not judge me, to be rich and yet unhappy.”

Finances are at the heart of how we relate to the world. The way we manage our income affects our families, shapes our conversations with partners and can project long shadows on our relationship with our parents.

But as with so much therapy, when people think they come to talk about money, it is actually not the money at all. And under all this, it often reflects the lessons that we have absorbed while growing up.

“It’s just a language that we use, because I think it is easier to say:” You are stingy “than to say:” I want you to be more affectionate with me “or” I don’t feel like you love me enough “or” I love you more than you love “,” says Reynal.

She also meets customers who find it difficult to reach the two ends, who feel that they are childish and impulsive with money – they feel lowered by the way they spend. When Reynal raises this, I can’t help but ask myself if its customers are attached to themselves these negative descriptions because in the United States and the United Kingdom, poverty is often described as bad choice rather than wider economic conditions.

Most of us can indicate relationships in our lives – certainly with ourselves – where the way we go is a proxy to something deeper. The colleague who is a constant lower, who feels hard, despite the least in the bill; The brother who works like a dog but can never ask for an increase; The friend who feels constantly on the verge of financial ruin, despite more than sufficient.

So what are the subconscious motivations under these interactions? Reynal will often see customers who come to tell him about one thing: for example, a recurring frustration that they are always too generous and give far beyond their means, even to the point that it lets them feel resentment and angry; Which in turn leads to a conversation on people who please and where the desire to put the needs of others first came in their lives.

These behaviors, it turns out that – just like infidelity or drug use, or one of the most obvious subjects that we associate with therapy – can come from an era of our lives when we felt dissatisfied. An incredibly generous person could have had trouble integrating during their adolescence, while the hunger for another could be due to a non -satisfied need for their caregiver as a baby or feeling constantly rejected or rejected as a child.

“These are non -obvious links on the surface … but they help us reach the real desire below, the true unsettled desire.”

His practice also helped her to understand wider changes. It remains shocked by the way in which the use of social media has led to an unprecedented level of lifestyle inflation. People no longer compare their lives with their neighbors, but for completely inaccessible lifestyles displayed by people paid to appear rich.

“There is this maniac level of social comparison,” she says. “People are starting to believe that everyone has more money than them. Many customers are men who are undergoing enormous pressure because they have gained greater mortgages than they could afford or cars that they could not afford. They must accept that they have failed against their own standards, or the shame of not being able to provide what their family wanted or hoped. ”

In some ways, it is not surprising that many of its customers feel a feeling of relief after having found it. These types of difficulties are not often encountered with a lot of sympathy – especially in an economy where so many people simply try to reach both ends.

“There is this idea which is quite common that money will repair everything. And of course, if you have trouble paying your bills, the money would make it better. But to make the jump that if people have money, they must be happy, or they do not have the right to be unhappy – it’s a big jump, “she said.

She lists many ways that people fight with wealth. Some customers have more than their family and self-sabotage accordingly, perhaps believing that they do not deserve it. They do not charge customers properly for work, or do not feel guilty when there is a lot of money in their account. Others spend extravagant money, almost to get rid of it. And in the therapy room, she often learns about how the stories that customers have heard affect them: if their families thought that wealth as immoral or greedy, for example, what is it said about them if they become rich?

But Reynal also highlights the many stabilizing and positive relationships that people have with money – as feeling autonomous after years of struggle, or wanting to be financially independent because it is released.

“It is not a question of withdrawing emotions from financial decisions,” she says. “It’s about becoming aware of them.”

In this sense, she invites readers to be curious about their own attitudes towards money, how they spend it and where their own beliefs come from financial security.

“We cannot all allow ourselves a therapy. But the opening of this curiosity can be sufficient: why do I buy this thing? Or why do I feel guilty to spend money on this thing, if I have enough? What is the desire behind this? ” she said.

Some may think that there are only several different ways to divide the bill. But for those who look more deeply, they can simply discover something new about them.