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130: Challenging Noble Poverty with Khara Croswaite Brindle

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“I need to know where my beliefs come from, which ones are mine to hold, and which ones I need to leave behind gently. If this is my grandparent’s belief, if this is mom’s belief, if this is my first boss’s belief, it doesn’t have to be mine. But they’re so sneaky that we don’t even realize how many beliefs we have and how they impact our decisions. So for most of us, it’s starting to look at those money beliefs and being like, which ones do I want to hold on to, and which ones are my truth versus [which ones] I’ve got to let go.”

~Khara Croswaite Brindle

Meet Khara Croswaite Brindle

Khara Croswaite Brindle, MA, LPC, ACS, CFT-I is passionate about giving people aha moments that create goosebumps and catalyze powerful action. She is a TEDx Speaker, licensed mental health therapist, and financial therapist in Colorado. Khara enjoys various roles as a serial entrepreneur, author, professional speaker, professor, and consultant. Khara specializes in helping therapists and financial therapists turn pain points into possibilities through consultation, courses, and supervision. She is originally from the Pacific Northwest and gets her best ideas walking outside and being around water. When Khara’s not writing her next book or supporting fellow professional helpers on their own self-discovery journeys, she enjoys spending time with her daughter, reading, and indulging in gluttonous, gluten-free desserts with her family.

In this Episode...

What is noble poverty, and is it impacting your financial decisions? In this episode, Linzy welcomes financial therapist and consultant Khara Croswaite Brindle to explore the concept of noble poverty—an underlying belief that can impact financial decisions, particularly within helping professions like therapy. Linzy and Khara discuss how therapists are often socialized to equate service with sacrifice, leading many to adopt a mindset that prioritizes scarcity over financial well-being.

Together, Linzy and Khara examine the roots of noble poverty, its connections to gender, education, and the nonprofit world, and the impact it has on therapists’ money mindsets. Khara offers valuable insights on how to identify this pattern and shares strategies for breaking free from noble poverty, empowering therapists to build a healthier, more abundant financial future.

If you’re ready to challenge limiting beliefs around money and embrace financial empowerment, don’t miss this episode. Tune in for practical insights on breaking free from noble poverty.

Connect with Khara Croswaite Brindle

Have you ever wondered how your relationship with money impacts your success as a therapist and small business owner? Discover what Financial Therapy can bring to your life with Khara Croswaite Brindle:

https://croswaitecounselingpllc.com/financial-therapy

Want to work with Linzy?

Check out the FREE masterclass, The 4 Step Framework to Getting Your Business Finances Totally in Order, where you’ll learn the framework that has helped hundreds of therapists go from money confusion and shame to calm and confidence, as well as the three biggest financial mistakes that therapists make. At the end, you’ll be invited to join Money Skills for Therapists and get Linzy’s support in getting your finances finally working for you.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Khara: I need to know where my beliefs come from, which ones are mine to hold, and which ones I need to leave behind gently. If this is my grandparent’s belief, this is mom’s belief, this is my first boss’s belief, but it doesn’t have to be mine. But they’re so sneaky that we don’t even realize how many beliefs we have and how they impact our decisions. So for most of us, it’s starting to look at those money beliefs and being like, which ones do I want to hold on to and which ones are my truth versus I got to let that go.

[00:00:30] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today I had a conversation with Khara Croswaite Brindle. Khara is a therapist, a financial therapist, and a consultant, helping other therapists, specifically helping therapists with money. And today, Khara and I got into a conversation about noble poverty. This is a phrase that is new to me, but as soon as I saw it, I was like, Oh, yep, I know what that is.

[00:01:16] So today, we dig into this idea of noble poverty, where it comes from, the connections to gender and education, and the nonprofit sector. We talk about how to identify noble poverty in yourself, and what to do if you start to see noble poverty playing a big role in your relationship to money. I feel like Khara and I went a few different ways today, kind of almost turning over this idea and looking at it from different angles.

[00:01:42] There’s just so much here to unpack. Here’s my conversation with Khara Croswaite Brindle. 

[00:02:02] Linzy: So Khara, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:06] Khara: Thank you. So excited to be here.

[00:02:07] Linzy: Yes, I’m so happy to have you here, as someone who is also supporting therapists in multiple ways, in the space. I’ve always been a fan of those who are helping the helpers and that seems to be very much your world.

[00:02:25] Something that I saw on your website, which caught my attention, and a phrase that is new to me that immediately though, I was like, Oh, I understand what that is, is this idea of noble poverty.

[00:02:37] And I’d love to dig into that with you today. Tell me, first of all, how do you define noble poverty? What is that?

[00:02:46] Khara: Yeah. In its simplest form, it’s putting yourself in financial stress to serve others. So it has this feeling of being a martyr. In our space, working with therapists. It’s, I can’t be a good helper and make a good income, which I know is something you talk a lot about. I’m like, well, I can’t wait to do both.

[00:03:03] But so many folks believe that you can’t be a good helper, and still make a good living for yourself.

[00:03:09] Linzy: So it’s putting yourself into a financially How did you put it? Financially difficult position.

[00:03:16] Khara: Yeah. Financial stress, putting yourself in financial stress To serve others.

[00:03:19] Linzy: Yes, and tell me what is noble about that?

[00:03:25] Khara: I think it’s, the noble pieces. You feel like you’re sacrificing in this case, self-sacrificing to serve others, which is why there are certain populations that resonate with this terminology of noble poverty. Specifically, therapists, some nurses, and social workers resonate with this, as teachers, and nonprofits.

[00:03:45] Those are all the people I’ve said this to, and they’re like, oh, that hit me in the heart. Like, that was hard to hear. 

[00:03:49] Linzy: Absolutely. Because. Why do you think that those professions particularly end up with this kind of thinking?

[00:03:57] Khara: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s two-fold. First, it’s the systems that educate us to become that professional, that career choice. So I think of graduate school saying, you’re not worth your salt. You’ve got to put your time in, you’ve got to earn your keep, those kinds of phrases, that like basically imply you have to work for zero money or little money to earn a degree, or credibility, or experience, right?

[00:04:19] So starting at the grad school level, that’s reinforced. And I know that’s not just true of mental health, but as a mental health professional, that’s what was loud in my head. And on the other side of it, a lot of the professions we’ve named have women as the people in this position.

[00:04:33] So in the shortest answer possible, patriarchy is also part of this.

[00:04:39] Linzy: I like it. It’s to the point. It’s good because we’re specifically asking women, mostly women, to do this self-sacrificing. And something that I will say I have observed of male colleagues, that I have if I think of, you know, men that I went to school with, is often they were quicker to go out in private practice in general or set higher fees.

[00:05:03] So they’re in that profession, but they did seem more, immune maybe to that kind of messaging. I think my observation has been many men don’t seem to struggle with that need to sacrifice themselves as much as many women who go through. And these are vast generalizations, but I feel like I can make them.

[00:05:21] Have you had a similar observation? Do you notice that some folks are more immune even though they go through the same education?

[00:05:29] Khara: I think it’s a gender difference, it’s an ethnicity and race difference, it’s all sorts of things here. But yeah, I think men, especially when we think about numbers and money, men historically have been encouraged to be good at numbers, and so they’ll be like, you’re so good at math in elementary school, and then for girls they’ll be like, how about you go towards this other profession, right?

[00:05:47] We think of like 1950s, you were a teacher, a secretary, or a caregiver, right? It’s like common professions. I think it’s just, you know, at this point, decades and decades worth of messaging that women should be caregivers and that you sacrifice your needs to make that happen and you can’t ask for reimbursement while you do it. 

[00:06:05] Linzy: And that’s an interesting point about math. Let’s, let’s talk about math for a minute, math and girls, because something that comes to mind for me when I think about that is, first of all, I think as a girl if we’re going back to like being in school, like being children, Being too smart is not something you want to be, right?

[00:06:25] You don’t want to be like Hermione Granger who’s that smart girl who annoys everybody else. I do think there’s, there’s something in that kind of stereotype and being good at math is something that I think girls don’t get to be proud of if they’re good at math, nor is it rewarded to be good at math as a girl.

[00:06:43] Like other girls are not going to think that’s cool if you’re good at math. I don’t know. What, comes up for you when you think about that? If we go back to the thinning of our education.

[00:06:51] Khara: I have to agree because when we think of Hermione Granger, like, yeah, she was portrayed as annoying. So like, even the audience got the message that being too smart is obnoxious, which is not helpful to girls or boys at this juncture. But yeah, I mean, there was somebody, I can’t remember who it was, but they put out like, how

[00:07:08] teachers reward boys versus girls and the language changes that they’ll say to a girl. You’re so pretty. You’re so nice You’re so kind to a boy. They’ll say you’re so strong. You’re so smart. And so just those examples highlight the difference and how we show up with boys and girls. It’s fascinating.

[00:07:24] Linzy: Absolutely. And then the other thing that I think about as we’re talking about money and gender kind of over the decades, these old narratives, is something that I’ve heard folks talk about is traditionally, in a heterosexual relationship, it was generally men’s job to earn money and to take up financial space and like, you know, bring home the bacon.

[00:07:44] And it was women’s job to manage the money, and be thrifty, and make it go further. So even though we’re talking about the same pot of money, the skills that we were supposed to develop or the relationship we were supposed to develop to money, historically was very much for women more about restriction and control, and for men was more about status and power right and being a caretaker and what’s so interesting to me about that is we are talking about the same pot of money.

[00:08:11] We’re talking about the same money in the household, but the gender role related to that money, historically… And this is in a certain family model. There are lots of exceptions to this, of course, but is around women being small, and controlled and I’ve even heard to this day, I’ll hear, hetero couples who I know the woman is maybe home with the kids or is earning less because they’re in more of that caretaking role, and their partner will give them a hard time for spending too much on groceries, right?

[00:08:38] It’s like, they’re supposed to be controlled. And like, so there is this, real smallness around women and money that I think shows up in, in a few different ways by the time we get to grad school, and get into these, these professions we’re talking about.

[00:08:52] Khara: Oh, yeah. And even as we think back to the childhood experiences of like, okay, now just a little girl in our example, have an internal narrative of I’m bad with money. So she goes into that relationship and says, Oh, I’m bad with money. So of course, I want my spouse, in this case, a man in our, scenario to manage the money.

[00:09:09] So we’ve just reinforced all things of like, who has power, who has control, who’s a spender, who’s a saver, which financial therapists hate that language because it’s so polarizing. And so it causes conflict versus saying, how are we coming together and working as a couple or partners on this issue? 

[00:09:23] Linzy: Yeah. Being, being a team, being in it together. And that’s usually the conversation that I have with couples that I know who are like that. I’m a lot of fun as a friend. You can imagine. It’s like, it’s the same money. You’re managing the same money. Like you’re a team. You know, she’s only buying groceries cause your household needs to buy like eat groceries.

[00:09:39] So you know, um, coming together on that. So yeah, there’s all this gendering then that, we’re talking about here. Then we go into grad school and we’re, we’re given these, As you said, these experiences sometimes of having to work for free. I know that I worked for free as part of my internships…

[00:09:57] There are good things I could say about that in terms of experience, da da da da But it’s exposure, right? You’re working, you’re getting exposure while paying tuition to do that. So there’s this piece of us experiencing sometimes literal poverty, right? Like working 40 hours and getting paid zero dollars, and then you’re paying tuition on top of that.

[00:10:16] And then what do you see happens once we get into the profession? Where do the noble poverty dynamics come in once we’re out of grad school and we step into, in this case, we’ll talk about the therapy world?

[00:10:26] Khara: Yeah. So a couple of things are top of mind. So I’m a provider who takes insurance. So the fact that they want to pay less for an unlicensed candidate or someone new to the field, I think, reinforces noble poverty. Cause it’s like, Oh, you’re green. You’re new. We’re not going to pay you what you’re worth.

[00:10:42] Not anything close to that. So insurance is reinforcing this. Most of us go into community mental health or group practices, more group practices now than ever, which is fun to see for my students. But when I was coming into the field, it was like, community mental health is it, that’s all you had.

[00:10:56] So now you’re being paid 25, 15, 25, 30 tops once you’re licensed to do this work. And they kept saying, you should be grateful because you you have supervision built in. You have all these things you’re learning for free. So it was really kind of toxic in that way of reinforcing I shouldn’t be asking for what I’m worth. I shouldn’t be challenging what I’m paid. I should just go with the flow.

[00:11:18] Linzy: Yeah, and the non-profit space has this whole other level of toxicity around self-sacrifice and, and poverty. And I just observed this actually with, a peer that I know, another parent from the school that I, my son goes to, who just stopped being the director of a non-profit. And so she’s at the very top of the non-profit, and she had to quit, she burnt out, and she was saying, I’m going to go somewhere with a salary and benefits.

[00:11:46] And vacation time. Like, you know, these things were all very like novels. She had a salary before, but to get a salary that would be, you know, meet her family’s needs, It’s kind of baked in at all levels of that sector. And what I see happens in that sector, and, and this shows up whenever we work in any kind of nonprofit mental health, setting is that there’s kind of this idea that as long as other people are suffering,

[00:12:11] Then you should also suffer, right? Like, you’re supposed to like, do it for the cause, do it for the justice, and that like, your suffering, first of all, it would be wrong if you didn’t suffer, because people are suffering, but also that your suffering is like, good, somehow. And this comes into the noble piece.

[00:12:26] What are your thoughts on that sector, the non-profit space? 

[00:12:32] Khara: So many thoughts. When I founded a non-profit several years ago and learned a lot about the dysfunction just from being in the seat of like executive director founder. What does this look like? As I was going through my education to understand the non-profit sector, they said the average person who works in non-profits is a woman with a master’s degree or higher who’s paid about 30, 000 across the board.

[00:12:54] And I was like, wow, that’s painful knowledge to get in this class on non-profits, and then not have anyone question it. Just be like, well, that sucks. And there’s nothing we’re going to do about it. This inertia, this like, we’re not going to change or create any new systems to say, let’s do better.

[00:13:10] Luckily, over the last couple of years, I’ve seen more people saying, let’s make some positive changes to that sector. But it is rampant with, this is how we’ve always done it, and we’re not going to change it. And so, the fact that women feel called to help, and under having the message reinforced that you have to help and not meet your own financial needs, is why I think noble poverty hits that population so hard when they hear this term.

[00:13:31] Oh, that’s me. And it doesn’t feel good. 

[00:13:35] Linzy: Yeah. Because then the other piece that also comes to mind for me in the term noble poverty, which we’re just unpacking in a few different ways here because I feel like it’s rich territory, is the term noble.

[00:13:46] And it does have, to me, almost a religious connotation to that term of kind of this self-sacrificing stoic, like take it on the brow kind of, image that comes to mind for me. I’m curious for you, do you also see religion or certain cultural beliefs tying into this when you’re talking to folks about noble poverty?

[00:14:11] Khara: I think there’s always a cultural component, especially when I think of family systems or different cultures where it’s, Hey, the collective is the focus, right? So I live in the U. S. so it’s like, this is part of being an individualist culture, right? It’s like, first, you focus on yourself.

[00:14:28] But for folks who come from collectivist cultures, where it’s the family first, or the community first, they would also say, like, this is selfish to focus on yourself to ask for something that you think you need or want or deserve. So, from a cultural perspective. As someone who doesn’t identify with religion, I can still hear the flavor of that from what you’ve shared of like, yes, there’s something about this, like, whole…

[00:14:49] You know, to be a martyr is not something people like to have labeled as themselves, right? So we’re not going to say martyr poverty. It also doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well. 

[00:14:58] I struggle with the word. But for people to put the word noble to it almost feels a little bit like gaslighting.

[00:15:05] To be like, oh, I’m going to make this sound like it’s a really important champion thing you’re doing, but then make us wonder what’s wrong with us when we actually can’t make ends meet. 

[00:15:12] Linzy: Yeah, because that’s, that’s the phrase I think of with noble as I see this kind of upright, like, it’s fine. It’s fine. I can suffer through, you know, makes you a better person for it. So. With all this, I’m curious, how do you see noble poverty then showing up with the folks that you work with?

[00:15:32] Khara: Absolutely. This is the most common question. Once people know the term, they’re like, okay, and what are the warning signs that I’m in it? So other than professions that we’ve listed off, it’s usually around things like avoidance with money, where it’s like, I’m not going to ask for a raise. I’m not going to confront someone who owes me money.

[00:15:48] I think the private practice clinicians who have a client with a credit card that declines and they’re like, Oh gosh, I’m not going to say anything like this is awkward. It makes me intense and uncomfortable. I’m just going to write it off or not pursue it. It’s the colleagues who have clients with thousands of dollars that they’re owed that they’re just not having a conversation.

[00:16:04] In non-profit spaces, it’s, I’m not going to ever talk about getting a raise or asking for more because I’m worried that if I do, someone’s going to call me greedy or selfish. And so that’s where the emotional tie is, of like, there are so many messages of if you advocate for yourself or play big versus play small,

[00:16:22] You’re now greedy, selfish, or corrupt.

[00:16:24] Linzy: Right, so it’s that smallness and that avoidance. Yeah, because I think that in that mentality, it’s kind of like if you ask for more, then you’re saying you can’t hack it. Mm hmm. Right,  you’re not noble, if you need more or you want more, and it does make me think about, you know, I come from, a farming family background.

[00:16:46] My parents were not farmers, but my grandparents were farmers, and they were such a huge influence on our family, and on our family’s money narratives that came down. And it is really interesting because I can see in my family contradictions around it.

[00:16:59] So, my grandparents were very good with money and ended up with money near the end of their lives, but started their lives with no money. So I do remember noticing, you know, from my grandmother, for instance, like, judgments about kind of how much we had, or it was very strange to her around these things because it was something that she had talked about…

[00:17:17] I recorded my grandmother’s money stories about a year before she died. I interviewed with her. which I haven’t used yet. It’s a little, it’s a little too raw. But I do have this recording of her talking about how her dad kind of taught her that if the Queen of England comes in here, we’re Canadian, so, you know, there’s this kind of royalist tie.

[00:17:35] If the Queen of England comes in here, she’s no better than you and me. Like, we’re all the same. And it was very much this noble kind of thing of, like, we might be dirt poor, but she’s no better than us, which is a really good coping mechanism for being poor to still have pride, but it is that of having your head held high.

[00:17:54] Like you’re almost better than for being poor because you don’t need these trappings or these material things, right? You’re still able to, I don’t know, eke meaning out of life or, or get by. And so I see that if I think about my own family, the way some of those narratives have kind of trickled down of like feeling judged by my grandparents, because I, I wasn’t poor, but at the same time, this contradiction where my grandmother gave us kind of chunks of money at different times And something that I asked her at the end of these money interviews that I did was like why did you give us money?

[00:18:23] If you also had this experience of being able to find dignity within poverty. Why did you give us money when you didn’t have to and she was like, well, I didn’t want you to suffer like I suffered. So it’s this interesting thing where I think we can have pride in our suffering Right,suffering is pure, and that’s where we get into these pseudo-religious narratives, but it also sucks to be poor.

[00:18:45] And my grandmother when she no longer had to be poor, she was happy to make sure that we were also not poor. But yeah, and I’m thinking about that, you know, like this kind of,

[00:18:54] Purity narrative that we can have around suffering and being poor is good. And this is what I see in, in my students, and I’m sure you see this with the folks that you support as well, is like, if being poor is good, then having money is bad. Right? And there’s the flip side to that narrative.

[00:19:13] I’m curious how you see, or if you see, that showing up. This kind of guilt, and mistrust, almost like money is a gluttonous, greedy thing to even think about wanting. What do you notice about that?

[00:19:25] Khara: Absolutely. Well, in focusing on working with therapists, they say that 70 percent of us are avoidant with our money, which means we already have a bunch of negative beliefs about money. So right there with money is evil, corrupt, greedy, and not good, you can’t be trusted if you have money. One that’s come up more often is You’re a changed person when you have money.

[00:19:45] So it changes you and it’s not always a good chance of, hooray, the rags to riches story. Sometimes it’s now you’re corrupt. Now you’re, you don’t belong. And I was having this conversation with the therapist-client today where she’s like, Oh, my family of origin says we are noble and not poverty.

[00:20:01] And this is how we show up and how we survive. And we, you know, pull up our bootstraps and handle it. And then she also wants to make enough money to be generous, and to give back, and to fund different things that she feels have value and she’s like, but if I do that, if I make enough money, I’m going to be ostracized for my family, and I’m going to feel that grief and loss and estrangement because I’ve made too much money.

[00:20:22] So she’s sitting here going, I want this money, but I can’t have it at the risk of losing my family, which is such a common occurrence for a lot of us when we’re kind of going out of a class or going to the next SES. And we have family or friends or people in our lives who are like, Oh, I can’t trust you now, or you’re too good for us. Those kinds of messages. 

[00:20:40] Linzy: And I think whenever we leave behind a story that’s not serving us, we also either endanger relationships that are bound up in that story or sometimes we do lose relationships that are bound up in that story. And I think that’s a very painful part of growing as people, and of owning our needs.

[00:21:00] And especially as therapists, you know, being in this space and culture of self-sacrifice and noble poverty. And I remember experiencing these own things not with my own family, thankfully, but you know with friends you know who you can tell like they think you’ve gotten a little too big for your britches Is probably how my grandfather would say it you know, but there there is this endangerment that can happen, right, because you’re kind of rocking the boat, and some people hold these stories consciously or not very near and dear.

[00:21:27] Khara: The word homeostasis shows up as you said that I’m like, we just want to keep it the same how it always has been. So if someone gets. Some wealth or inherited wealth or we have this whole generation about to get wealth that’s inherited, but it comes at the loss of a family member. And so people are like, Oh, you’re so lucky you have money, but it’s not lucky at the loss of the person I love, that they’re no longer here for that to happen.

[00:21:49] And so financial therapists all over the world are getting ready to like to hold for that and help support people through the grief of my life has forever changed on so many levels. And it’s not all hearts and flowers just because I have money I didn’t have before.

[00:22:01] Linzy: Yeah, and that’s that, boomer-to-millennial transfer that’s coming, which I’m personally not looking forward to as a Millennial. 

[00:22:09] Khara: Most of us are, try not to think about it, but I think most of us also are like, what are we going to do when this happens? 

[00:22:14] Linzy: Yeah, that is a really interesting point about this cultural shift that’s coming where many people in their 30s and 40s who maybe have not had a lot of money might be coming into money as their parent’s generation starts to pass away, or as they lose their parents.

[00:22:29] So as you say, there’s this mixed piece there of your financial situation has changed, but at great, great personal cost. And then, yeah, whenever we have a big change in our life. You know, as I was saying, it does also change our relationships. It breaks that homeostasis, which can be painful, to have those relationships around you rocked or lost, as your life changes.

[00:22:52] So for people who are listening. Who might be thinking, okay, maybe I am living a little bit of the noble poverty life, who, who feels called out right now? What do you say to folks once they start to identify that this is a narrative that they’re living? What can they do now knowing this about one of the money stories that they’re carrying?

[00:23:12] Khara: Just having the language for it is so impactful for people to be like, I didn’t know that there were words that represented what I was experiencing. So I’ve seen that be very empowering just to have a phrase of some language to it. From there, I think it’s about getting curious about their current money story, and what they want to move towards.

[00:23:28] So we think about questions like, what do you want your future relationship with money to look like? Or one of the folks that people follow online says something like, imagine your rich life, right? So, thinking about what are we going towards, and then what are the steps that make that happen for so many of us, it’s, we have to do that healing work first that you named with grandma and like other people to be like, I need to know where my beliefs come from.

[00:23:51] Which ones are mine to hold and which ones do I need to leave behind gently? If this is my grandparents’ belief, this mom’s belief, this is my first boss’s belief, but it doesn’t have to be mine, but they’re so sneaky that we don’t even realize how many beliefs we have and how they’re impacting all of our decisions.

[00:24:07] So for most of us, it’s starting to look at those money beliefs and being like, which ones do I want to hold on to? And which ones are my truth versus I got to let that go? And that’s the work I love to do, honestly. 

[00:24:17] Linzy: They are sneaky, those beliefs. And something that I have started to see or come to more and more over the last few years of doing this work with therapists as well as it’s easy sometimes, too, to blame or have feelings about the stories of, Oh, this is my dad’s stuff. And once we can start to also have compassion for like, was this story true for them though?

[00:24:37] Or was it true for their parents that they were never able to discard their, their parents’ story?  You hear this, with folks, whose families come through holocausts or wars, right? Is there is this immense financial trauma that’s carried down to the next generation and then the next generation, right?

[00:24:53] There’s so much room for compassion for our family members, regardless of what our relationship is to them now, of, the horrible stories that people have carried and how there’s often trauma and loss around the stories that we carry that are not functional and then we can, you know, bless and release the ones that are not serving us.

[00:25:11] But there is, there is depth work to do there, right? Like a lot of the times, these stories are not, light and casual, right? They’re related to real suffering that our families have endured.

[00:25:21] Khara: I think that’s why so many of us like the money genogram, because then we can see those layers, right? Of grandparents to parents to children to grandchildren. And be like, what were the money stories? What were the money behaviors? Was there a debt? 

[00:25:32] Was there wealth? Was there a loss? I remember distinctly having a client who had four women in her family die or their partners died and left them in debt.

[00:25:42] And so she was like, I have to do this on my own, was her money… her money belief is I can’t rely on anyone. I’m going to be put into a financial crisis if I do, which is fascinating because she wanted to be an entrepreneurial therapist and private practice. And she’s like, why am I stuck on this?

[00:25:57] And we looked at her family tree and we’re like, you have no women role models. All of the women in your family had lost or become widows. And told you this is too risky. And once she had that, she was much more compassionate and gentle for her, not her, just herself, but her family members who went through a lot of horrible money stuff and loss. 

[00:26:14] Linzy: One that I’ve had to unpack for myself, speaking of kind of that line of women, is in my family there’s a pattern, and sometimes it was real and sometimes it was a narrative, of like, women have to carry it. So women are carrying it, and they’re the primary earners, and they’re the primary financial managers, but they’re also the primary parents, right?

[00:26:33] They’re kind of doing all of it, and sometimes it’s so interesting, I notice it coming up in my partnership, But even though it’s not true, right? It’s true to a certain extent because my partner also works for my business. Some of his earnings come from my business, but also he could turn around and get an amazing job tomorrow if he wanted to.

[00:26:46] Right. But I have noticed how that story tries to come up in these stubborn, stuck ways that don’t make sense. But I’ve just witnessed that in my family for so long and I’ve heard so many stories of, you know, like my great grandfather who just kind of, you know, became depressed and stopped working his forties, and my great grandma that had to earn and support them for the rest of their lives.

[00:27:08] Right? And so, it is incredible how these things could pop up even when we know about them, they can still stubbornly try to pop up, in all these ways that our brains and bodies, try to keep us safe with outdated information. 

[00:27:20] Khara: That’s right. It’s never boring.

[00:27:24] Linzy: So true, so true. So Khara, thank you so much for coming and, being on the podcast today, chatting about noble poverty. For folks who are interested in learning more about you, and getting further into your world, where can they find you?

[00:27:39] Khara: Yeah. Everything’s on my website. I know you, you and I talked offline. I’m like, there’s a lot there, so just give that disclaimer of lots of projects. But around Noble Poverty, we’re working to create some retreats and online groups for people to just really start to unpack that in safe, communal ways, to be like, I’m not alone.

[00:27:54] I’m not the only one with these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So everything about me on financial therapy is on my website.

[00:28:00] Linzy: And we will put the link to your website in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today, Khara.

[00:28:06] Khara: Thank you.

[00:28:22] Linzy: I So enjoyed this conversation with Khara today. It’s got my wheels turning around noble poverty. And if you enjoyed the conversation, if you’re curious about Khara, you should check her out. We had a chat after our conversation about some cool retreats that she’s running around noble poverty.

[00:28:38] She’s also done some leadership fatigue retreats, so she’s got lots of neat offers. So go check out her website to get further into her world. It’s always so nice to see other folks in the therapy space also focusing on finances because we know there’s lots to talk about and lots to unpack when it comes to finances.

[00:28:56] So thank you to Khara for coming on the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at MoneyNutsAndBolts, and if you are enjoying the podcast, please tell a colleague about it, even just one. Maybe it’s your office mate next door. Maybe it’s somebody you went to grad school with. Maybe it’s your friend who’s going to school to be a therapist right now.

[00:29:15] The more people who can be listening to these conversations, the more we can start to open up the silence around money, and start to change the way that we as therapists are socialized and conditioned around money. Thanks for joining me today.

Picture of Hi, I'm Linzy

Hi, I'm Linzy

I’m a therapist in private practice, and a the creator of Money Skills for Therapists. I help therapists and health practitioners in private practice feel calm and in control of their finances.

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