Written by: Bob Bertsch
Self-reflection and self-discovery have a number of benefits for professionals working in financial counseling. According to Holden and Jeanfreau (2023), investing in self-awareness builds a foundation that allows financial therapists to “respond to ourselves compassionately regarding financial topics and concerns so that we can then respond to others around these issues.” Practicing self-awareness also helps family service providers identify their potential triggers and biases around financial topics, (Nichols & Davis, 2017).
In the OneOp webinar “Mind and Money: Connecting Mental Health and Financial Well-Being,” Dr. Bruce Ross, Assistant Professor in the Family Sciences Department for the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment and the School of Human and Environmental Sciences at the University of Kentucky, shared his early career experience working with a single mother of five children. The family had low income. The mother worked a part-time job with no benefits. She was struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. When the family received a large tax refund, Dr. Ross created a financial plan to get the family back on track, but the mom spent the refund on a new TV, a gaming console, and other things to entertain her kids. Dr. Ross was “floored,” in his words, but, as he thought about it more, he realized how the purchases aligned with this mom’s need to keep her kids safe. In the neighborhood this family lived in, being safe meant being inside, and these purchases that may have seemed unnecessary to some helped this mom make sure her kids were safe while she was at work.
Dr. Ross shared this story to illustrate how financial behaviors are tied to individual beliefs and values, and how our own assumptions, biases, and judgments as service providers can lead us to recommend what we think is best without considering the priorities and goals of those we are serving.
Putting It Into Practice
Practicing self-reflection and self-discovery benefits our work and supports our well-being. There are numerous resources available to support your journey. Here are a few to get you started.
Understand Your Core Money Beliefs. Dr. Ross recommends utilizing the Klontz Money Script® Inventory (KMSI), an assessment of four core money beliefs: money avoidance, money worship, money status, and money vigilance. Money scripts are the conscious or unconscious belief systems that influence a person’s financial behaviors, decisions, and interactions. The KMSi can be used as a tool for clients, but can also help service providers understand their own financial belief system.
Explore How Your Family (Financial) History Has Affected You. Holden and Jeanfreau encourage the use of financial genograms to help not only clients but also financial therapists with their self-work regarding money. Genograms are visual representations of a family’s history that are widely used to explore a client’s or family’s values, feelings, and patterns around a particular area or issue. Creating a financial genogram can help you identify “overarching financial patterns, themes, values, expectations, and norms within your family.”
Learn About Other Ways of Knowing Yourself. OneOp’s Practicing Connection podcast has several episodes dedicated to self-discovery.
- Why Knowing Yourself Matters and Why Knowing Yourself Matters, Pt. 2 explores why self-knowledge is important in creating connections with others.
- Determining Your Values focuses on how values shape emotions, decisions, and relationships, providing a roadmap for reduced stress, boosted confidence, and thriving connections.
- Finding Your Strengths delves into Character Strengths, which can be applied to any situation, leading to positive emotions, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, and accomplishment. This episode also includes a practice to help you find your strengths.
Your journey of self-discovery can help drive your journey as a service provider. As Dr. Ross said in the webinar mentioned above, “You can only take your client as far as you’ve taken yourself.”
References
Holden, C. L., & Jeanfreau, M. (2023). The Self-Reflective Financial Therapist: Creating a Financial Genogram. Journal of Financial Therapy, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-9771.1339
Mind and Money: Connecting Mental Health and Financial Well-Being. (n.d.). OneOp. Retrieved
July 17, 2024, from https://oneop.org/learn/160019/
Nichols, M. P., & Davis, S. D. (2017). Family therapy: Concepts and methods (11th Edition). Pearson.
