Coping with Stress Around Money:
The Work of Byron Katie

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to work with self-judgments about money.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover how your thoughts about money make it more stressful than it has to be, how to find internal balance by considering the opposite of what you think, and what the process of inner exploration looks like in real life. Today is another edition of Open Session Wednesdays. You bring your questions and stressful situations, and I facilitate you in the simple, powerful process of The Work of Byron Katie. As always, I share the unedited recording so you can experience the open session just as we did.

Nervous and excited to be here because to see that all these faces seem like they are looking at me, but just, how it feels, and it’s still very uncomfortable, but if I want to do The Work, that’s what I have to do. And, I started doing The Work on money today. I think money is related to everything else.

Yes. And so one thing that struck me was what if money were a person? It really hit home because it all started with my dad. I always thought that he was an authoritarian, and I had to manipulate him to get a yes about anything I needed from him. The whole time, I was either wanting something from him, or it was a lot about wanting something from him and being uptight about it—it was all in my head.

When I did The Work on it about money, I realized that I made this whole thing up. I looked at money as something I have to be careful about, afraid of, uptight about, that I don’t have enough of. It complicates everything. I still don’t feel I can trust myself to manage it.

I blame myself when I mismanage it, and I get really scared when I don’t have money. And even when I have money, I’m scared I will lose it. It’s a no-win situation. But when I began to look at it as more like, okay, he wasn’t authoritarian, but at the same time, he really loved me.

He really wanted the best for me, and he did provide the best for me. He had his way of doing things, and looking back, I really appreciate him for even the way he was. I just feel that if I can change my relationship with my dad, then I can change my relationship with money too.

I have such a deep gratitude. I want to be intimate with money. I want to really trust that no matter how I goof off about it and make stories about it, it’s all going to be okay. My dad never meant badly for me, even if he were unhappy with me, it was out of love.

I just felt like, have I been so wrong with my relationship? I mean, I can see how I misinterpreted my relationship with my dad, and I can also see how I misinterpret it with money. I made all these things about money being cold, calculating, greedy, whatever. It’s all just my interpretation.

Now, I want to work with you on, “I should be mindful. I should be mindful with money. I should be accountable. I should be objective.” And all these should-be’s are impossible. So, help me do The Work on this.

Let’s do The Work. You said, “I should be mindful with money. I should be accountable. I should be objective.” Which one of those sounds closest to what’s getting you stressed?

I think objective is truthful.

Okay. Because I am so emotional. It’s either, you know, it’s emotional.

Okay. And when you think that you should be objective, does that feel like a stressful thought?

It feels like what? That I cannot do it. I cannot be objective.

Got it. So, you should be objective when it comes to money. Is that true?

Yes.

And can you absolutely know it’s true that you should be objective when it comes to money?

Can I be absolutely true that I should be objective? No.

So how do you react? What happens to you when you think you should be objective when it comes to money and you’re more emotional?

I feel like an idiot.

Out of control, that I’m really stupid. I judge.

Yeah, I should be objective. What are you comparing yourself to when you think you should be objective when it comes to money?

Warren Buffett, people who deal with it, and also my sister. She is not attached like I am.

So when you see her not attached, and you are, and you wish you were objective, how do you treat yourself?

Me, I want to be different.

And then how do you treat money when you think you should be objective and you’re not?

I’m confused about money. I feel I need to be respectful. I need to be all these things that I am not. I am confused.

So, imagine for a moment that you didn’t believe that you should be objective. Who would you be without this thought that you should be objective when it comes to money?

I would be easy. I would be grounded. I would not care. I would be kinder and accepting. I would be accepting.

What’s an example of when you’ve not been objective about money and you wanted to be?

When I needed to make an airline reservation online, and I see that the price was going up 50 percent, and I went ahead to buy it anyway. I just wanted to get over it. It was a stupid move because it was a no-win situation.

Okay, so given that situation and what you did, who would you be looking at what you did without the thought that you should or should have been objective?

I would be accepting. I would say, fine. I would not make myself wrong. I would say I paid a whole bunch more than I should have wanted to, and I would just say, get on with life.

That’s the difference. And I am okay with admitting that I did what I did. I mean, it is borderline mistake or not a mistake, I do not know, but I just say, okay, that’s fine.

Okay, so let’s turn the thought around: I should be objective.

I should not be objective.

Okay. Give me some examples of how not being objective, in this case with the airline ticket, could be okay.

I got it done. It’s done. It’s over. I can get on with life.

Okay. So, yeah, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t the possibility of doing it a different way, but you did get the job done. So we’re looking for ways that not being objective in your money spending could be even a good thing, possibly. Can you say more about that?

Yeah, I don’t have an idea. But just think about that airline ticket. How could it be, you spent 50 percent more, possibly, and how could that actually, and you did it, you know, quickly, not objectively, how could that have turned out to be better in some way?

The price could go up. It could double, right? It could be 100 percent more.

What else? How else could it have been good? Even though it was impulsive or emotional, how else could it have been okay or good even?

Yeah, like I said, I could extend this saga for another few weeks and waste my energy. Which is worth more to you, the extra money or two weeks of your emotional experience of trying to worry about it?

So I shouldn’t be objective in this case. It would have prolonged my misery. Yes.

Keep going. Anything else that is good about you purchasing quickly like that, even if it wasn’t objective?

Not being attached to outcome. I think that is a very important lesson I want to learn. I’m always like, should I, should I not?

So being objective, what does being objective mean to you? If someone is objective, what do they do?

They detach. And they are balanced and grounded.

What we’re looking for is how it is okay that you are not objective. Whether one is objective or not objective with money, at a certain point in time, if you are buying a ticket or the stock market or whatever it is, that is that moment. And the next moment is different.

So, there is no absolute objectiveness, is there? Sounds good, sounds like an ideal, but it may not even exist. Objective is objective in one moment.

I’m thinking like, if someone is really objective, they’re going to have to spend a lot of time analyzing or thinking about making spreadsheets or something like that. What are the pros and cons of this one and that one? And I better research a few more as well to be 100 percent objective. And like, if you go far enough with that, it’s not even possible.

Okay. I have to look at every airline ticket available in the whole world on every different site to see if the offer is different. You know, like I’m taking it to the extreme just to make the point. At some point, someone has to make a leap of faith, just like, I’m just taking this one.

It’s almost emotional in the end, for everyone. Even the most objective person in the world, when they finally buy, they push the button. It’s impulsive! Emotional, even. It feels right. This feels good. Some people need a lot of different reasons to back them up. And some people just act impulsively without any reasons. But in the end, they may not be so different.

And one is not better than the other, it’s just an act.

That’s right, exactly. And the people that are super objective may have as much problem trying to make a decision as someone who is impulsive. So right, there are pros and cons to all sides.

So what we’re doing here is we’re looking for the balance. Looking for the balance between, you came in with the thought, “I should be objective,” like objective is gold and that’s the best.

What we’re doing is just lowering that standard down a little bit to reality and seeing that being objective may not be as amazing or the solution to everything, or even peaceful, let alone, it may not even save money.

You know, you might spend so much money on research that you end up losing in the end.

The work is about finding the opposites and balancing, finding the balance. Yeah, it’s good to be objective. It’s also good to be impulsive. It’s good to, but both together, that’s where I can rest in a place of, I’m somewhat objective, somewhat impulsive, and I get the job done.

And maybe I learn. Maybe next time I’ll find an even better way. This is really about your internal experience of how you see yourself processing, judging. Don’t have to fiddle with this website anymore until I take another trip instead of, oh, I spent an extra 50 percent.

So where does it land with you in terms of this feeling of balance? Like, “I should be objective.” Turn around, “I shouldn’t be objective.” Where are you sitting at the moment?

All this relating to the stress relating to money is such an additional burden, additional hurdle to go through, additional ways I can beat myself up. You know, I should be this, I should, I should not have done this. I should have done this, you know.

I like to go back to where I said I want to be softer and feel more that I can trust myself to be with money. It’s okay if I blow it, it’s okay if I were great at it, because one day I might be great at it, and another day I might be stupid at it too.

But to come to terms like, you know, looking at it as a person like my dad, and see like actually he means well all along. And money, I mean, is not a living thing, but somehow it’s an energy, like air. I depend on money, for sure, to pay my rent, to pay for food, you know? So if I can look at it like, if I have money, I’m grateful.

If I don’t have money, I’m grateful for whatever it is that I don’t have, so that it is not, I hate money, you know? I want to make it easier.

Yeah, I think you’re beginning the process, and what helps when you’re doing this work is, find the specific examples.

Like when I asked about that airline ticket, you know, like when is an example of where you were feeling like you should be objective? And when you do the work on those specific examples, it’s going to give you even more clarity about how to find your examples for the work, how to do the turnarounds, everything like that.

It starts to make more sense. When it’s just money in general, it becomes harder to hold and hard to even know what you mean when you’re just talking about, you know, my relationship with money in general. Look for the next situation when money was an issue, next situation that money got stressful for you, or any situation from the past where you had specific stress about money, and then write your stressful thought and go through this process like this, and little by little, my experience is, you become friendlier to yourself, and you become friendlier to money.

So, but it’s a process, it’s, we’re working with our thinking, and that thinking has been there for a long time, so. When I’m judging myself, what do I do? Then write it down and question it. Those self-attack thoughts, question them. They’re also part of it.

Okay. Well, thank you. Any questions or anyone want to share anything from listening?

Yeah, Sarah?

Thank you so much, Ada. I had this thought with that turnaround: I shouldn’t be objective. That I can have beliefs about money or whatever running, and I’m not aware of them. But when, you know, I buy that airline ticket, or for me, it was, I lost my wallet.

That is a moment that I can anchor in. So it’s like, I screamed at that moment. I lost the wallet. I screamed, I freaked out, 300 gone. And I shouldn’t be objective in that moment. I shouldn’t be objective in that moment because look, it surfaced my attachment to money, my thinking I need to be more careful.

It surfaced. So like when you bought that ticket, when I lost my wallet, I shouldn’t have been objective because that brought it up to the surface. And now I can question what might’ve been running in me. So it’s kind of like such a great thing for me to anchor in to do other work around.

What’s running in me all the time, and I might not know about. And I like it because, again, it’s hard for me to welcome feelings like that and welcome stress and welcome discomfort. And I beat myself up afterward, but seeing it like that is like, oh, that could be a real benefit of overreaction. Emotional. So thank you.

Yeah, great point. It shows us what’s there, right? It’s under the surface anyway, but the emotion brings it up, and so then we can look at it.

Yeah, it’s almost like if I’m trying to be objective too much, then I’m almost trying to do everything perfectly, trying to never make any mistakes, trying to always be emotionally good about it. Like everything is trying to be really controlled, and it’s the opposite of a good learning environment.

Like, I should not be objective. I should just throw myself in and get messy and spend too much money, and then have to experience not having the money after that. And like, go through the ins and outs of it, and then experience increases with that. So, and that’s, and then I become “more objective,” but I didn’t get there by just jumping to being more objective.

I almost had to go in the opposite direction and become less objective and just try stuff, and make mistakes—if you can call them mistakes. It’s like, I can’t know the outcome of my actions. I just can’t know. So I just have to plunge in, try something, and then learn from that and then do it again.

And if you’re doing a process like this—of the work where you’re questioning your thoughts in each situation—you just start getting clearer and clearer. I had a situation last summer where I spent some money on something, and immediately it became completely not what I needed. And there was no way to get a refund.

And it was like, you know, thousands of dollars. And I was like, I watched my mind go like, “Oh.” And then, I also watched how quickly it resolved out of that. And it’s like, okay, that’s done now. What, you know? You have to be honest and allow that emotion to come up because it’s going to show you what needs to be questioned.

In this episode, we looked at how your thoughts about money make it more stressful than it has to be. We looked at the thought, “I should be objective.” And it sounds like a good thought, maybe even true to some degree. But the mind gets caught on that thought and starts making it into a bigger deal, making it more stressful.

Then we looked at how to find internal balance by considering the opposite of what you think. That’s what these turnarounds do: “I should be objective,” “I shouldn’t be objective.” And it’s not that either one of them is true on its own, but that together, they balance each other.

Where’s the balance point? And that’s where peace resides.

Finally, we looked at what the process of inner exploration looks like in real life. It takes its own form. It doesn’t always go according to a strict format. And that is part of the inner exploration process—of looking inward and finding what is true for you.

So thanks for being here. Thanks for listening and being a part of this. I look forward to more sessions as we continue, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.