ADHD Money Talk

The Story Behind Every ADHD Money Problem

• David DeWitt, CFP® • Season 1 • Episode 78

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0:00 | 21:17

We explore how childhood experiences shape our adult relationship with money, especially for those with ADHD who receive an estimated 20,000 more negative messages than praise by age 10.

• Children with ADHD often develop shame-based beliefs from chronic criticism
• These negative messages literally rewire the developing brain
• The prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making) is affected by both ADHD and chronic stress
• Financial struggles in adulthood often stem from childhood shame rather than just executive function
• Conventional financial advice fails because it doesn't address the underlying emotional wounds
• The pattern creates a feedback loop: shame triggers fear, which impairs executive function
• Healing begins by recognizing and addressing the emotional needs of your inner child
• Breaking the shame cycle allows financial management to improve naturally

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Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.

Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience on future episodes.

Learn more about ADHD-friendly financial coaching
Follow me on YouTube
Subscribe to the newsletter

Speaker 1:

I'm about to tell you a story that's going to piss you off, not because it's sad, not because it's unfair, because when I'm done you're going to realize something about yourself that you can't unknow once you know it, and it's going to change how you see just about everything. This is about one week, an eight-year-old's week. Here we go. It's a Monday morning in October 1995. I'm eight years old, staring at a math test with numbers swimming on the page. Mrs Peterson drops my test face down. I turn it over and I see a big red D minus circled so hard. The pen practically tore through the paper. My chest tightens, blood rushes to my face. That all-too-familiar wave of terrifying negativity that can't really be described fills every corner of my body. But somehow something kicks in. I force my mouth into a smile. I'll do better next time, mrs Peterson. Mouth into a smile. I'll do better next time, mrs Peterson.

Speaker 1:

So the next day after school, mom's holding that manila envelope from school, we sit at our wobbly kitchen table. You're so smart, son, why aren't you applying yourself? If only I had the words to explain how I felt. But the feeling that I was feeling was indescribable and it couldn't be placed. It felt like it was from another planet. So I do what I know how to do. I smile again. I'm sorry, mom, I'll try harder. She sighs. That's what you always say. Something has to give. You're not going to become anything if you keep this up. Something cracks inside my chest. Home was supposed to be safe, now nowhere. Nowhere is safe.

Speaker 1:

So the next day, wednesday, at soccer practice, sun Sun is shining, birds are singing, it's a nice day outside. Coach Martinez explains a drill, but to me his words sound like they're underwater. My mind is too cluttered and my thoughts are flying in and out. The shame from earlier this week, the test, my mom telling me that I can't think straight, I'm not listening. Coach blows the whistle, everyone scatters. I make my best guess at what to do and I run. But I'm wrong. I'm completely wrong, david. He yells what are you stupid? Every kid turns to look. The word stupid hangs in the air like a toxic cloud. Feeling that terrifying energy pour over me. Again I laugh Sorry, coach Mustering up a small smile, but inside something is dying. That night I go to sleep just ruminating about all this pain and these memories that hurt, but I still don't know what to do about it. So I just escape.

Speaker 1:

Friday afternoon rolls around and I'm in the boys' bathroom. I notice a few kids are flushing the urinals over and over. We had those urinals that would go from the ground up, you know, like the tall ones and they're just flushing these urinals and I see that the water is starting to spill out over the bottom edge of the urinal and filling the bathroom like it's flooding the bathroom. I know it's wrong, what they're doing, but it's been a bad week and everyone's having fun and it seems like these are what the cool kids are doing right now. So, desperate for attention and really any level of connection, I join it and I start causing the bathroom to flood and I keep going and going and going and people are laughing. I feel like I belong for a brief moment. We're all laughing together.

Speaker 1:

Later that day the loudspeaker crackles. Will all the second grade students please report to the principal's office immediately? We all go and we crowd into her office. We all go and we crowd into her office. My chest is already tightening. I'm already feeling that wave of emotion over me that I can do nothing but just withstand it and let it terrorize me. She makes an offer If whoever was responsible for flooding the boys' bathroom raises their hand. I won't call your parents For a little while.

Speaker 1:

Nothing happens. No one moves. We're all sitting, crowded around, sitting in her office, wall to wall filled with kids, the unbearable pressure of all those eyes, that fear of disapproval. I can't take it. My hand shoots up and for a moment I am relieved. I am relieved of the pressure and the pain of knowing that I was going to be lying and that I would have to live this down. My hand goes up and I take the blame. The tension in the room for everybody else dissolves. But something else dissolves too, something inside of me, dissolving and disintegrating. The shame rocks my entire body. I feel paralyzed. I am the one that everyone's looking at, the one who did this stupid thing. I am so stupid, okay, okay, pause for a second. That moment when his hand shot up, that's not just some kid being noble or something like that, Because it is noble, but something's happening there. See, when you're a kid and stuff like this keeps happening the criticism, the feeling different, the not fitting in your brain starts learning things, things about yourself, about how the world works, about who you fundamentally are. And those lessons well, they were some of the most well-taught lessons that we are ever going to be taught.

Speaker 1:

So Saturday rolls around. Finally, the weekend. I asked my dad for my allowance. Not this week, buddy, money's tight, okay, that's all right. But later at the grocery store I'm doing what I do best. I'm quiet, obedient, not trying to upset anybody, and my dad pulls out a five dollar bill. He says you've been a really good boy today, son, you're really well behaved. Here's five bucks. The money feels warm in my hand, but there's something cold settling in my stomach and as an eight-year-old I have no idea what that cold feeling is. I have no idea, but it just doesn't feel right. It's been a weird week.

Speaker 1:

Sunday, family goes to church. I'm wedged between mom and dad. Father McKenna is delivering a sermon, but I'm squirming. It's just been a really dysregulating week. I'm an eight-year-old, I don't really know what's going on, but I'm squirming. There's energy inside of me that's trying to get out, but it doesn't know how. The busy energy builds up inside of me and I'm just moving around and I guess I'm causing a problem for everybody around me. I'm trying to sit still, but it's like holding back a sneeze. All of a sudden, mom clamps down on my arm. Sit, sit still. People are watching. What's wrong with you? So even here in God's house I'm wrong, I'm not accepted, I'm not really wanted. We get ready to leave church and I'm kind of just tagging along behind the rest of my family. I guess I wander off in the wrong direction and by the time I realize I've sort of lost track of where my family is. I run to the car. When I get to the car car, I see it pulling away down the street. They forgot me.

Speaker 1:

In that moment I'm feeling that feeling again just take over my body the fear, the invisibility of it all. I start to wonder, like, do I even exist at all? I know, I know, I know You're probably thinking this is just some kid having a bad week. But here's the thing For some kids this isn't a bad week, this is just a week. And the math and the school struggles, the impulsive decisions and the acting out for attention, the not sitting still, the feeling like you're always doing something wrong, no matter how hard you try and want to do the right thing, and maybe even more painfully for a lot of us, the feeling that if you're not doing certain things, to get the attention to be literally seen and paid attention to. Then you just feel plain invisible. When this is your normal, when you're getting these messages over and over, something happens to how you see yourself and that something doesn't just go away when you grow up.

Speaker 1:

Stay with me here, 20 years later, I'm sitting in my Honda Civic in a parking lot. It's raining. I had received a large amount of money eight months back $43,000, and it's gone. And in this moment that reality is hitting me like a punch in the gut and that similar feeling that I can't place but that is terrifying, fills my body bone to bone. Every corner of fiber of my being is crying. This is overwhelming. I'm a financial professional and in this moment I'm realizing that I can't even manage my own finances. It must mean that I am just broken and not good. The feeling is unbearable and the voices start to return. What's wrong with you? Mom says what are you stupid? Coach says Good boy. Dad says, but only when I've earned it. My chest tightens and the feeling again floods my body. My face turns bright red. I can barely breathe.

Speaker 1:

In the deepest moment of my despair, something clicks. I realize I wasn't just bad with money in this moment. No, not at all. What I was feeling is the same feeling that eight-year-old boy felt. That emotion, that feeling that came over his body, was over my body now. The kid who raised his hand to take the blame, the child who learned that money meant love and he didn't deserve either. The spending wasn't about wanting things. It was about feeling a hole that was carved out of me. It was a survival mechanism, a way to escape the feelings that I didn't have words for my entire life and that nobody saw in me to validate them. So the money wasn't the problem, it was this emotion, and this emotion was shame, and the shame had been there way before I had any money to manage. Money became the escape, because if money equaled love, wasn't I just showing love to myself? Now let me be honest with you.

Speaker 1:

That story, this story I just went through. It is mostly fiction. The bathroom part, though, that was real. That's a very true story. The rest, it's stitched together with bits and pieces of my life, with a fair amount of creative license, and obviously being stuffed into one week. This is not really how anything really went down.

Speaker 1:

However, I told this story for a reason. All right, gotta stop here for a second. When I first told this story I said it was mostly made up, as you just heard, based on everything you've told me about growing up. This might as well be exactly what happened to you, and there's also way more stuff you've shared with me, and the quantity of things you've shared with me doesn't make me feel like you should have said that at all, kind of weakened your message and, honestly, honestly felt weird when I was saying that I also had a hard time deciding what to do, because I'm like I should just be totally honest and if I'm not being totally honest, I can't say that it's real, whatever. Um, but every feeling in that, that story, the shame, the taking the blame, the learning that love has conditions, that's all so real to me. I could cry, and maybe it wasn't all in one week, but the pattern, the way it felt, that's my childhood, and if any of this felt familiar to you the tight chest, the desperate need to just fit in anywhere then maybe it's your story too. Oh, and if this is hitting you different than expected, then go ahead and smash that subscribe button and like this message and share it with your friends. Yeah, so, anyways, back to the story. I want to drive a very clear message home to you today, because, while this story that I told is not quite the truth in full, it does encapsulate in a short story how I felt growing up with ADHD. And here's what I didn't understand then, assuming this story is totally mine and this week happened.

Speaker 1:

This story is not unique. Researchers have found that children with ADHD receive around 20,000 more negative messages than messages of praise. Like that's this story's Monday through Sunday, multiplied by thousands, hundreds of thousands of other kids all carrying the same burning shame. Research says by age 10, so that's 5.5 negative messages a day. So picture this. There's another eight-year-old in Michigan standing in front of his math teacher with the same tight chest's another eight-year-old in Michigan standing in front of his math teacher, with the same tight chest. A 10-year-old girl forgetting her homework again, watching her mom's face twist into disappointment. A teenager impulsively spending his allowance, then lying about it because the shame feels too heavy.

Speaker 1:

These aren't just ADHD symptoms, because for so many of us we didn't know anything about us having ADHD when these 20,000 negative messages were happening to us. So they're not just ADHD symptoms or just because of your ADHD. They're shame building moments. And here's what the research shows, chronic criticism rewires the developing brain. In fact, children with ADHD and those under constant stress both have reduced volume in their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain Responsible for decision-making, the part of the brain that all of us with ADHD will say it's not quite caught up yet. So that little boy's brain was being wired for survival, not for money management. The shame wasn't just emotional, it was neurological. So we have one born factor working against us and then the events of that born factor in our early life make that worse and affect the same part of the brain.

Speaker 1:

Fast forward 20 years. That michigan kid is sitting in his car outside a bank, too ashamed to ask about overdraft fees. That texas girl is hiding credit card statements from her husband. That teenager is now an adult who impulse buys when he feels worthless. Clinical studies show adults with ADHD score much higher on shame based beliefs, things like I'm fundamentally flawed or I always mess things up. These beliefs create a feedback loop. Shame creates fear. Fear cripples executive function. That leads to avoidance and leads to coping and leads to escaping and that leads to more failure, which validates the shame.

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of us can relate to this when it comes to our money. This is why budgeting apps fail for us, why the color coded planners that we come up with don't work very long. Why just try harder? Advice falls flat Because we're not treating the problem at the root cause. 20 year old wound. 30 year old wound. 40 year old wound. 50 year old wound.

Speaker 1:

For some of you with productivity hacks, tired ADHD hacks and tricks and all of this that all it does is heighten and reinforce the shame spiral when we fail to follow through on those. And if we were to be honest, we don't fail to follow through on the budgeting app merely because our executive function is weak. If it was merely because our executive function is weak, if it was merely because our executive functioning was weak, we would just be late on getting onto the budgeting app and cleaning it up. We would do it eventually, but many times, most of the time, we don't do it at all. So the forgotten bills, the impulse spending, the financial chaos they don't create new shame, it's just reinforcing the same story we've been telling ourselves since we've been kids adapted to the financial world. Because here's the truth. That story does not end in the parking lot. No, once you see the pattern, you can't unsee it. If this video resonates with you, pattern, you can't unsee it. If this video resonates with you, you won't be able to forget it.

Speaker 1:

Once you understand that your money problems are shame problems, everything can change. I learned to sit with that eight-year-old's feelings instead of buying my way out of them. I learned my worth wasn't tied to a bank balance or perfect behavior or doing what my friends were doing or being as far ahead as everyone else. I learned that the hole I was trying to fill could only be healed by finally giving that scared little, traumatized boy that feels unseen, invisible and worthless, the acceptance that he never got. And it wasn't easy and there were setbacks, but for the first time I was treating the real disease, not just the symptoms, because all that ever did when I was trying to solve the symptoms was an endless chase for the next thing that could help for temporary relief, which only ended up in piling up the absolute number of failures that only made the problem deeper. And these things come to a head. And when we heal this shame, the money stuff, it actually starts to take care of itself. So here's what I learned.

Speaker 1:

We talk about ADHD like it's just a brain thing, like some people's brains work differently and that's it. But it's not just that. When I really thought about it and I really envisioned what it means to have 20,000 more negative messages than other kids by age 10, 20,000. So it's not that's so much extra. So it's not just that our brains work differently because they do, they are wired differently.

Speaker 1:

Adhd is real trauma and negative experience doesn't cause ADHD. I think complex trauma can be mistaken for ADHD if someone doesn't really have ADHD. But I totally believe that ADHD you're born with it, when you are clinically diagnosed and fully resonate with it. But the thing is that's been so impactful to me to understand is that our brains work differently and we grow up getting told we're wrong, we're too much, we're not enough, over and over and over. And that's not just ADHD, that's ADHD plus the shame, reinforcing and originating experiences. That's not just ADHD, that's ADHD plus the shame, reinforcing and shame originating experiences that we have to go, that we go through.

Speaker 1:

And once you see that, a lot of things start to make sense. And me, I cannot unsee. In fact I think my entire worldview is filtered through of this understanding, probably too much. I get it, I get the adhd, but why this? Why that? Why is this, which takes just as much executive function, so much better now that I have these strategies, and but why is this that takes maybe even less executive function, not as bad things like that? So I hope you enjoyed this. I want to know which moment hit you the hardest in this video. Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching. More content's coming peace.