Do you know someone with OCD who struggles with money? Join us as we reveal the financial challenges faced by individuals living with OCD and their families .
Click here to learn more about the OCD Freedom Formula Bootcamp. This 28 day program kicks off 5/7/24.
Do you know someone with OCD who struggles with money? Join us as we reveal the financial challenges faced by individuals living with OCD and their families .
Click here to learn more about the OCD Freedom Formula Bootcamp. This 28 day program kicks off 5/7/24.
OCD and Finances: Breaking the Taboo on Money Matters
Do you know someone with OCD who struggles with money? Join us as we reveal the financial challenges faced by individuals living with OCD and their families.
As always, let’s kick this off with a story.
I was talking with a coaching client Gail about her secret fear: She said, “I worry about being a bag lady one day eating out of dumpsters.”
Years ago Gail started working with a financial advisor, saved and invested and was on track to retire at 50.
That was before her daughter Elly was diagnosed with OCD.
Gale recognizes that much of her current financial pain is a result of choices about “helping” her daughter financially in the decade since she got the diagnosis of OCD.
As with so many other families, it took years for Elly to get a diagnosis and then cycle through therapists and treatments that didn’t work.
Finally they found ERP, and Elly’s life radically improved.
At that time, Elly was living at home enrolled in a community college. Elly wanted to have the college experience she always dreamed of.
Gail had saved so that Elly could graduate from college debt-free. Elly decided that she wanted to go to the arts and design school. The tuition was about 10X more than the state college Gail budgeted for.
Gail and her husband talked about it. Elly had an undeniable talent for drawing. They decided to dip into retirement savings and pay for the arts school.
Elly stretched out a 4-year program to 6 years. After graduation, she took jobs that would pay her rent as she explored options of turning her drawing talent into a paying career.
Elly decided that being an Uber driver would be a good fit for her. However, Uber has standards about the cars their drivers can use on duty. Elly asked Gale for help and Gail bought Elly a new car.
For a few months things looked good.
Then Elly’s boyfriend broke up with her, and she crumbled. She couldn’t leave the house because she was too busy with her obsessions and compulsions.
Gail suggested that maybe ERP would help. When Elly told her she couldn’t afford it, Gail offered to pay.
Then Elly asked Gail to borrow money for rent. Gail told me, “What could I do? I had to say yes.”
Gail said yes when Elly asked her to make a $10K investment in a multi-level marketing business selling skin care products. Elly said, “It’s a great way for me to contribute to my tuition. Plus, this is a sure thing. I can sell to all the kids in the dorms!” It failed.
Gail said yes to paying off Elly’s credit card bills when Elly managed her stress with shopping. She called it retail therapy.
Gail said yes to paying for Elly’s inpatient treatment that her insurance did not cover when Elly was 19.
Gail and her husband had constant fights about money that ultimately ended in divorce.
Gail describes these transfers of money—often from her own retirement account to Elly-- as “guilt offerings.” She said, “I feel so badly that Elly has such a hard life. I want to do what I can to make her life a little easier. And I see that I’m doing it in a way that moves me ever closer to being a bag lady eating out of a dumpster—or working until I’m 70.. I carry a lot of shame around money.”
Gail is not alone. Money is one of the top things people worry about. It’s the source of conflict within relationships and the leading cause of divorce.
Most importantly, money is a background concern for virtually every family navigating OCD.
Here’s the thing. Very few people talk about money. Money may well be the ultimate taboo topic. Many people carry money shame.
If OCD is part of your life, you’re no stranger to shame.
Shame often keeps people from getting a diagnosis of OCD, or getting the right treatment.
Many OCD themes, like harm or sexuality, remain hidden because of shame.
However, in my experience, money issues related to OCD with rise to the very apex of the mountain of OCD shame.
As shame expert Brenee Brown says, “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.”
In this podcast episode, I want to shine some empathy on OCD-related money issues.
We’ll talk about OCD and money. However, you’ll see that as you do money, so you do life.
Another mom of an adult child with OCD said to me, “Have you ever read The Giving Tree? It’s like the story of my life. I’m giving and giving and giving to my son with OCD because I love him and I want to make him happier. One day I’ll wind up as an old stump with nothing more to give.”
I won’t pretend to offer you answers about how you manage your money. However, I’ll offer you a lens through which you can look at your spending and explore financial choices that work for you and your family.
Really what I most want to do is to begin a conversation about OCD and money.
Here’s why this is so important right now. The COVID pandemic changed our financial lives.
Money issues can assume more urgency since the COVID pandemic. More and more Americans are financially insecure.
In 2019, a survey found that 75% of Americans were okay financially.
Today, three out of four Americans say they are stressed about finances. Inflation, rising interest rates and a lack of savings contribute to financial insecurity.
Even thought you’re listening to the podcast because you identify as a loved one of someone managing OCD, you’re also a citizen of the world.
We’re all subject to the same economic forces as neurotypical people.
We’re all navigating a financial recovery from the COVID pandemic.
Financial pain is like a toothache. It’s always with you taking up slices of your attention pie.
Now, let's delve into the intriguing connection between OCD and finances.
The first thing you need to know is that I could come up with very little data about the connection. Here is what I have found
2. More debt
I found solid data that shows that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are almost six times more likely to be in problem debt than neurotypical people. In England, nearly a third of people (29%) with OCD have problem debt, compared to just 5% for people without mental health issues.
How can we explain the debt?
First, we know that OCD can impair a person’s ability to work and earn income. According to data from 2014, as many as 2 out of 5 people with OCD withdraw from the work force either temporarily or permanently .
Second, we can only imagine the added expenses to fund compulsions. What are the costs of cleaning supplies, showers that last hours or new clothes? What are the costs of household modifications to create a sense of safety? How much do people with moral OCD spend on expensive gifts to be accepted by others?
Third, there are the additional expenses associated with diagnosing and treating OCD. The highest medical costs are a reflection of the failure to diagnose OCD—sometimes for years—and costs to deliver treatments that do not help people with OCD.
Just a friendly reminder. ERP is the proven treatment for OCD. According to the NOCD site, the fee for working with an ERP-trained therapist could as high as $350 and $500 per session. Many patients paid out-of-pocket. NOCD has partnered with national insurance providers, and it’s possible that your co-pay could be between 0 and $50 a session. I will leave a link to NOCD to help you find an ERP practitioner and pay for treatment.
Fourth, The COVID pandemic represents a time of unprecedented stress.
Even before the pandemic, the top 3 sources of stress include:
OCD can touch all three areas. So even if money is not a theme for either obsessions or compulsion, you can see that we are living in a time that makes it more challenging to manage OCD.
How does added stress translate to finances? We know that some people are born spenders and others are born savers.
It turns out that for born spenders, retail therapy—spending money—is an effective strategy for numbing the discomfort of stress. If the source of stress is financial, spending can make a bad situation worse.
Can money become an OCD theme? In other words, do people have obsessions and compulsions about money?
I mentioned that we are biologically programmed to be “born spenders” or “born savers.”
Born savers can develop a fear of spending money known as Chrometophobia This is a documented theme for people with OCD.
Born spenders may be at risk for compulsions that involve gambling or shopping. Researchers at Yale found that problem gambling and obsessive-compulsive behaviors share genetic as well as behavioral links. A twin study finds that individuals with severe obsessive-compulsive behaviors — or those who demonstrate specific forms of the behavior, such as fear of germs or desire for order in the environment — are also more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder.
Some choose to deal with money concerns with avoidance. They pretend that money does not exist. They don’t open statement. They do not have an idea of where they stand financially. Avoidance is generally not a strategy that supports with physical or fiscal health.
Here’s the good news. ERP can be used to mange ANY OCD theme, including money-related behaviors.
Let’s Summarize
Huge numbers of Americans are facing financial stresses. This is amped up for families touched by OCD.
Undiagnosed and unmanaged OCD can have huge financial consequences.
Here’s your biggest question how: does OCD impact your family’s finances? Whether you have OCD, or your child or grandchild or partner has OCD, how does this illness impact your financial health? Are you okay with the ways things are, or would you like to make some changes.
There are some next steps if you want to explore more.
First, take a deep breath. Money is a topic that elicits strong feelings. One of my clients told me that she had a trusted friend literally sit with her as she opened her bills and statements.
Second, know that wherever you are, you are not alone. Please feel welcome to become part of the Free Me from OCD community and share your stories and let us know about financial resources you found. I’ll leave link below.
Next, if you are experiencing OCD-related financial stresses, you may believe that your problem is a shortage of money and the solution is more money.
In fact, OCD-related spending is a symptom, just like obsessions and compulsions are symptoms.
Further, more money is rarely the solution to money problems, unless you are in a financial situations in which you cannot meet your basic expenses. If you are in that situation, please know that there are sources of support on your community.
Once you meet your basic needs, the solution to a sense of financial scarcity is to change your money habits. You do this by managing your brain!
I’ve been researching, speaking and writing about the way human brains make money choices for the past 2 decades; I’m working on my third book about it.
We have the potential to make logical, rational financial choices with their our Planning Brains—the prefrontal cortex that can imagine and realize a different future.
Economists created computer models that will predict the behavior of the ideal investors.
The problem in that the models did not describe what people actually do.
Two economist won a Nobel prize for their observation: real investors don’t behave like idea investors; we humans make predictable investing mistakes. This is the field of behavioral finance.
Here’s a way of understanding this. We mostly make our money decisions with our Paleo Brains—the part of the brain that kept is lives in the hunter-gather era.
Most people treat found money like food. When you see it, eat it. When you get money, spend it!
Financial scarcity is treated like the modern day saber-toothed tiger. Suddenly you’re fleeing or fighting or freezing. The choices you make in this physiologic state usually makes a bad financial situation worse.
We know that people with OCD have a lower threshold for responding to potential danger. Money can become a very frightening to discuss.
Further, you may know someone who has financial PTSD.
This is the challenge all humans face as they work towards financial health.
Someone with OCD or any other form of neurodiversity brings their unique brain wiring with them when they make money choices.
If you are the person with OCD, you already know the dear costs you pay for unmanaged OCD. The time you lose. The opportunities you say no to. Maybe the dreams you have given up on. OCD-related spending is a literal cost of unmanaged OCD.
You might get advice like, “Stop spending! Make a budget!” This is about as helpful as the advice to just stop doing your compulsions.
The best way to manage OCD -related spending is to manage OCD more effectively. This means managing your brain.
If you are the parent or partner or friend of someone with OCD, your OCD-related spending reflects your beliefs about how you can best help and support someone you love with OCD.
On one end of the help and support spectrum, you might express your love by helping your loved one with OCD have an easier life with less drama or discomfort, like Gail did. It feels like a caring thing to do. Yes, you’ll buy cleaning supplies by the carton, wash sheets every day and offer as many reassurances as your loved one requests. There’s only one catch. In the end this enabling behavior makes OCD worse and not better.
Another mom of an adult child with OCD said to me, “Have you ever read The Giving Tree? It’s like the story of my life. I’m giving and giving and giving to my son with OCD because I love him and I want to make him happier. One day I’ll wind up as an old stump with nothing more to give.” Your whole family pays the price for underwriting obsessions and compulsions.
On the other end of the “help and support spectrum” you have clarity that you will do what you can to support your loved one’s OCD recovery. Your vision is for the person you love with OCD to be able to live a full life. This usually means setting and maintaining clear boundaries, and saying no. No, you will not buy extra cleaning supplies. You’ll wash sheets once a week and offer one reassurance. You will not be your loved one’s favorite person. In fact, you might be the target of your loved one’s anger.
Your OCD money choices can change depending on where the person with OCD is on the spectrum of OCD management/recovery at any moment in time. Are they completely disabled by OCD? Do they demonstrate complete mastery? Does your loved one with OCD have the potential to live independently when OCD is well managed? You may be in the situation in which you need to make financial plans for your loved one to be cared for when you’re not on the planet.
Every family navigating OCD makes different choices.
The best place to begin is to get an assessment of where you are now. What is your OCD-related spending? How well is this working for you?
You can make different choices about spending. And this can feel uncomfortable.
I recently heard the story of a mom who wanted her neurotypical middle school kids to take responsibility for their own lunches. She purchased groceries so her kids could make their own sandwiches. If they did not want to make their lunch, they could use their allowances to pay for lunch.
One day the school administrator called this woman to let her know that there was a $12 outstanding bill for lunches.
This mom explained how her family manages lunches. She said, “My child is responsible for this lunch bill, Please have the conversation with my child.”
She said that her administrator treated her like she was a negligent parent. She said she got off the phone and wondered herself.
However, she knew in her heart she was parenting in a way that aligned with her values. She wanted to raise financially independent adult. She gave kids higher levels of responsibility that matched her kids’ developmental levels.
Gail and I went through this exercise. She came to understand that being her daughter’s bank deprived he daughter of the opportunity to know what she could do for herself. By giving her daughter money, she was saying, “I don’’t trust you to come up with a solution.” This was a real disservice. She wants to have a daughter who trusts her own ability to take care of herself.
She wanted her daughter to say, “it’s time for an ERPP tune-up. How can I find the money to make the happen?”gShe made a commitment to stop rescuing her daughter. She says that sometimes she feels like a bad parent. She wonders if other people judge her with the new choices she’s making. Then she decides that she will not measure herself by what others think; she’ll judge herself on the basis of how well her behaviors align with her values—even when it’s hard. Her highest value was to support her daughter’s recovery
You might feel like “bad parent’ when you make different choices about OCD spending. This is when it’s time to get back to what you value most, and what you’re trying to achieve: help the person you love with OCD to be freed from the tyranny of OCD.
Clearly this is a big topic, and we have just started to scratch the surface.
Thant’s why I’m inviting you to a complementary webinar entitled OCD, Neurodiverse Brains and Money: How to Move Toward Financial Health.
If you or an adult you love is managing OCD, ADHD or autism, you know that these brain wiring conditions touch all parts of your life--including your money. Join us for this complementary webinar to learn:
* How OCD and other neuro-divergent conditions shape your finances.
* Tools for identifying where you stand now with your money
* With compassion, explore why you made money choices in the past
* Discover Your Money Archetype and Financial Pain Personality
* Scripts you can use to have family conversations about money--even if it's with yourself
* How to head to financial health.
It will be Sunday, Nov 26th at 1 PM Pacific. I’ll leave a link below.
Join the Free Me form OCD community. Share your own money story. Share any financial resources you might have uncovered. I’ll compile them and offer a list.