Number one is you’ve never had money. So let’s say you grew up in a really struggling household and you’ve always struggled having money. And so shame can emanate from just that fact of growing up in that and then never feeling like you have money comparing yourself to those who do.

Number two is you’ve had money, but you’ve lost it. And so this can occur two ways.

One is there’s been a situation out of your control, a natural disaster, a fire, maybe your business burns down, it’s a physical business. Maybe you get sick with an illness, so you end up some accident and all of a sudden you’re not able to work at the capacity you were before, or your recovery time is so long that you lose your business. So those two things had money, but lost it. Either something out of your control or the second way you can lose money, of course, is a decision that you make.

So I’ve been through this before. I’ve made a massive investment into some kind of program or some kind of investments out there in the world of investing, and I haven’t returned my investment or literally the money was lost. And so that was a decision of mine. Sometimes the heaviest shame is from decisions we’ve made where we feel like we have made a mistake or we’re interpreting and perceiving, oh, I made a mistake, and so I have to be ashamed about making that mistake.

The third face of money shame is carrying debt. So we have all kinds of programming and stories around debt is bad and also, but sometimes carrying debt, it’s just hard. It’s heavy. It’s causing you to have to make decisions about where your money’s going to go. And that can carry a lot of shame when you’re having to say no to things in order to, let’s say, pay back your debt.

Number four is you’re working hard, working, working, working so hard, doing everything you can. You’re intelligent. You’ve got these brilliant ideas, brilliant business, but you’re still not where you want to be after years of working on it. That number four type of working hard shame is also very heavy.

Number five  is struggling with managing money. So let’s say we’re talking about habits or addictions spending. Addictions very common. Very common, a lot more common than people realize, and that can have a lot of shame to it where you don’t feel in control or you don’t believe you’re managing your money.

Number six  is something that I never see in money and mindset books, it’s never anywhere. And that is where your health needs are high. Let’s say you live with a chronic illness or you live with mental unwellness and you have to spend a lot of money on healing. So I’ve had some chronic illnesses in my lifetime and the amount of expense I had to go to find healing because the regular medical system was just not giving me the answers.

All of that healing came right out of my pocket. So when we’re talking about people that have chronic illness, a lot of people feel so much shame for their chronic illness and the expense and the money that they feel is being taken away from their family just for them to be able to thrive or even survive day to day. So that’s something that I see in clients and I’ve experienced it myself.

Number 7  is: affluence and privilege. And this is almost like a shame kind of guilt where you have grown up in affluence, you’ve grown up in privilege, you’re privileged, you’re a self-aware person, and that there’s disparity in the world and inequity in the world, but you actually feel a lot of shame for being part of the privileged population. And that is another thing that I never see talked about in money mindset books