You have tried the budgeting apps. You have watched the YouTube videos on saving, read the threads about investing and maybe even hired a financial coach. But somehow, you still find yourself making the same money decisions over and over again and you cannot quite explain why. The truth that most financial advice skips over is this: money wounds are running the show.
Until you understand what a money wound is and where yours comes from, no spreadsheet or savings challenge is going to get you to where you actually want to be.
If you are ready to do that deeper work and finally build wealth on solid ground, the Obaasema Salon, Future You is Expensive: Building Wealth for the Life You Actually Want, is happening on June 25, 2026 at 1PM WAT. Click HERE to register now for this free event!
For now, let’s start with the foundation.
What Are Money Wounds?
A money wound is a deeply held belief about money that was formed by a painful or confusing experience, usually in childhood. It lives in your subconscious, which means you are not walking around actively thinking about it. Instead, it quietly shapes how you interact with money, often in ways that contradict what you consciously want.
The reason money wounds are so frustrating to deal with is that they do not respond to logic. You can know exactly what you should be doing financially and still not do it. You can understand compound interest perfectly and still not invest. That gap between knowing and doing is almost always emotional, not intellectual.
The 4 Types of Money Wounds
There are four main money wounds that show up again and again in people’s financial lives. Most people carry at least one of them, and plenty of people carry more than one.
The Scarcity Wound
This one comes from growing up in an environment where there was never enough. Maybe your family said “we can’t afford that” constantly. Maybe the fridge was sometimes empty or the lights got cut off. Whatever the specific memory, the message you absorbed was that money is always running out and you always have to brace for the worst.
So now, even when you have money, it still does not feel like enough. You hoard it out of anxiety rather than strategy. You feel guilty spending on things you actually want. You track every cent obsessively because some part of you is waiting for it all to disappear. The scarcity wound keeps you living in a state of lack even when the numbers tell a completely different story.
The Shame Wound
The shame wound is a little different because it is not just about not having money. It is about what not having money made you feel about yourself. Maybe you were teased at school for wearing worn-out shoes. Maybe you watched your parents look embarrassed at the checkout counter. Maybe you were the kid who could not go on the school trip, and everyone knew why.
That kind of experience teaches you that poverty is something to be ashamed of, and by extension, that you are something to be ashamed of. As an adult, this wound shows up in two very different ways. Some people overspend to prove they have “made it,” keeping up appearances to distance themselves from that version of themselves they are still ashamed of. Others shrink financially, staying small, undercharging, avoiding visibility around money, because deep down they still do not feel like they deserve more. Both are the shame wound talking.
The Chaos Wound
If you grew up in a home where the financial situation changed without warning, you know this one. One month things were fine and the next month there was an eviction notice or the car was gone. There were constant arguments about bills. Feast and famine showed up in unpredictable cycles and you never quite knew what to expect.
What this does to a person is deeply underrated in financial conversations. When chaos is what you grew up with, stability starts to feel uncomfortable. Not because you do not want it, but because your nervous system genuinely does not recognise it as safe. So when you finally start doing well financially, something in you pulls toward disruption. You make a reckless purchase. You quit the job just when things were going well. You “forget” to pay a bill for no logical reason. This is the chaos wound trying to return to what feels familiar, because familiar feels like home, even when home was not a good place.
The Silence Wound
This one does not come from a dramatic event. It comes from an absence. Money was simply never discussed in your household. There were no conversations about budgets, no explanations of how bills worked, no guidance on what to do with money when you started earning it. The topic was either off-limits or just never came up.
So you entered adulthood financially illiterate, not because you were careless or lazy, but because nobody taught you. And because nobody taught you, you feel embarrassed to ask questions now. You avoid looking at your bank statements. You put off important financial decisions because you do not know where to start. You piece things together from friends and social media and hope for the best. The silence wound creates a financial confidence gap that is incredibly common and incredibly overlooked.
Why Knowing Your Money Wound Actually Matters
Here is what tends to happen when people skip this step. They get motivated, make a plan, follow it for a few weeks, and then fall back into old patterns. They blame themselves for lacking discipline or willpower. But discipline is not the problem. The pattern is the problem and patterns have roots.
When you identify your money wound, you stop making it about character and start making it about context. You start to understand that the way you relate to money makes complete sense given what you experienced. That is not an excuse to stay stuck. Actually, it is the opposite. It is the first honest look at what you are working with, and you cannot fix something you have not properly seen.
Beyond that, knowing your money wound helps you build emotional awareness around your financial decisions in real time. So instead of impulsively spending after a stressful week and wondering why, you start to recognise the pattern. You notice the trigger. You get a moment of choice that you did not have before.
Healing Is the Part Nobody Talks About
Most financial education stops at information. It tells you what to do but not why you are not doing it. Healing money wounds is different because it asks you to go deeper, to look at the stories you inherited and decide which ones you actually want to keep.
What healing is not, though, is a one-time thing. You do not work through money wounds once and never think about it again. What changes is your relationship with it. The wound stops running you quietly from the background and you start making financial decisions from a more conscious, grounded place. That is when the budgets, the investment accounts and the savings goals actually start to stick.
So here is what healing looks like in practice, broken down by each wound.
Healing the Scarcity Wound
- Start a “proof of enough” journal where you write down three financial wins every week, no matter how small. Paying a bill on time counts. Buying groceries without stress counts. You are training your brain to register safety instead of defaulting to lack.
- Practice intentional spending on something small that brings you joy, once a week. The goal is not to be reckless but to teach your nervous system that spending does not always lead to disaster.
- When the anxiety spikes, pause and ask yourself: “Am I actually in danger right now or is this an old feeling?” That one question creates a gap between the wound and your next decision.
- Work with a financial therapist or coach who can help you trace the scarcity story back to its root so you stop reacting from it unconsciously.
Healing the Shame Wound
- Write out the earliest memory you have of feeling ashamed about money. Getting it out of your head and onto paper is the first step to separating that experience from your identity.
- Start separating your self-worth from your net worth deliberately. This means catching the moments when you tie how you feel about yourself to your account balance and consciously challenging that thought.
- If overspending is your pattern, build a 24-hour rule before any non-essential purchase above a set amount. That pause interrupts the shame-spending cycle before it runs.
- If staying small is your pattern, start practising visibility in low-stakes ways. Talk about money with a trusted friend. Share a financial win out loud. Slowly build the muscle of not hiding.
Healing the Chaos Wound
- Create a simple financial routine and stick to it even when everything feels fine. Review your accounts every Sunday. Automate one savings transfer. The consistency itself is the healing because you are proving to your nervous system that stability is safe.
- When you feel the urge to self-sabotage, name it out loud or in writing: “I am feeling the pull toward chaos.” Naming it interrupts the automatic response and gives you a moment of choice.
- Work on building a small emergency fund first before any other financial goal. Knowing there is a buffer reduces the unconscious need to create drama because the safety net exists.
- Consider working with a therapist, specifically one familiar with trauma, because the chaos wound is often tied to nervous system dysregulation that goes beyond money.
Healing the Silence Wound
- Give yourself full permission to be a beginner. You did not learn this stuff growing up and that was not your fault. Start with one financial concept per week, not a whole curriculum, just one thing.
- Find a community or space where financial questions are welcome and nobody makes you feel stupid for asking. The upcoming Obaasema Salon is exactly this kind of space.
- Start looking at your accounts regularly, even when it feels uncomfortable. Set a recurring time weekly to check your balance and review your transactions. Familiarity reduces fear over time.
- Ask the questions you have been holding back. Talk to your bank. Google the terms you do not understand. Reach out to someone doing better financially and ask how they started. The silence wound heals when you choose to speak up.
What Comes After Awareness
Awareness is step one and it is genuinely powerful. But it is not the whole journey. Once you know your money wound, the real work is building new financial patterns that align with who you actually want to become, not who your past taught you to be.
That means getting honest about the financial decisions you have been avoiding. It means asking for help when you do not know something, even when the silence wound tells you that makes you look stupid. It means staying the course when things feel stable, even when the chaos wound is pulling you toward something dramatic. It means spending on something you love without guilt, even when the scarcity wound tells you it is not safe.
None of this is easy. But it is absolutely possible.
