Conquer The Impostor Syndrome – The Psychology of Toxic Shame and Money

The Psychology of Toxic Shame and Money

07.08.24

As I start writing this, I know the only way to help you overcome this is if I’m vulnerable and allow my soul to speak because this subject is very close to my heart. I’ve been entertaining these ideas about trauma and being successful for a long time but what triggered a new synthesis, was Pete Walker’s book about CPTSD: From Surviving To Thriving.

It’s interesting that whenever I’m learning about psychology, I’m always transported to certain periods of my life. Of course, this depends on the topic being explored but that’s how I learn, I have to connect the words to my own experiences to truly embody them.

As I was listening to the book, I remembered several moments in my childhood and early twenties in which I allowed shame and fear to dictate all of my decisions and prevent me from truly exploring my potential. I was constantly afraid and would always undermine myself.

I felt like I didn’t have any talents or anything worthy of saying. I also didn’t want to call any attention to myself, to the point I didn’t want to wear any new clothes so people wouldn’t notice me, one of the many effects of bullying.

This mix of shame and fear also prevented me from going after what I truly wanted for years and once I finally started, I felt like a fraud. I was deeply afraid to charge a fair price for my services and would often be in debt because of it. I didn’t trust my own ideas and felt like I didn’t deserve to be successful.

But why I’m telling you this?

Well, because after 6 years of working as a therapist, I could spot endless connections between experiencing trauma, fear, shame, and a lack of financial success. Forget about inflation for a moment because I want to explore the deeper psychological dynamics behind our relationship with money and feeling like we deserve to be successful.

To illustrate this, I want to tell you a quick story. A few days ago, a client of mine was anguished because he was experiencing very weird intrusive thoughts. Every few days, these crazy ideas about being really sick and developing cancer would pop into his mind.

Of course, he was very disturbed about it, who wouldn’t be? However, I instantly knew what everything meant. We’ve been doing sessions for a very long time now and I know his story very well, so the connections were evident to me. Plus, this kind of intrusive thought is way more common than you might imagine.

Rules of Interpretation by Carl Jung:

First and foremost, when we deal with unconscious fantasies, we need context and the client’s associations and amplifications. It’s impossible to interpret anything in the void.
Second, we must interpret this material symbolically and as a metaphor.
Third, we must understand the origins of these fantasies and what they’re trying to compensate.

These thoughts first appeared in a moment where he had just graduated and was starting his professional life. Just like everyone, he had many idealizations and thought that things would be easier. When he was faced with the reality of someone starting their own business, he felt incapable and lacked the necessary self-confidence. He thought he would never be able to be successful which led to a depression.

To simplify things, the fantasies appeared as a way to avoid dealing with this reality, because if he got really sick, he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. This is a coping strategy that comes from his childhood since he suffered bullying and had to deal with parents who constantly shamed him.

Now, as an adult the same coping mechanism was preventing him from truly growing up, individuating from his parents, and realizing his potential. He was also having many difficulties charging a fair price for his services and was dealing with severe impostor syndrome. He thought he couldn’t make it since both of his parents were bad at handling money.

The Inner Critic

Well, here we are once again talking about the mother and father complex. I explored this subject at length in my other articles, so I’ll keep things short and then come back to the main point.

Simply put, when our ego-complex is developed it comes with the desire for positive regard and appreciation, this is not only a basic human emotional need but also a biological and survival one.

In that sense, we unconsciously absorb all of our caregiver’s values and strive to fulfill their expectations about us, in hopes of receiving this appreciation, and protection, and developing an emotional bond. The problem is that many parents should never have become parents in the first place, or at least not at the moment they did since many lack the emotional capacity to deal with a child.

When we’re constantly met with emotional and physical rejection or neglect for expressing our authentic desires, wants, and needs, we start to let go of our authentic selves. This happens because we’re a defenseless child trying to either keep this bond or avoid any further altercations.

In this process, we start adopting the lenses of our parents to judge and react to the world and mainly to ourselves. We unconsciously absorb all of their dynamics about how to deal with our emotions, our relationships, and yeah you guessed it, work and money.

Furthermore, all of these values and judgments are, more often than not, unaligned with our authentic selves. That’s why we might feel like there’s something inherently wrong with us or with what we want in life. Over time all of these experiences can turn into a ferocious inner critic that annihilates our self-esteem.

To compensate for this lack of self-esteem, we usually become addicted to perfection and develop an immaculate and flawless persona. The problem is that we become overly sensitive to rejection and constantly create the craziest catastrophic scenarios.

I’ll stop here because I cover everything you need to know in my article – How To Break Free From Childhood Trauma, plus you can find a step-by-step to overcome the mother and father complex in my course Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual.

Conquering The Impostor Syndrome

This digression was necessary to highlight the main point: Toxic shame is behind many destructive behaviors and poor decisions about money that can prevent us from achieving any level of success. Shame and fear can paralyze us when we want to start something new and go after what we truly want.

It makes us feel incapable and downplay our abilities, or worse, it prevents us from seeing the value we can provide for others and even refuse to be fairly compensated. That’s exactly what was happening with my client and as you can see I deeply relate to that.

The main problem is that we get used to abandoning ourselves, we suppress our emotions and disconnect from our souls. This rupture creates a generalized feeling of being a defenseless lost child with no purpose or passion. However, it’s only when we’re connected with our emotions and affects that we can access inner guidance.

My experience as a therapist revealed to me that everyone intuitively knows their path in life, and what talents and abilities they would like to explore, the problem is always fear and twisted judgments. But deep in our souls we know what moves us and makes our eyes light up, we know what speaks to our hearts.

There comes a point in which we realize we can’t keep living life the same way, all of these coping mechanisms create an illusory sense of control and safety and become a huge crutch.

I’m obviously not invalidating anybody’s experiences, you know I have plenty of articles discussing how to overcome childhood trauma, but I believe we must make a conscious choice to stop running away from our callings and commit to it.

This decision truly feels like a life or death situation as part of us desperately wants to cling to our illusory sense of comfort while the other part knows that if we stay our soul is going to die. However, I believe it’s our duty to explore our potential and be the absolute best we can be.

You owe it to yourself, for all the times you abandoned yourself, for all the times you allowed fear and shame to win, and for all the times you diminished yourself. You deserve to develop your talents, the world needs your gifts.

In my last article about Flow, I say that the first step to finding our sense of purpose is to deeply care about something and be fully affected by it. It needs to be something truly valuable and we must have skin in the game. The stakes need to be high.

Once we connect with that, I found that the way to shut up the inner critique is to become obsessed, we must give our blood for the new version of ourselves to emerge. When you’re serious about it, you feel like you’re dying when you’re not dedicating every waking moment to your dreams and achieving excellence in your craft.

We must develop a pristine work ethic to obliterate the imposter syndrome. As Peter Levine says, we must deploy healthy aggression, assert our boundaries, and go after what we truly want. I know this might feel extreme for some, but this is different from having a compulsion or becoming a workaholic, this drive comes from a place of inspiration and the desire to excel rather than a mere escapism.

It’s true that sometimes we’ll be driven by fear or pain, but that’s our chance to transmute these feelings into something valuable. We have the opportunity to transform our tears and all the obstacles we had to face into a gift for others. This is the path in which creativity thrives and work can also feel like play.

When we truly commit to exploring our potential we prove to ourselves that we’re worth it. When we dedicate ourselves to achieving excellence in our crafts, we start respecting ourselves more. When we decide to face our fears and accept true responsibility for our destinies, our posture changes.

We not only start living a more meaningful and fulfilled life, but we also start seeing real value in ourselves and in what we can offer to others. We rise above the inner critique and conquer the impostor syndrome. This allows us to dare to create disruptive music, art, projects, and incredible services, which also translates into start being more fairly compensated.

As Michael Mead says, we unlock our genius and start being who we truly are. Without this internal shift, it doesn’t matter how many new business strategies you try, they all tend to fail. I’m obviously not saying to avoid learning them, but more often than not the true battle lies in overcoming our internal blockages, and learning how to treat our crafts as something sacred and devote our lives to them.

Lastly, if you want to commit to this path and conquer the impostor syndrome, my new and accessible course Obliterate Procrastination is perfect for you.

I teach you how to master your habits, unleash endless endless motivation, and how to unlock the flow state to help you find meaning, be more creative, and achieve excellence in any craft.

You can also come directly to the Audacity University, access ALL of my courses, join the Audacity Inner Circle, and participate in live meetings.

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual – My best-selling and accessible course will introduce you to all you need to know to disrupt the unconscious patterns keeping you stuck.
Audacity University – My flagship course contains a 4-year psychology curriculum and gives you access to the Audacity Inner Circle and live meetings.
Obliterate Procrastination – Effortlessly master your habits, unleash endless motivation, and unlock the flow state.
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