What Is Money Dysmorphia? How Does It Impact Your Life?

Money dysmorphia is the distorted view we have of our financial reality that causes us to make poor decisions about the use of our non-renewable resources, both collectively and individually.

Want to find out if Money Dysmorphia is impacting your life? Take the quiz here.

You can see it quite clearly collectively, as we sacrifice our non-renewable natural resources, like the rainforest, in service to money. Individually, you may be able to see it in your own life, as you sacrifice your time, energy, attention, health and relationships, all of which are non-renewable, in service to money.

Here's the thing: money is actually infinitely renewable when we know how to access it and use it wisely. Unfortunately, due to inherited conditioning and trauma, such as holocaust, slavery and other “power and control” type dominant economic practices historically, most of us have not learned how to access and use money wisely. Instead, we carry all sorts of money trauma.

As a result, we compromise ourselves in service to money, either consciously or unconsciously.

If you look inside, you may see it very simply in that you are working in a job that is not aligned with our values because you think we need to, for the money. Sometimes, this values mis-alignment can be extremely subtle, just a nagging feeling that something isn’t right.

Other times, the mis-alignment can be highly noticeable, such as knowing you are in a job that actually causes harm, and yet doing it anyway because you believe you need to, for the money.

I watched my dad do it when he sold fake Alaskan oil leases to retirees, and went to prison for it. My dad believed he needed to do that to make money, and while it should have been obvious he was compromising his values, given how committed he was to teaching my sister and I to speak truth, he somehow convinced himself that it was acceptable behavior.

Whenever we are compromising ourselves in service to money, even if we aren't looking right at it on the surface, some part of us knows. We can numb it with alcohol or drugs, or other addictions. We can pretend it doesn't matter. But the truth is that if we are not in right livelihood (Buddhist or not), we will be sick in some way.

Our indigenous relatives call it wetiko: a collective mind virus that is cannabilising our lives in service to money.

Money Dysmorphia Can Even Be Benignly Destructive

Money Dysmorphia isn't always as clearly destructive as outright ethical and values mis-aligned ways of earning money. It can show up in more benign, yet still harmful ways as well.

For example, let's imagine that you have a great service you offer, you know how to deliver it well, people love it, and yet you are maxed out on your time, energy and attention, and your income is capped as a result. You want to grow your business; you want to increase your income; you want to serve more people. But, you can't. You're maxed.

The only way through is to hire more support to free up your time. Doing so would require you to invest before you have the income coming in to justify the investment, so you'd have to use credit to make the investment. But, your Money Dysmorphia lens just says "I can't afford it." The truth, though, is you can't afford not to hire support, and when you take off your Money Dysmorphia glasses you can look rationally at what you do have, what you do need, and where the gap is so you can find the resources to support your next level of growth.

Another symptom of Money Dysmorphia, which is far more subtle, but can have the longest term impact for generations, is believing you are too poor (or not rich enough) to plan for what happens to your assets in the event of your incapacity or death. As a 20-year plus Estate Planning lawyer and founder of Personal Family Lawyer, I see the fall out of this one all the time and it's extremely painful for the family left behind.

It happens to the financially wealthiest among us -- hello Tom Petty, Prince, Leona Helmsey, and Aretha Franklin - and the poorest, approximately 67% of adults do not have an estate plan, and of those that do, most have made at least one of 6 common mistakes that will likely leave their family stuck in court and/or conflict, both of which are extremely expensive for many generations into the future. If you don't see and value what you have, you will not plan for it wisely.

Money Dysmorphia is Inherited and Can Be Healed

Every generation is affected by Money Dysmorphia, but in different ways, as it’s an inherited pattern and therefore reflective of the experience of your ancestors. What we know from books like “It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn, and “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessell Van Der Kolk M.D., trauma is passed on until it’s healed, through the body itself.

So, while we all likely experience some version of Money Dysmorphia, depending on the amount of healing work already done by our ancestors or vice versa, the amount of trauma in our family system, the youngest generations may have the most impact of what needs to be seen and healed.

The reality is that we are truly the first generation of humans who have the resources - the time, energy, attention, money as well as the consciousness -- to even consider seeing or healing Money Dysmorphia. Our ancestors were mostly in survival mode because that’s what was necessary to get us to this point. They had to lie, cheat, thieve, steal, and hide to survive. If we look back into our ancestral history, we can see that, no matter from whence we came.

What we can also see with our conscious awareness from this moment in history is that we do not need to do that. If you have the luxury to be reading or hearing these words, it’s clear that you are no longer in the same survival reality of your ancestors. And, given that, it’s now your responsibility to do the work of seeing and healing the Money Dysmorphia so you do not pass on the same survival-based scarcity patterns of your ancestors. This is what it means to “Do the Work” of healing, and it’s ours to do.

I’ve found one of the best ways to Do the Work, at least in the initial years of healing work, is to use money as the catalyst for that work because security, which we collectively have decided occurs through money, is at the very base level of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Therefore, doing the work on money will then give you access to the higher levels of “belonging” and “self-actualization” and the support necessary to do the work on those pieces of your needs.

How can we best understand it and, from there, overcome Money Dysmorphia? 

 The first step in overcoming Money Dysmorphia is being truthful with yourself about which symptoms may be present in your life  – which can be accomplished by taking my Money Dysmorphia Blindspot quiz here: https://eyeswideopencollective.com/resources. 

Once you’ve identified your blindspots, you can come up with a plan to address it. Remember that this is an opportunity to grow and learn from your mistakes. No matter how far you may be from your financial and personal goals, you can always come back– trust me, I’ve been there. 

Read about my own personal experience with Money Dysmorphia and how I overcame it here: https://eyeswideopencollective.com/eyes-wide-open-blog/money-dysmorphia