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22 | Financial Fear After Narcissistic Abuse: What Nobody Talks About · The Messy Middle Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Messy Middle, the podcast for women navigating the raw, confusing, lonely aftermath of narcissistic abuse and emotional control.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Erica Leon, trauma-informed abuse recovery coach, mom of five, and creator of the six keys to unfuck with the ball.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're picking up the pieces, questioning everything, and trying to remember who the fuck you were before you were so carefully erased, you're in the right place.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Messy Middle podcast.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is your host, Erica Leon.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: This week's episode is about financial fear after narcissistic abuse.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a big one, and it has a lot bigger ripple effect than people ever give it credit for.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So for me observing this with my clients and me actually having gone through this myself, there is not a week that this does not occur.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there's usually a moment that hits a lot of women after they leave or even before they leave to do with finances, how they're going to support the children, how they just know that as soon as they start this process with either separation or divorce, that there is going to be a huge impact for them from the other party.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because people who have these tendencies automatically take any kind of accountability as an attack.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So filing for divorce, you've almost declared war on them in their mind.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they are cheating a lot of the time, they are treating you terribly, actively abusing you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as you choose to leave, it's like you've declared war and they will make sure that they punish you.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: As the punishments slip away with proximity, when you actually move out, when you actually aren't there for daily abuse or you found out about cheating and you just don't want that anymore, then the punishment turns to either your children and trying to file for custody, even if they haven't been that involved as a parent, and then wanting full custody, making up awful things about your parenting, and then finally financial abuse.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I see it every single week.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have lived it.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is awful.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And usually it's not just the day you leave.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It might not even be the first week.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It might be later when things go quiet after your separation or when that high octane stuff again wears off.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: It might be just when you're sitting there, maybe late at night, maybe looking at your phone or your bank account and just thinking.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly this horrible feeling lands on you.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh shit, I am on my own and I am gonna really have to fight for everything I get.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not sometimes a loud knocking.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to explain, but it's often just a subconscious fear that's been hanging out in the background.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: This underlying steady fear.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really know maybe what it is, but it's coming.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you fear that this person might completely turn on you, even though they don't want to be with you.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to be able to choose not to be with them, if that makes sense.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, How am I gonna do this?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna do bills, rent, food, kids, work, all the things that used to be shared or at least look like they were shared, they now sit with you.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then the anxiety starts creeping in.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know some people who maybe admit this out loud, but there are equally a lot of people I've worked with who don't like to admit it out loud because a lot of women I feel like feeling embarrassed about this, and they don't necessarily want to say I'm scared about money because somehow it feels like a personal failure.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So many of my clients, especially the ones that have been previously career women and then have been stay-at-home moms for the children, they are the ones I see in the most stress and damage because they somehow feel like this is a personal failure, like they should have been more on top of it, and they don't know how it shifted from them being the one that does all of the finances to now their husband gradually has taken it over and says, No, I can manage all that for you.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need the stress.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they think I should have paid attention.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I should have known what was going on.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I didn't know what were in our bank accounts, I can't believe I took my eye off the ball like that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And society makes you feel bad for doing that stuff because you can never really win in these situations.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this fear is everywhere.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because women are irresponsible, by the way, just in case that's crossing your mind.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's because a lot of the relationships quietly, the financial power dynamic shifts over time, especially if the woman is usually the one that looks after and does more of the labor towards raising the children.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how it really happens is it starts small.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: You meet someone who seems quote unquote good with money, organized, on it, responsible, and you think, great, that's not my strength.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: That works.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they start handling the things, bills, accounts, decisions, and it might feel like a relief at first, one less thing to think about, especially when you have kids and it knocks you for six.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then slowly there are these little shifts.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't really, months or years down the line, you may not really know what's in the accounts anymore.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be fully sure what's being spent.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: You might start asking questions and the answers are vague or brushed off, or don't worry about it, I've got it, it's handled.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you just let it go because you trust them.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't want to seem difficult or the B word.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've been taught, haven't we all, that questioning too much becomes a problem, especially if you have garnered some pushback and negative reaction, like the word nagging, don't even get me started on that rent.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that starts to form a pattern.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pattern of subtle control.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then there are these smaller moments.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're buying something, not extravagant, just normal life, and there might come a comment.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you really need that?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit much, isn't it?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or you probably should be more careful.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then you remember how that feels.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Your body tightens, but again, you brush it off because it's not aggressive, it's just a tone.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And over time you just start adjusting, like we've talked about before, bending yourself into a different pretzel knot to avoid the punishment and pain or to be loved.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you might start adjusting your spending, spending less, checking yourself, second guessing.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, their spending does not get the same scrutiny.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: They actually make a big fuss about things that you have bought for yourself or they have bought for you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then when it comes to something like a milestone for them, the value is ten times what they've bought you, but with no question for themselves at all.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that balance is easy to miss while you're in it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because in some cases, I have witnessed because the person is the pecuniary spouse, so to speak, the person out in the world earning the money, that is thought of as their money.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if they want to buy an extravagant gift for themselves, it's their money.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can't argue.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: But as you're the one home raising the kids, it's not your money.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: That whole thing is dangerous and it needs to change so badly.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really easy to miss when you're in it and when you have that conditioning from birth and from society.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So many of us do.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're out and you look back on this, this stuff does seem more obvious.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But in it, no, all of these subtle control techniques, you don't see it when you're in it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the aftermath of all this is when you leave or the relationship ends, you're not just dealing with an emotional fallout, you're dealing with actual real world outside of emotional fallouts, too.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you might not fully understand your financial position, or something else I see all the time which makes my blood boil, is the other party, even in the divorce, not disclosing their financial position, and nothing happens to them.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just a light slap on the wrist, which almost is nothing anyway.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is an actual joke most of the time, unless your person that you're up against is a regular employed person who has a salary that you can't really mess with.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're dealing with an entrepreneur or a business owner, be prepared.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You might be facing rebuilding credit.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: There might have been lots of loans taken against your name, more financial abuse.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Never seems to be any comeback for that either in civil court.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: You might be starting again in ways you did not ever expect.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, your nervous system is already fried.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely fucked.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So even something as simple as opening your bank app, looking at the numbers, making a decision about money can feel so big, much bigger than it should, quote unquote, if this wasn't the reality of years of abuse in your nervous system.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those internal inner critical voices saying, You're bad with money.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is your fault, you overspend.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our finances would have been fine if it hadn't been for this, that, and the other.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: When actually it's usually the other way around.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you have all these voices running at the same time, making it seem like you can't be trusted, that you are irresponsible, that you can't take care of these things.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that is an absolute cluster fog to make these things really difficult.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels so intense because it's not just money, it's safety.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Money becomes: can I take care of myself?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can I make good decisions here?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Can I trust myself not to mess this up?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the echo of the voices don't help.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So every decision carries weight, even the small ones.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And thinking about being a present parent if you have kids in this scenario and being able to keep them in the life of which they deserve is extremely hard when you're worrying about how you're going to feed them.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the next meal coming from?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Will you have a roof over your head?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And abusers know it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: They know that it's the very thing that will keep you either going back to them or at least in this horrible cycle where they can control your emotional state and keep you in survival perpetually.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, often that is deliberate.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: If I had a dime for every time one of these abusive people has filed for joint custody, thinking that that excludes them from paying child support, I see it all the time.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every decision carries weight, even small ones.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I see women go in two directions.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The two reactions I usually see is one is panic that I need to fix everything immediately, I need to make more money right now, I need to sort my entire future this week, and the other is freeze.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And freeze is so common.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Avoiding looking at accounts, not opening emails, just being in a state of suspended animation where you put things off because it just feels too much.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Both are completely normal.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: What actually helps is a bit less dramatic.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's smaller, quieter, more consistent.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's opening the account, even though you know you're not going to like what you see.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's understanding fully what's coming in and what's going out, and dealing with the actual what is rather than what could be coming or what could be happening.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's making one small decision, not ten, just one, then the next one.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Staying small and consistent and staying involved, even if it's not your thing, you have to learn it and you have to make it your thing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I hear a lot of people say I'm just not good with money, and I totally get that, but this isn't about being good at it.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's about being connected to it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to become some kind of financial expert at all.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to not be in the dark anymore, like a mushroom, fed shit and in the dark.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because being in the dark is where your power got taken in the first place.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I can speak for myself here.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to speak for you, but when I was handing over more and more financial control, I felt uneasy about it very, very deep down.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because logically, even, there are some things that I knew my partner couldn't handle or didn't handle well.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why would he be able to be in charge of all the finances and handle that well?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of knew underneath.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I really want every woman to understand moving forward, that not in a fearful way, but just in a grounded way.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: If someone quickly takes over the finances or someone is angling to take over all the finances, pay attention.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have visibility to it, pay attention and ask for it.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like you have to justify basic spending, pay attention.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: If your independence is slowly being reduced, please pay attention to that.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to build a case, you don't need to prove anything, you just need to not ignore the feeling.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And all of this circles back to self-trust again, like most things, because money decisions require you to trust your own judgment.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's been shaken, everything else feels harder.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So again, we go small.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You make a decision, you follow through, you check in with your gut, you learn something new, you build consistency, you prove to yourself over time I can handle this.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling that most people get at the end of this is how did I ever doubt myself in the first place?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I dealt with this shit before him, and there was me thinking I couldn't deal with this shit after.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And something does change slowly, mind you, but what feels overwhelming eventually just becomes familiar, like any habit that you build, and anything that has felt scary before ends up feeling manageable.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is repetition.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: What felt like survival starts to feel like structure.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: You actually start to enjoy it.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's so good for your trauma healing to have dependability, to know what's coming in, and to know when your bills are paid and be thankful for it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing feeling.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to feel like safety.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of women end up with a much clearer, more conscious relationship with money than they ever had before.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they start really digging in to all the ways they may have overlooked their worth in the workplace, in terms of their labor and what it's worth, their contributions to relationships.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And most, if not every single one I've ever worked with vows never again to be dependent on someone else financially.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a win.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because they wanted to learn it this way, obviously.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's because they had to.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: But like women do, we step up and we absolutely knock it out the park.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're in that place right now where money feels heavy, stressful, or it's just like looming as a thing you have to deal with, you are not behind, you are not incapable, you're in the middle of learning something you were probably never taught properly, at least, and you probably have a real inaccurate sense of your worth and how much of a badass you actually are, and how you will prevail.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You will go out there, you will make money, and you will provide for your family the way that you always thought you could, but maybe have never tried, or maybe you need to go back to a career that you haven't been in in a while, you will smash it.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I am never not in awe of how resilient and amazing and resourceful women are.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You are not behind, you are not incapable, and you don't have to solve it all at once.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to stay connected, stay aware, and take the next right step in front of you with self-trust and feel in your gut that yes, this is the decision and move.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's scary, do it anyway.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Move scared, but do it.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: The next right step in front of you is enough.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sending you so much love.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, please submit your questions and I will answer listener questions in coming episodes.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.