Money Trauma:

Healing with great consequence for our bodies, our self-worth, our relationship to the world,  and the Earth.

A Masterclass with David Bedrick

We meet the bigger world with a sense of an exchange that's built in to our psychics, an exchange of our gifts for a relationship with the world and its gifts. It's an exchange we try to align with, that feeds us, that gives us a sense of purpose, and often connects us the pains and suffering our lives are meant to address.

This exchange is deeply tied to our self-worth. It's not just an internal, psychological process; it requires us to manifest this exchange in the outside world in a way that aligns with our authentic self—our heart and soul.

There's no way of avoiding that part of that exchange for the value of our gifts is in regard to money.

Should it only be in terms of money? Absolutely not, but that doesn't mean that we are not violated then by those evaluations and parameters or by what’s communicated by our inner critics about our worth.

It doesn't mean we don't look for freedom to live true to our purpose without being constrained by that sense of self.

And it doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue financial exchange and reach for a remuneration that suits your soul and body in life.

But this honest relationship is aligned relationship that allows us to flow into the world, care for our security and insecurity, that's free from old stories of past generations, that's not held by market values, that unburden us of our deepest fears of scarcity is often walked in in a traumatic Weiss – trauma not spoken about in the world of trauma healing.

Creating an honest and aligned relationship with money allows us to:

  • Flow freely into the world and care for our security and insecurity

  • Release old stories passed down from past generations

  • Unburden our deepest fears of scarcity that may be filled with unaddressed trauma and often goes unaddressed in the world of trauma healing

Why when we're talking about money we don't talk about trauma?

How come we don't share the details of our spending, income and savings with people, even often within families of the more hidden details?

Maybe you're looking at the price tag of an item if you want. Maybe you're sitting with the bills that you have to pay. Maybe you're thinking about the income that you have and how you hope it grows. Or maybe you're worried and fearful of what will happen tomorrow and if will you be financially secure.

These moments are at once literal, meaning money can be counted and responsibly used and worked for, but these moments can also be riddled with old stories. 

And most importantly, these  stories are rarely linked only to those of early childhood,  but also of ancestors who made sacrifices, who wrestled to survive, or even to nations that were subject to  brutalization because of capitalism. We must also take heart of not only the victimization that occurred through money, but our connection to cultures and nations that perpetrated violence because of their wealth.

These energies become locked in and frozen in stories and experiences that live as trauma in our bodies and psyches.  They determine,  almost always unconsciously, our relationship with money.

The first order of business in addressing money trauma is seeing money as a relationship that we have, a relationship that we build, and a relationship that's formed by our early stories, just like any relationship would be. 

We know, for example,  that our relationship patterns often mirror our childhood relationships with  our families and parents . However,  this vision of understanding rarely is offered in the world of money. 

We don't think of being trauma bonded to money. 

We don't think of being abused by money. 

We don’t think of the nature of our attachment with regard to money. 

We don’t think of ourselves as coming from cultures that have been subject to brutalization because of lower financial status.

We don't think of ourselves as coming from cultures that have brutalized others. 

When we think about trauma, we usually think about physical and sexual violence that we've experienced in life, but are too  blind to our relationship with money as a flowing river creating our relationship to the big world.

Perhaps most importantly, our relationship with money impacts our relationship with the Earth itself because in capitalistic cultures, the vision of the Earth is as a resource to use. This not only injures the Earth and the myriad of species that are erased on a daily basis, but also affects our connection with our own soul because deep in that soul is an experience of our relationship with the Earth and how we treat her and how that leads to the flow of our loving in our ability to be loved.

In this program, I'm going to teach you how to begin looking at your clients relationship to money and how to unpack the trauma in there. 

Here are the best practices I'll teach you:

  • Working on our personal myth about money - working with our earliest memory 

  •  Accessing  the somatic experience connected to our relationship with money

  • Exploring our relationship to the Earth and it's intelligence about money 

  •  Unlocking our fantasies on having abundance and scarcity

What past students have said:

 “David makes a safe space for a deep deep healing and expression.”

“This work is so important, it’s profound.”

“David holds such beautiful space for a person, their experience, their unfolding.”

“Powerful to watch and hear David respond to the inner critic.”

DATE: Friday, August 29, 2026

TIME: 4:30pm-6pm Pacific

COST: $33

WHERE: on Zoom with recording available on Monday, September 1st.

CLASS DETAILS

MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:

David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of healers as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. David’s embodied way of teaching is far more than informational, students are often brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul. 

David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Over thirty years of research, teaching, and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people—seeing our sufferings and ills as something to fix and cure instead of messages to be understood and invitations to deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. In this way, David understands our difficulties as “dreams”—invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives. 

David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.  

His fourth book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic Books in November 2024.