My guest for this episode is Ed Coambs, who is what I call the gold standard of financial therapists. He is both a certified financial planner, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and a certified financial therapist. He’s also the author of The Healthy Love and Money Way: How the Four Attachment Styles Impact Your Financial Well-Being.
We talk a bit about the path Ed took to his current work. It started in a firehouse because Ed became a firefighter right out of high school. And as he puts it: “When I wasn’t running into burning buildings or going to car accidents, we were sitting around the fire station and the guys would complain about their wives and money. And I thought, well, I don’t want to have that problem.” That sparked his curiosity about personal finance and building wealth, which led eventually to becoming a therapist as well as doing his own internal work along the way. It’s a fascinating story in itself.
We also talk about attachment styles. Ed describes attachment theory, the psychology of attachment, as all about how our relationships help regulate us, see ourselves, and see other relationships.
We all have early primary relationships that set the tone for our quality of caregiving, our sense of who we are: whether we’re safe, lovable, and acceptable, or we’re unworthy, unacceptable, and unlovable. Those experiences get internalized into the neural structure of our brain and our nervous system, becoming our metaphorical lens through which we see every relationship.
One piece of this system is what’s called our attachment styles, the way we experience relationships. There are four broad categories: secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized. This does not mean all our relationships are exactly the same. Your experience of different people can fall into different categories, but you probably have a primary way that you experience relationships. In addition, there are different degrees or nuances within each type.
Secure. I feel mostly comfortable that I can meet my own emotional and relational needs, and I feel comfortable that I can turn to somebody else with emotional or relational needs. For example: I feel really excited about this new job opportunity, or I just got this great bonus or something else good happened to me. Someone with a secure attachment style will match and acknowledge that, not minimize or dismiss it.
Anxious. I see myself as less valuable and you as more valuable. I don’t think you can really know or understand me, but I’ll work really hard to try to get you to engage with me and understand my emotional world. But even if you do, I still might not feel it.
Avoidant. I’ve learned that relationships are not satisfying, people can’t understand my needs. So I will keep you at a distance, push you away, and not let you in.
Disorganized. Most humans are pretty relationally consistent in the way they show up and engage in relationships. But someone who has lived with caregivers or others who are very inconsistent in their availability—perhaps due to major mental health issues or addictions—may form a disorganized attachment style. Their brains have a very hard time predicting what they can expect relationally.
Attachment theory provides a way to try to make sense out of how people will experience a relationship, and then how they will navigate the money side of things. This is especially helpful in working with couples, where each partner brings their own attachment lens and set of experiences to the coupleship.
This is only part of what we discussed; there is much more in our full conversation.
Check out The Financial Therapy Podcast by Rick Kahler concerning this topic.