My guest for this episode is Joy Slabough, who has an amazing combination of credentials uniquely suited to the field of financial therapy. She is a certified financial planner with a master’s in taxation from Villanova as well as a certified Internal Family Systems therapist with a master’s in counseling from Arcadia.
Our conversation begins with Joy’s personal story, which is integral to her professional path. She was raised in a cult that used money to control people and did not allow women to have money or power. This taught her that money meant power, and getting access to power was tied to money. Needing to work full-time to pay her way through college, Joy got a job at a financial planning office. This led to a successful career as a financial planner.
In Joy’s words: “I really loved a lot of things about this. I love the people aspect of it, the nerdy analytics, the strategy of it, the creative problem solving. And also I realized that every day I helped rich people get richer. I began questioning, is this really a life well lived?
So I decided to make a career change and thought it would be really meaningful to become a trauma counselor. I was planning on closing the financial chapter of my life. I went back to grad school, I studied counseling, I started working with clients, focusing on survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse. And I was stunned to realize that I was still talking about money in many of these conversations.”
Our conversation goes into more depth about Joy’s journey and bringing her career into alignment with her values. We also talk about trauma and healing.
One part of the discussion is Joy’s view of the idea that healing trauma is inherently painful. She believes we have a “window of tolerance within which healing can happen.” For practitioners, IFS offers many tools to help people bring whatever they’re experiencing within that window of tolerance so they are able to experience it without being flooded and overwhelmed. This makes it easier to go where you need to go in a way that your system can tolerate and that is healing and restorative.
I found this part of our conversation fascinating, and I think it will be especially thought-provoking for therapists who listen to the full episode.
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.