Overcoming Financial Trauma: A Path to Healing and Empowerment is a powerful episode packed with insights you can apply to your own financial journey. Money often exposes our deepest wounds, but it also offers opportunities for healing. In this episode, we explore what financial trauma is, where it comes from, and, most importantly, how you can reclaim your financial power, no matter your history.
My guest is Rahkim Sabree, a financial therapist, author, and speaker specializing in helping individuals and organizations overcome financial trauma. He combines lived experience, clinical insight, and cultural critique to create transformative conversations around money, mental health, and empowerment. His forthcoming book, Overcoming Financial Trauma (Wiley, 2025), expands his mission to redefine financial wellness through a trauma-informed and trauma-responsive lens.
Order his new book, Overcoming Financial Trauma, here: https://a.co/d/dITl2sj
Follow Rahkim’s thought leadership here: https://rahkimsabree.substack.com/
Website: https://www.rahkimsabree.com/
Forbes column: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rahkimsabree/
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The Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast’s mission is to empower women to approach money confidently, reframe their financial habits, and build a future where their money is a tool for opportunity and security. Through Dr. Sev Talks Money YouTube channel and Podcast, I provide actionable advice and inspiration to help you achieve financial freedom. Join me for one-on-one coaching, group sessions, workshops, or speaking engagements as we journey to financial empowerment together. It’s never too late to begin again—let’s make it happen!
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Podcast Transcript
When I talk about financial trauma and the definition that I use is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way that you view, interact with or believe about money. I’m looking at the experiences that we did not have as well as the experiences that we had first person, right? I’m looking at the experiences that we had through observation, right? Maybe our parents argued about money, maybe we had a friend who was navigating poverty and we saw the conditions that they navigated and that influences how we engage with money. Maybe we listen to a financial educator who, who you know, calls people idiot and stupid and tells them, you know, maybe that influences financial trauma
Hey, hey, hey, Savvy squad. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Sev Talks Money, YouTube and podcast, where we empower women to manage money confidently.
Today’s guest is Rahkim Sabree, a financial therapist and thought leader on financial trauma. Today we’re going to be exploring how financial trauma affects our lives and discuss ways to heal and empower ourselves through financial therapy. We’re also going to be talking about his new book titled Overcoming Financial Trauma. Rahkim, welcome to the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast.
Thank you. Thank you. I’m excited to be here.
So, I’d like to kick it off with a fun question as an icebreaker. So here goes. If you could have dinner with any historical figure, living or dead, who would it be and why?
So I’ve been asked this question a couple of times, and we’re gonna look different today. I would pick Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison. Because I. I did not. I was familiar with her growing up, but I did not read her her books. Just had only heard about her genius as an author. And so recently I decided I was going to dive into her work.
And so I’m currently reading a book of hers, and just very. It’s a different experience than reading books by white authors. She really encapsulates the black experience and has her own style. I mean, just written genius. And so I would absolutely want to have a conversation with her, talking about her work, her process, what went into the intentionality and how she delivered her messaging, because she was very intentional about telling black stories and centering the black experience. And I know we’re going to talk about my book a little bit later, but that was kind of the vibe or the energy that I tried to capture in writing my book. So definitely Toni Morrison.
Okay. I like that. Yes. She is a. To me, a powerful writer. I’m not a writer, so I may not be using the right word, but to me, powerful represents who she is as a writer. So before we get into the book, I’d like you to share with the audience the pivotal moment or moments that made you realize financial trauma was impacting your life and your financial decisions. What would some of those be? And maybe listeners can see themselves in your scenario.
Sure. So I didn’t have the vocabulary for financial trauma until I want to say, maybe 2021, 2022. I had just finished publishing my second book, Financially Irresponsible. And in the process of writing that book, I was reading a book by Dr. Joy DeGruy called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome where she explores the intergenerational transfer of trauma from the time of slavery in the United States history up through Jim Crow up through present day. And what she illustrates in her book and through this syndrome that she developed is that the impact of slavery and the conditions around slavery specifically trigger a post traumatic stress like response that not only does the individual who is having the, the trauma inflicted onto them experience, but the individuals that come after them through generations. And so as I was reading this, I drew parallels to how financial socialization, again I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe this at the time, but how financial socialization is also passed down through our genetics, through our culture, through our engagement with the previous generations. And you know, intergenerational transfer of trauma is a mouthful of words, but generational trauma was like the abbreviated version.
And so I’m like generational trauma applied to finance financial trauma. And that’s how I landed on the phrasing. I didn’t realize at the time that financial trauma was a defined kind of concept already existing in the behind of academia and like clinical work around behavior. So I thought that I created the term. So I’m using it as such, as if I created the term financial trauma until I bump up against some financial psychologists and financial therapists, I’m like, oh, I didn’t make this up. So that is how I started using the term in terms of my own experiences and recognizing what financial trauma looks like. I think I’ve always kind of recognized that I just, like I said, didn’t have vocabulary. My parents were young parents.
I tell this story often. The shaping of my money story was really influenced by my parents separation and realizing what the household finances look like. Being involved in the administration of the household finances, particularly as an extension of my mom.
Right.
So I became aware of the fact that we had section eight, that we had food stamps. I was involved in helping to budget the food stamps balance. I was involved in helping to walk the rent money over to the property management, very involved in some of the day-to-day management of household finances. And I didn’t realize at the time, but a lot of the reinforcement of those experiences started to leak into what I valued and what I believed was possible for myself by way of home ownership, by way of. And then it’s look like financially. I started to describe it in 2019 as aspiring to be poor. When I was at that age, and this is probably late teens, maybe in the 13 to 16 year old range, I’m thinking, okay, when I’m an adult and I go out on my own, I’m going to apply for Section 8, I’m going to apply for food stamps. This is my reality.
Yeah.
And because conversations around money are often not had at home and because my mom was so in the day to day minutia of what surviving looked like, we never really got to discuss that, you know, this is a temporary fix or that this is not something that you should be aspiring for. I just thought, okay, this is what, you know, we’re doing to survive. And so obviously this is what makes sense. I think that was super pivotal in terms of the foundation of understanding financial trauma. But certainly as I grew up and I started to learn more about financial products, financial services, I worked in the banking industry for a decade, engaging with consumers on the wealth spectrum, leaving the 9 to 5 environment and going into entrepreneurship, all of these things will trigger financial trauma at different points. So really the expanded view of financial trauma that I talk about today is kind of a culmination of my own experience, practitioners experience of working with individuals, academic experience. So learning about financial trauma, learning about financial therapy and financial counseling, and they really just kind of put it all on a ball.
Right.
And talking about it through this multi layered lens that is practitioner, academic and experience based.
Yeah. You said something very key that I think listeners should latch onto. Because of your experience with, for example, Section 8, your thought process was, when I get older, I’m going to get Section 8 because that’s what you were socialized to. And a lot of times when even we, as you know, practitioners, we can sometimes be judgmental of people because we think, why are they not doing better? If you don’t know better, you can’t do better. And you know, you, you’ve mentioned that after you’ve been socialized and you’ve been exposed to certain things and you realize this is a temporary thing. So for whoever’s listening, I want you to hear that and know that wherever you are financially, that may be all you know and you may see other people doing other things. I want you to know that you have the opportunity, you can have the opportunity to get out of what we’re, what you’re in. As Rahkim said, exposure allowed him to see that that was not, does didn’t have to be a permanent situation.
And I just want to mention also, you talked about the homeownership. You’ve helped people purchase their first homes, you know, after overcoming financial trauma. What advice would you give to individuals who feel like home ownership, especially in today’s environment, is out of reach due to their past, not so much the finances, but due to their past financial mistakes or financial trauma?
Yeah, I love this question because I’m starting to see a narrative pushed on social media and even traditional forms of media that millennials, later millennials and gen zers are opting to rent over own, that it’s more convenient, that it’s less expensive, et cetera, et cetera. And I’m certainly an advocate for ownership in whatever form that takes, whether that is the home, whether that’s investing in a stock market or what have you. But my advice to individuals who are looking to pursue it is that first of all, it’s possible.
Right.
I think like that’s a baseline that we have to acknowledge, not perceiving this as something that’s out of reach, but also understanding that in recognizing that this is possible, that certainly there are going to be obstacles to overcome. And so you talked about when you know better, you do better. And I agree with that statement to the extent that, yes, the exposure is important, but also I’m not insensitive to the fact that there are variables outside of our control. There are variables outside of our control.
Right.
And some of those systemic variables can influence what wages look like and how you pursue income. It can influence what lending looks like, whether the lending is predatory or non predatory. We’re seeing examples of predatory lending kind of resurfacing in today’s environment, what credit scoring looks like and how that’s used against you if you have made mistakes in the past. And so I think as a part of the next step from exposure is the education piece and understanding like where’s the lay of the land?
Right.
We do not navigate a perfect system or it’s imperfectly perfect system or perfectly imperfect system rather, in that it was designed in a very specific way to benefit a very specific group of people. We acknowledge that. We do not become victims to that. And so in understanding the lay of the land, I think the education piece is super important to say, okay, this is the board. These are where the obstacles are present. How do I navigate around those obstacles? And sometimes that may look like enlisting the help of a financial counselor or financial therapist or financial coach to say, hey, I need to come up with a plan. And maybe that plan is getting exposure to programs that will help provide a down payment assistance.
Right.
Maybe that plan is gathering a group of people and practicing a communal or group economic practice that allows for us to facilitate homeownership. Looking at how other cultures navigate what home ownership looks like, because people are still buying houses and selling houses market. And so if we look at things through the non traditional lenses that says this is the only way, then we can kind of figure out what is a creative financing approach or what is a creative ownership approach, or what is a group ownership approach that allows for us to achieve our goal. Just not in the way that, you know, you might see on TV.
Right.
When I bought, I bought back in 2016. I use FHA loan, so I put down three and a quarter and, and that’s how I was able to buy my house. But I know people who pursued conventional loan, they put down 20%, right. That is like, what is the like, I guess, all American like approach that is advertised to you. I know people who have purchased multifamily homes through the NACA program, so they’re putting down no down payment. I know people who have teamed up with other people and, and purchased houses together. So there are like so many different ways to skin a cat. And I think it’s important to be sensitive to people’s reality, but also to challenge ourselves to look outside of the boxes and the boundaries that may prevent us from doing it a particular way.
I love that you said that. And it’s given them, whoever’s listening, so many options to think outside the box, so to speak. Before we jump into your book, we know that financial inclusion plays some role in healing financial trauma, especially for underserved communities. Can you talk a little to that?
Yeah. Where do I begin? When we use the word or the phrase rather financial inclusion, you know, certainly that implies that there’s been financial exclusion. And I think a lot of times financial, where financial education or traditional financial education has fallen short is that it’s often delivered through a lens of this, like cookie cutter, you know, everybody starting on the same level, everybody has the same opportunities, everybody is here, right? And it is the series of choices that we make that make us successful or unsuccessful. The problem with that phrasing or that positioning rather, is that people begin to assign their identity to their finances, right? Their Credit score by way of how much debt they have or they don’t have by way of what they own or what they don’t own by way of how much money they make or they don’t make. And so because it is often approached through this kind of like binary lens, if I have it or, or if I don’t have it, if I have it, I’m doing good. If I don’t have it, I’m doing bad. Usually that will come with feelings of guilt or shame, sometimes fear, sometimes anger. And those feelings can create a loop that says, okay, I’m feeling shameful or I’m feeling guilty or I’m feeling anxious.
And so how do I resolve this? How do I regulate my nervous system here? I’m going to go out and do this thing. And it may not be the most practical thing, but it is the thing that alleviates the pain in that moment. So when we talk about financial inclusion and we talk about financial trauma, I think that you cannot talk about financial trauma. This is going to be a bar financial trauma without talking about race.
Yeah.
Someone let that breathe.
Right
Cannot talk about financial trauma without talking about race being. Is that the foundation. The fabric of America was built on race theory, that black people or stolen Africans at the bottom of the. Of the totem pole and placed into an intended permanent underclass. We look at the atrocities of slavery and then we look at subsequent events in history like Jim Crow and redlining and the civil rights movement all the way up through present. And now in post Trump America, we’re starting to see things roll backwards, it’s very evident that black people were not ever thought of as being equal or thought of as being deserving of the same opportunities as white counterparts. And so when we took, when we acknowledge race theory, and I’m intentional about my language here, because the concept of race is a social construct, right? So there’s no such thing as race. But when we acknowledge race theory and we point out white supremacy, that said, or the theory of white supremacy, or the ideology of white supremacy, that says that if you’re white, you’re right, and if you’re black, like you’re wrong, that shows up in financial exclusion, that shows up in the policies, that shows up in the education, that shows up in a legal system, that shows up in medicine, that shows up in history in the way that we are socialized to engage with the world and in the way that they are socialized to engage with the world and to engage with us.
So I think it’s super important to talk about Race as a part of the spectrum of that is financial trauma. Because the race theory birthed the way that we practice capitalism in the west and around the world now.
Right.
Race theory birthed how the navigation of social classes and the unfortunate mistake that some upwardly mobile black Americans and also other model minorities.
Right.
Non white individuals who are, who are looking for or pursuing a proximity to whiteness make is that they believe that upward mobility by way of class gives them the respect or the validation or the humanity that race has put them at the bottom of totem pole and then they have to have their wake up call.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
So when we talk about financial inclusion, I think again, it’s important for us to address these things because it does not just impact black people. And I think when we start talking like spicy like this, people like, oh, you know, talking that DEI stuff, they’re talking that critical race theory stuff, they’re talking that, you know, black stuff. But no, it has a ripple effect on everybody else, including poor white Americans, including middle class Americans and also the wealthy Americans.
Right.
Because if we’re engaging in capitalism, there has to be like the winners and the losers.
Yes.
So, you know, what, what class are you in? Are you Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos or you know, are you Rahkim Sabree? Right. So that’s not to say that we can’t aspire for wealth or that we can’t leverage the systems that exist to build wealth, but it is to say that it’s important for us to be able to name a thing. And in naming the thing, looking at the landscape, looking at the obstacles, and then learning how do we navigate through those obstacles to make what it is that we desire a reality for ourselves.
Yeah, I was trying to explain what you just said to somebody. You said it so much better because this is not my lane. I was trying to explain to my brother and you said it so much better. And I’m hoping that whoever’s listening really open your ears, not in a defensive way, but really listen and then ex and look around you to see what’s really happening. And is there a nugget of truth in what we just talked about? You know, honestly open yourself to, to examine. So with that, I want to jump into your book.
Yeah.
Overcoming Financial Trauma. What was the driver behind your book? And, and what do you hope people learn from reading the book?
You know, great question, I, I paused here because I have been so in the weeds of creating like the book just, was just finished. So in the weeds of creating that. I have not had the opportunity to really, like, slow down and savor what it is that I just birthed into the world. So when you ask that question, what is the driver? My knee jerk response was, well, it was accident, right? Like, I didn’t plan on writing Overcoming Financial Trauma. I have a newsletter on substack called Overcoming Financial Trauma. I have a podcast that, like, I haven’t been keeping up with called Overcoming Financial Trauma. And I’m like, this is the lane that I have chosen over the last three years. When people hear Rahkim Sabree, usually they associate me with financial trauma, but the opportunity came across my path.
And initially my idea for a book was to do a second edition of Financially Irresponsible because I’ve grown significantly in knowledge and experiences since 2019. And so some of the positioning and delivery of content that exists in Financially Irresponsible is just not consistent with the person that I am today. But the publisher, and this is my first traditionally published book, was like, no, like, we don’t want something that’s recycled. We want something original. Can you give us a new idea? And I’m like, well, you know, what am I known for? What is the space that I’ve dedicated myself to over the last three years? And certainly it’s been financial trauma. So initially, the idea was to discuss financial trauma through a lens of financial therapy. And this is the first time I’m saying this, like, in a public forum, so it might be jarring to some people, but I found that discussing financial trauma through a purely financial therapy perspective was too limiting. So I’m affiliated with the Financial Therapy association at the time of this recording.
I sit on their board, you know, very engaged with that community. I’m also affiliated with the AFCPE Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. I carry the AFC, very involved with that community as well. But I’ve been talking about financial trauma before I even knew what these entities look like, before I even knew that they existed. And so when writing this book, in the preface to the book, I outlined that, right? Like, yes, certainly I can pull on credibility that comes from the education and the affiliation with these organizations. However, this is being driven by the experiences that Rahkim Sabree has had outside of that. And so in doing that and making that declaration, both externally and internally, what I was able to do was widen or expand the way that financial trauma is approached. Because a clinical approach to financial trauma or the definition of financial trauma through a purely academic lens that might be more so aligned to members or practitioners or Academics, yea, might speak to a flashpoint experience that somebody has around money.
That is a first person experience, right? I experienced job loss, I experienced homelessness, I experienced a repossession. When I talk about financial trauma and the definition that I use is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way that you view, interact with or believe about money. I’m looking at the experiences that we did not have as well as the experiences that we had first person, right? I’m looking at the experiences that we had through observation, right? Maybe our parents argued about money, maybe we had a friend who was navigating poverty and we saw the conditions that they navigated and that influences how we engage with money. Maybe we listen to a financial educator who, who you know, calls people idiot and stupid and tells them, you know, maybe that influences financial trauma. And, and my bread and butter, when I talk about financial trauma is the surfacing of epigenetic research that talks about how genes are expressed by way of previous exposure to trauma. Not just trauma, but environmental factors, right? So epigenetic research can look like the foods that we eat, whether or not we smoke, whether or not we drink, what kind of, what is the quality of the air that we breathe, what is the quality of the water that we drink, right? There are environmental factors that outside of us, but also there are internal factors, the stress, the anxiety, the abuse that we may navigate. What we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Those are gonna, those are gonna change how our genes are expressed. Not how our genes are structured, but how they are expressed, which can lead to things like higher blood pressure, which can lead to diseases like cancer, which can lead to heart disease, which can lead to, you name it, right? And those are all first person experiences. But when those genes change the way that they are expressed and we have children, we pass on the impact of these environmental factors. And when they have children, they pass on these environmental factors. And so when we look at the connection between epigenetic research, which is more so like biologic or biochemical or even bio neurological, and how that shows up as a result of prolonged stress by way of financial exclusion, right? By way of oppression, by way of I have to survive off of the scraps of the animal rather than, you know, the good parts, those things can show up as trauma and exist in our body. And because we don’t know or we don’t have a name for it, we don’t ever get the opportunity to metabolize that trauma. And then going back to Joy DeGruy or Dr.
Joy DeGruy’s, work around the intergenerational transfer of trauma. And she’s not the only person that has done research on this, but she’s the person that I point to. We are passing on this trauma that is not just a psychological occurrence, but a body occurrence. Trauma in our body. We’re storing trauma in, like, the way that we breathe, the way that we carry ourselves and our muscles. And in my research around trauma, in the process of writing this book, what I’ve learned is that trauma is not just a brain event, and therefore we cannot talk therapy our way out of trauma. That was a big revelation to me in the process of writing this book. So we have to embrace somatic practice that allows for us to metabolize the trauma that’s in our body through movement, through song, through touch, through breath, work, through affirmations.
We have to rewire what’s happening inside of our bodies and what’s happening inside of our brains. Before we can do that, we have to acknowledge the factors that influence the condition of our present selves. So in the process of, you know, doing all of this research, I looked at a variety of different sources. I looked at a variety of different disciplines, which often is not explored in traditional financial therapy. So I’m looking at neuroscience. I’m looking at social theory, I’m looking at intergenerational transfer trauma. I’m looking at epigenetic studies. I’m looking at capitalism and the impact of capitalism.
Capitalism. I’m looking at polyvagal theory. I’m looking at the triune brain theory. What are the fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses. I’m looking at my own experiences, right? And so I break my book up into three parts. Three parts of the framework that I introduced called the three E’s. And I’ve been talking about three E’s for a while, but I’ve really fully developed it in the process of writing this book. Those three E’s are exposure, which we talked about a little bit earlier, education and execution.
And so the first book, I talk about six different sources of financial trauma. And those six sources being generational or genetic, vicarious or observational, financial instability or poverty, institutional or systemic, workplace or employment, and then family, societal and religious. And so I go through each one of these and I tell stories of my own experiences, or I present case studies of experiences, people that I’ve worked with and how that shows up in their behaviors. And pointing out like, this is a source of trauma, this is a source of trauma, this is a source of trauma, and then move into the education piece and say, okay, now that we know that these are the sources of trauma, what’s happening in your body? What’s happening in your brain? What, like, how are we reacting to this? How does this show up with our money? How does this show up with the way that we traditionally talk about financial literacy? How does it show up with bank products and services? How do, how do banks and credit unions engage the community that they have lost the trust of as a result of the institutional systemic trauma? And then I move into the execution phase where I talk people through rewriting their money narratives, establishing financial boundaries, building community so that community can look like like minded people. That community can look like financial professionals, whether that, whether they be financial therapists, financial counselors, financial coaches, mortgage lenders, real estate agents, whatever. Social responsibility, right? So you achieve a level of wealth or a level of financial success and you are trying to figure out, what do I do with this money? Rather than just checking off the box and say, hey, I’m just gonna donate X amount to this charitable fund. So I get the tax write off, being more intentional about how you recirculate them in your community. I have a chapter on how to build a financial wellness program that’s geared towards HR professionals.
So they acknowledge that their employees are experiencing financial trust and stress and life financial trauma as a result of the economic warfare that they’re engaged in through financial funding, which I introduced in the first part. And so really I just wanted to like pour everything. Like the idea, the mentality that I had when I was writing this was if I don’t do anything else, like I want this to be like the mark. If I don’t, if I don’t write a book, if I don’t write another article, if I don’t do another interview, I want this to be the mark, the thing that really just kind of like cements my legacy. And so I put a lot into it. There were, I contracted for a certain word count and so I existed within that word count. I’m sure that there are themes and topics and ideas that I could have gone on, you know, forever on and certainly want to create some latitude for me to be able to talk through some of these concepts and workshops and speaking engagements or whatever in the future. But that was, that was the intent, that was the driver of writing the book.
I wanted it to be like a comprehensive guide to financial trauma. And the space hasn’t been as noisy, hasn’t always been as noisy as it is now. When I first started talking about it, I didn’t Hear anybody else talking about it. Now everybody’s talking about financial trauma. But what I love about the liberties that I’ve taken with expanding the definition of financial trauma and really leaning into my own experiences and my own research is that people can regurgitate what they hear about financial trauma all day. But what are the new ideas that you’re creating to identify and address financial trauma? How are you moving people through financial trauma? Do you even recognize that you have to engage in some form of somatic healing to metabolize that trauma? Or are you just going to talk about it? Or are you just going to position your product as something that helps people overcome financial trauma? Because.
Oh, boy. Yeah.
And it’s taken me a long time to get to this place. I have a good friend who’s also a content creator who asked me, what, like, how are you solving people’s financial trauma? When I started my substack? And I’m like, I’m not. In fact, that’s kind of the intentionality behind the title, Overcoming Financial Trauma. It’s present, progressive, it’s ongoing.
Right?
Yeah.
This is how you overcome financial trauma. But in the process of writing this book, I think I’ve given certainly much more of a complete approach to identifying, getting educated on, and moving through financial trauma than I’ve seen out there. The only thing that comes close to. To what I’ve seen as it relates to a complete project or a complete program, rather, is the Trauma of Money by Chantelle Chapman. And, you know, I regard her very much as a peer in the space. There are a lot of overlap in the work that we do, what we talk about, how we talk about it. She has a book called the Trauma of Money coming out a few months before mine does. But in her book, she references me, my work, my experiences.
And in my book, I reference her, her work, her experiences. So there is a sort of collaboration that allows for our work to complement each other. And I think, you know, there can’t be enough resources. I just. My goal was to get to the finish line before anybody else did.
Well, I can tell you I love your. You probably saw me jotting notes, but I loved your definition of financial trauma. And I’m going to make sure I pop that out in the podcast because I think that’s something that the layperson can really relate to, because we’re speaking to the layperson. We’re speaking to professionals also, because there are a lot of professionals, as you mentioned, who you Know, this is about a product for them, and we want it to be more than a product. We want it to be. I care about these people, and how can I really serve these people? It’s not about money, and it’s not. Yes, we want to be paid, but it’s not about the money so much as making sure that what I am putting out there is not harming the people that I say I’m wanting to serve. So you said so much that I could just dive into a lot of it, but I don’t even know if I want to do that because I’m probably going to ask the wrong questions because it was so rich.
And this is. Since this is not my lane, I’m just going to let you take it.
I’m going to let you do it.
Yeah. But I think this is going to be. This is a great product that anyone can learn from. And I would strongly urge my. My listeners to lean into this because we see people go abroad to live. And I hear a constant theme of my. I let my. My shoulders go down.
My shoulders go down. And some of the things you were talking about, the inherited trauma, all of those things now, they’re in a space where they’re not so much on guard because the US Is a great country. I’m not from here, and I have lived here. And it’s a great country, great opportunities. But for black people, the opportunities are capped. They are. There seem to be capped in a certain way because, yes, we want you to be successful. No, no, no, not so successful.
Not quite that. Not much. And when you go to these other countries now, your shoulders go down. And there’s a reason for that. And Rahkim said that so beautifully that I don’t even want to repeat that. And anything else you want to add?
No, I. I appreciate. I appreciate that framing. And in writing the book, I also tried to envision what like, I wanted the message to be universal.
Right.
So, yes, I’m talking about financial trauma through the lens of my experience. And certainly my experience was the experience of a black man, a millennial black man in America. But also I wanted the essence of what I was talking about to be a universal message. And so I’ll allow the readers to judge whether or not I was successful. But I really tried to remove myself from the parts where I am educating and then pour so much more of myself into the parts where I’m sharing. And so even in my writing about. I have a tendency to use we and us a lot in my writing because I share in the experience, I remind myself, like Rahkim, you’re positioning yourself as the expert on this topic, right? And so you need to talk to you like the person, right? And so there’s different parts in the book where I’m more intentional about using we and us as framing and then where I’m like, you, you, you, this is your experience, this is how you do this. And I’ve said this many times over the years, but I’ll say it again, like I don’t ever tell people what to do.
I let people know what I do and what has worked for me and I invite them to share in that. There is a chapter where I talk about culture and how we define culture is up to us, right? And how we invite others into culture is also up to us. And how we use culture as a weapon or how culture is used as a weapon against us. It’s also a thing, right. And so I spent some time talking about how do we look at things that we accept as law or that we accept that as kind of like the rules of engagement and really recognize that we have more power and influencing how that shows up and how that plays in our own lives, in the lives of our family and the lives of our community and kind of being brave, right? And saying, you know what, like this doesn’t work for me or I want to try something different and then really standing, standing by that. So although I talk about it certainly through the lens of my own experience, it is definitely a universal concept. And I think, I do believe the book is going to be printed not just in the United States, but around the world. So I think people in Australia and Europe and Asia are going to see the book and they’re probably going to relate to it.
And it will give a lot of insight too into how American capitalism has influenced a lot of these systems.
Right.
This book have a really strong critique of capitalism, but it’s not explicitly anti capitalist. I think, you know, that’s going to be certainly some discourse that’s had when the book comes out where you know, you have the red blooded Americans like, oh, you know, this is anti American. You’re a socialist commie. Like I’m expecting those kind of responses. But advocate for socialism or communism in the book, I just point out, like what is the truth, as you mentioned earlier, around the exploitative nature of capitalism and how we’ve had to learn how to constantly consume, consume, consume, how this process of consumption and overconsumption has dysregulated our nervous system and how we can find our way back into our body by engaging in certain practices or by recognizing that there have been intentional efforts to disengage us with our body so that we are constantly looking for ways to regulate our body by spending money that’s not by accident. And so I gave some examples there and really kind of like start leaning a little bit into quantum theory and the metaphysics of, you know, you can conceptualize. And I don’t talk explicitly about the, what is it, Law of attraction, but I kind of took around it and, and I reference Dr. Joe Dispenza and his work in Becoming Supernatural because it is scientifically backed and it’s not just like Rahkim introducing some woo woo fake science.
But I tried very hard to make sure that the sources that I pulled from were academic sources. And so, you know, I mentioned Dr. Joy DeGroy, I spoke about her, her work in the book. I referenced post traumatic slave syndrome, Dr. Claude Anderson. He’s a capitalist, hardcore capitalist, black capitalist and economists. So I reference him and his work in my book. Dr. Joe Dispenza, neuroscientist. I reference him and his work in my book. Dr. Russell Minikim, who is focused on racialized trauma. I reference him and his work in my book. Of course I mentioned Dr. Brad Klontz and you know, financial psychology and, and financial therapy in the book, the money scripts and money disorders. And I challenge some of them as well.
Like hey, this sounds good on paper but like what does the reality look like about something like financial enmeshment where you know, single mom has to depend on 15 year old Rahkim to go and pay the rent or manage the, the food stamps.
Right.
That’s a function of survival. It’s not necessarily, you know, disordered behaviors, what we have to do. So there’s a lot of cultural critique and commentary in the book. I think people that know me will pick up on some of the hints of nuance and the way that I talk about things or my humor or how I get serious and kind of tone things down and how I might speed things up. So I’m really excited about it. It’s something I’m very proud of.
Yeah, sounds very meaty, very. Not one of those books that’s just out there just to say I wrote a book. Yeah. So I, I know I can’t wait to dive into it. And you mentioned Chantal. I’m saying her name right. That’s one thing that’s on my list to do the trauma of Money because I really want to, to understand my clients. I want to not just serve them, but with the personal finance thing I want to, to help uncover some things and if there’s things I can’t manage, then I want to of course refer them to people like you, which go to that.
Let’s, let’s talk about how you can serve clients, how they can contact you to serve you. We want to talk about your substack and, and also how if individual clients, if you serve individual clients, how they can contact you to, to, to, to talk through financial trauma or any other financial related topics.
Yeah, for sure. So I think the way that you phrase that was perfectly. Because usually I will point somebody to my substack that is like the direct or the most direct access to me that, you know, the average everyday consumer is going to have. I haven’t been writing for it as regularly because I’ve been in the process of writing this book. So I’m going to start ramping that up again. And I do have a column with Forbes as well that I’ll contribute to. Forbes doesn’t get as raw and real as my substack does because, you know, they have their editorial guidelines. But it is kind of an institutional platform that I can use to share the message of financial trauma and what overcoming looks like in terms of working with people one on one.
I do work with people one on one on a rolling basis. So it’s not like a consistent open service that I offer primarily because I find that I’m more effective in working one to many. So what that looks like is I will come to your organization and speak to your employees or speak to your target audience or speak to the individuals that are customer facing. So, for example, next week I’m flying out to Milwaukee and I’m doing a full day training for a group of housing counselors and credit counselors and credit union leaders on financial trauma.
Right.
These are individuals that are engaged with people. I think that so much harm is done by financial inadvertently when we’re delivering our financial content and when we perpetuate this myth, and I kind of talk about this in the book as well, that oh, they just need more financial literacy, especially in underserved communities. They just need more financial literacy. My argument or rebuttal to that is the, you know, the people in underserved communities are sometimes more financially illiterate than the individuals who have the high income simply by fun, you know, by a function of survival.
Right.
They know how to rob people, how to rob Peter to pay Paul. They know how to budget between, you know, what their Social Security checks look like or between, you know, the re up on their food stamps balances. And so budgeting is not a problem for them, their engagement or lack thereof with financial systems is a problem. And so when we look at the root cause of that lack of engagement and I call that the willful non participation in financial systems, we have to look at the systemic mistrust that underserved communities have of these financial systems because these financial institutions have caused harm, right? Have created trauma. And so there are messaging that exists in our bones but also by word of mouth culturally within our families that says, oh, I don’t trust the bank so I’m going to keep my money under a mattress, I’m going to keep my money in a drawer. Or I don’t trust the stock market because I lost all my money in the stock market at whatever time. Or I don’t trust life insurance because grandpa had a life insurance policy and they never paid it out or whatever. Like maybe they don’t understand the nuances of how to navigate these systems.
And so they’re viewing what was the disqualifier as a prejudice because they’re black or because they’re, you know, enter your identity, right? And so you can’t go to somebody who doesn’t trust you and force them to sit through your financial literacy program and expect that they’re going to ingest and adopt it without creating a foundation for why that you should trust, why they should trust you first place. And so a lot of my work lately has been more in the train to trainer environment where I’m working with individuals who are going out and providing financial education resources to give them a trauma responsive lens which is a little bit different than trauma informed. In that trauma informed just says, hey, I’m aware of the fact that I can trigger your trauma. Trauma responsive is, I’m aware of the fact that I can trigger your trauma and I’m going to give you tools to work through that trauma trauma. So we hear trauma informed language often and I don’t have a problem with it, but this was a correction that Russell Minim actually directly gave to me. He’s like, hey, trauma informed is bs, right? Like you, you are trauma responsive. You’re providing solutions to help people move through what it is that they’re experiencing. And that’s a lot of the work that I do.
So that was my long, long, long way of telling people, subscribe to my substack. When you subscribe to my sub stack, email automatically goes out introducing me and asking you to introduce yourself to me. That is the opportune time to let me know that you are interested in one on one services and I can then follow up by letting you know if I have availability in my schedule and if that is that I am open to doing at that particular point in time. I do also exist in the directory for the Financial Therapy Association. So if you are looking for a financial therapist and you go to financial therapy association.org and you search for financial therapist, I will be there. And I’m also in the directory for the AFCPE under Find an AFC.
Yes, yes. And I have put on the screen RahkimSabree.Substack.com and that’s going to be in the show notes on YouTube and on the podcast. Now for your book, will they be able to find the book through the through links in your Substack or will they need to go somewhere else to find the book?
So I haven’t updated my Substack to include the book information yet, partially because. So we’re still in the pre order stage at the time of this recording.
Right.
The book is not due for release until November 12, 2025. So depending on, you know, when you hear this, the book will either be in the process of production or available to the public. It is available on Amazon, it is available on Barnes and Noble, it is available through Books a Million and Bookshop. So if you want to support a local independent bookstore, it could be black owned, could be women owned, could be LGBTQ owned, whatever independent bookstore that you’re looking to support. And that’s something I highly encourage. Instead of Jeff Bezos, all of our money, okay, definitely look for the book through bookshop.com and if they don’t have it at your Barnes and Noble or if they don’t have it in your independent book store store, you can request it. I highly encourage you to request it so that they know that there is certainly a hunger and a desire for this material to be present because it won’t by default be in every bookstore. But as of right now, yes, you gotta take the extra step.
My call to action at the as we wrap this up is to go in and update my Substack so that it’s easier for people to to find. But as as of, I want to say, like the last week is when I’ve been talking about it from a pre order perspective. I’ve been sending out the Amazon link.
Okay. Wow, this has been so rich. This is like getting all the meat off the bone. And I can’t thank you enough for appearing on my little old podcast to share so much. This has blessed me, and I know that it will bless my. My community. I’m going to definitely make sure that when it’s. When it’s released, I send it to all my family members.
Y’ all hear me? Y’ all better watch it. Listen. Yeah. Because we don’t know what we don’t know. And, and sometimes if we can put a name to it, then we can find a solution. But if we just kind of like, well, I’m not sure, you know, we just in limbo, but if we can put a name to it, maybe we can say, okay, this is what it is. Now, how do I find a solution? And I think we. You shared quite a number of things that people can get your teeth into and say, well, what do I do next? Because I recognize myself into some of this discussion.
So.
Yeah.
And I’ll also add to, like, on that point, so important. And I’m, you know, shame on me for not mentioning this earlier, that when people hear this message and they recognize themselves in the words that I use, please know that you are not alone.
Right.
Like other people going through the experience as well. And in fact, one of the. The steps to financial healing that I illustrate in the book is building community. And I think that that is super important. Capitalism isolates collectivism or some form of collectivism will, you know, bring us together. So that this is another key insight from Russell Mannequin, when we had a conversation, he goes, you cannot provide an individual solution for a group problem.
Yeah.
Or from a societal problem.
Right.
And I’m butchering it. But the gist of it is when we look at the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow and the impact of capitalism by way of the exploitation that exists not just among the black community, but brown community and, you know, people of color and up to and including poor white people, we have to recognize that this is not just a. This is impacting you Rahkim, or this was designed to impact you Rahkim. This is a people problem. And so while a lot of my work aims to help people move through their financial trauma as individuals, my hope is that the movement around the awareness that comes with overcoming financial trauma turns into group work terms, into community work that says, hey, I recognize you and I’m not in competition with you, so I don’t need to go out and buy the watch, the car, the house to compete with you, because I recognize that we are both struggling within the same system. How can we collaborate or how can we build community? Or not necessarily build community, but how can we act in a communal way so that we can alleviate the stress and the pressure and the threat that our body is registering when we are experiencing financial trauma?
Yeah. I love that. Love that. Thank you so much. Again, any last words that you want to share? Okay.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your platform. It is much a blessing to me as you have shared has been to you.
Yeah. And please don’t forget to go check him out. And I am not subscribed, so I need to make sure I go over there and subscribe to Rahkim Sabree. That’s R A H. If you’re driving and you’re like, what? What is that again? It’s R A H K I M S A B R E E.substack.com okay, so go over there and subscribe and then you’ll hear some of these rich information that he shared that you hear some of that over or you read some of that over on the platform. Thanks again, Rahkim.
And as we’re getting ready to wrap up, please remember to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. If you listen on Apple Podcast, leave a review and a rating. If you listen on Spotify, leave a rating. And as you are completing your ratings, please remember that we absolutely love the number five. Until then, this is Dr. Sev saying stay savvy and we’ll see you next time.
