Uncensored Money Season Eight: I Have PTSD. Here's What It Did To My Finances.

Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 25/06/2026

Show Notes

Nobody in finance talks about this.

How trauma responses — freeze, flight, fight, fawn — show up in your financial decisions. And what they're actually costing you.

In this episode I share something personal: I have PTSD from experiences in my teenage years. And for a long time I didn't connect that to my finances.

Looking back — it was there in everything.

This episode covers:
— What a trauma response actually is (and why it's not what most people think)
— How freeze, flight, fight and fawn show up specifically in financial behaviour
— The fawn response — the one that costs women the most and gets talked about the least
— Three practical financial steps to take alongside therapy
— Why you cannot separate your nervous system from your bank account

If you're working through difficult experiences, please reach out to a qualified therapist.

— 

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Transcription

Mel: Episode with something I don't usually share on this podcast, and that is that I have PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.

And that's from things that happened to me when I was younger. And for a very long time, I'd say an embarrassingly long time, given that I'm a qualified accountant and a financial advisor. I didn't connect that to my finances. But looking back, it was there in everything. It was there in the avoidance. It was there in impulsive decisions. It was there in giving away more than I can afford. It was there deferring every big financial call to someone else because being responsible for myself genuinely felt terrifying.

It was there in the good girl behaviour. And one that I've talked about in the podcast before, it was there in giving away every cent I earned at 33, which with what I now understand was a stress response I didn't have a name for yet.

It wasn't wanting to rock the boat. It was freezing and not being able to make the decisions. And today I'm giving it a name. And I'm talking about it because nobody really in finance does. Welcome to Uncensored Money. I'm Mel Browne and this solar episode is going to be a little different.

But before we dive in, as always, and even though we're not really talking about investing today, it's really important to say two things. One, that today we're going to be talking about trauma. There won't be I won't be talking about the specifics of trauma, but just a note that that is what that is the theme today. But also just the ASIC disclaimer. We are licensed here to give general advice under RASK not personal advice. So if you are after personal financial help, then please.

Please speak to a financial advisor. So before we get into the meat of this episode, I want to explain why I'm making it. And as I said, I've been in finance for 25 years. I was an accountant, I was a financial advisor, I'm now an educator. And I've sat across the table from hundreds, probably thousands and tens of thousands of women now over time, whether it's one on ones, whether it's conferences, whether it's small groups. And I've talked about money in I think every possible configuration. And what I've noticed.

Consistently across all these conversations is that the women who struggle most with money often aren't struggling because they don't understand the mechanics. You know, yes, we might not completely understand compound interest, but we can get that pretty quickly. You know, there I might be overwhelmed by ETFs, but I can kind of j I can grab on to the idea of a broad-based ETF.

fairly quickly if I sit down and if someone explains it clearly to me. So there is this understanding intellectually from many people about what I should be doing. The problem for many people is they just can't do it. And for a long time I framed that as a mindset issue. You know, I even wrote a book called Budgets Don't Work where I talked about your financial phenotype and your money story. And those things are still absolutely true, absolutely useful, and I still talk about them.

But there's another layer underneath it all which I haven't talked often enough about until now, and that's trauma.

And specifically how trauma, how trauma responses specifically show up in financial behavior and also what they cost. Now, I want to be really clear about what this episode is and isn't. It is not a therapy podcast. I am not a therapist. There are some incredible therapists, including Dr. Rebecca Ray, who was at my Her Wealth Her Way conference last year. If you want to go hear some incredible psychologists and therapists talk about issues like this.

So if you're working through difficult experiences, I cannot recommend enough to talk to a qualified professional. And I'll say that again at the end of the episode. But what this is, is a finance educator with 25 years of experience, more than that, with my own complicated personal history of PTSD, saying this is real, this is common, and we're not talking about it enough in financial spaces. So let's talk about it.

So let me start with a really quick explanation of what I mean when I say a trauma response. Because I think a lot of people hear trauma and think.

Either two things, like disaster or war, or something really catastrophic. Or they think, you know, I am one one of the one in four. they think that it's trauma or PTSD because of something really bad that happened to you. Or they kind of think of it as, you know, the the speak now, the tr the therapy speak that everyone has trauma. so it's so it's almost something that is made light of.

But I don't want to make light of it here because trauma is really anything that overwhelms your nervous system's ability to cope. And it left a lasting imprint on how you respond to threat. So it could be big, obvious things. It could be growing up in a household where things were unpredictable or unsafe. It could be experiences in childhood you were never able to talk about.
Certainly those two things were mine. It could be a relationship, it could be a financial crisis, it could be a period of profound instability, it could be an illness or an unexpected life moment that you just didn't see coming. And what happens when we carry on processed trauma, which a lot of us do by the way, without necessarily knowing it, is that your nervous system stays in a state of alert. So it's scanning for danger all the time. And when it responds to something that looks like

Danger, even when that's something is not actually dangerous, it responds. Now, research from a 2016 payoff study found that one in four people experience PTSD-like symptoms, so hypervigilance, avoidance, intrusive thoughts, and freezing triggered not by war or violence or anything I've mentioned, but by financial stress. Like one in four.

And when I read that statistic as someone who has PTSD, my reaction was, of course. Like, of course, financial stress activates trauma response. Because money is one of the most primal forms of safety and threat that exists. So when money feels unsafe, your nervous system responds to it like a threat.

And that response shows up in your financial behavior in the ways that look from the outside, like irresponsibility, laziness, avoidance, or self-sabotage. Only they're not. They're survival. They just happen to be really expensive survival. So let's get specific because this is a finance podcast, and I want to give you the actual practical application of this. Because what I have discovered in both my therapy, but also from my reading, is that there are four classic trauma responses. And chances are you've heard of fight or flight, but there's actually four: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And every single one of them has a financial equivalent.

So let's start with freeze. So the freeze response. So freeze is exactly what it sounds like. You go still, you can't move, you can't act. And in your finances, freeze looks like this. You know, you know you should look at your super balance. You have been meaning to for three months. You know you should open that letter from the ATO that's been sitting on the kitchen bench for six weeks. You know you should do something about the credit card debt that's quietly compounding in the background that you cannot bring yourself to look at.

You know, you know you should, but you can't. Not because you don't care, not because you're lazy, not because you don't understand that avoidance is making it so much worse. But because something in your nervous system has made a decision that looking is more dangerous than not looking. Opening the app feels like a threat. The letter feels like a threat. The debt feels like a threat. And so you freeze.

Now, this is one of the most common financial patterns I see in my work. And it's almost never talked about as a trauma response. It gets called avoidance, it gets called financial immaturity, it gets called not caring. And sure, for some people it might be that. But in this situation, it's none of those things. It's a nervous system that learns somewhere along the way that looking at bad news was dangerous. Certainly with my own PTSD, freezing was something that when my events happened to me, that's what I did.

And guess what I did financially as a result? Like it's just, it's so fascinating to me as humans, our unwillingness or our lack of knowledge to connect the dots right. But the what I'm hoping from you for you today is that knowing could feel like a release. And knowing could mean, okay, this is something I can get help for.

The second one is the flight response. So flight is about getting away from threat. And in your finances, flight looks like the unexpected bill arrives, the financial pressure builds, and you spend. Not because you're irresponsible, but because spending feels like control when everything is out of control. Like it's a way of moving, of doing something, of feeling like you have agency when a situation feels overwhelming. Or flight looks like actually leaving, you know, the job, the relationship, the financial situation before.

It can get worse, even if it's not that bad, before anyone can take anything else away from you. And I want to be careful here because sometimes leaving is the right decision. Sometimes the job is terrible and the relationship is harmful or not right, and leaving is survival and correct for you. But sometimes, and I've seen this many times, women can leave situations that are actually okay because the anxiety of staying feels more dangerous than the disruption of going.

And that, whether it's a job, whether it is a relationship, whether it is a business, could have a financial cost.

The third is the fight response. So fight is less common in financial behavior, but it absolutely shows up. And I see it, I probably see it. It's an easier one to spot. So it looks like extreme financial control, it looks like rigidity, looks like hyper-vigilance around every dollar. It looks like an ability to spend even on things that are reasonable and would genuinely improve your life. Or it looks like aggression in financial conversations. So shutting down discussions with a partner.

Partner. Becoming defensive when money's raised. Fighting to maintain control because relinquish any of it feels terrifying. So it's not that relinquish any any of it is problematic because you think you could do a jet better job, it's because it feels genuinely terrifying. Fight says if I can control everything, nothing can hurt me. And I'll you I if you you can't see me, but you might be able to hear the smile in my voice, because I so relate to that. But

Whilst it might be understandable in some situations, it's freaking exhausting. And also it's not a long-term wealth-building strategy. And finally, there's fawn. And this is probably one that is least talked about, but in my experience, it's one that costs women incredibly. And it's and because it's least talked about, I really want to dig in a little bit here.

So fawn is what happens when you learned that making other people comfortable keeps you safe. You know, when you learned that being agreeable, being helpful, being needed, that was how you stayed okay.

It's the good girl message lived out financially. It's in finances, fawn looks like not negotiating a salary because conflict feels dangerous. Lending money you don't have because saying no feels impossible. Giving away more than you can afford because being needed feels like security. Deferring every financial decision to someone else because being responsible for yourself feels terrifying, and you just want this to be okay.

Not asking for the pay rise, not challenging the advisor, not pushing back on the financial arrangement in a relationship that isn't working in your favor. And Fawn says, if I make everyone else comfortable, I'll be safe. And I want to say something here.

You know, I gave away every cent I owned at 33 with what I now understand was a fawn response. Now my first husband told me I wouldn't make it on my own, which he was not a bad bloke, but we say things when we're emotional, right? But because I didn't realise it at the time, I bet I had PTSD from things that happened to me when I was younger, and my nervous system, conditioned by years of learning that being needed, being generous, being the good girl who didn't take up space, responded by proving him right.

I gave it all away. Not because I was stupid, not because I didn't know better as an accountant, but because my nervous system made a decision in a moment of extreme emotional activation. Now I like to tell people it's because I'm petty and competitive. But that's because I didn't have a name for it at the time. And I do now, and naming it has changed everything. And it also changes looking back across my life, so many of the decisions, so many of my decisions to be a good girl in the moment comes from this.

So what do you actually do about this now that we know about it? So I've just spent, let's say 10 minutes describing patterns that might feel really familiar. And I want to make sure this episode doesn't leave you feeling feel feeling seen but feeling stuck. Do you know what I mean? Where it's, wow, but what do I do with this mill? So let's talk about what you could do. And I'm gonna give you both a personal and a financial answer. So the personal answer, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is therapy. I know that's not what you expect from a finance podcast, but therapy for my

Own PTSD was genuinely life-changing because it's about getting back into your body again, it's understanding how you respond and how your body responds. Because your body does keep school, you know, that that is a what was it, a book or a line? And for me, I remember when I had when I went for therapy, it was starting to recognize things. Now that when it happens, so sometimes if I'm under extreme extreme stress, I literally feel like I have a hand on my throat. And instead of being terrified by that, I now go, okay.

Okay, I understand what's happening. Don't act out. Don't try to grasp control from wherever you have. Go to your toolkit and grab things to reduce the physical symptoms. So I believe that therapy for my own PTSD was genuinely life-changing. But also, it wasn't just life-changing personally, it was life-changing financially. Because once I started understanding my own patterns, where they came from, what they were protecting me from, what had outlived the usefulness.

And that's a really important thing to say. What had outlived their usefulness? I started making different decisions and better decisions and decisions that weren't made by a 14-year-old nervous system trying to stay safe. So if you recognized yourself in anything I said today, the freezing, the fleeing, the fawning, please talk to a qualified therapist. That I believe is the real starting point.

And alongside that, here are three financial things.

Number one, name it. Dr. Brecka Doctor Bredek my gosh, I'm gonna say her name in a sec. Dr. Rebecca Bra Dr. Rebecca Ray. my gosh, it's because I've just talked about emotional things and that's what my brain does. It gets confused after it, but I know it, so I can not be ashamed by it, I can just know it, recognize it, keep going. So Dr. Rebecca Ray, who spoke at her wealth her way last year, really talked about this naming it. And it really landed for me. So when you notice yourself avoiding we when

You're freezing or fleeing or appeasing around money, name it. If you like audibly, name it. Say it out loud if you can. Say this is this is a stress response. This is not a financial emergency. I say that when I feel like I've got that hand on my throat. This is a stress response. This is not, you are not under attack. And that gap.

Moving from this is a stress response, this is not a financial emergency. The tiny space between the trigger and the reaction is where different decisions get made. Doesn't work every time, but trust me, it works more often than you think. Because it moves you back into your body.

Number two, automate what you can. So remove as many financial decisions as possible from moments of emotional activation. So what do I mean by that? Well, automate direct debits, automate your investments, or schedule your bill payments, automate your transfers from your everyday account to your bills and savings and emergency account, automate your superannuation top-ups if that's relevant for you. And it's not because you can't be trusted. Instead, it's because your nervous system

Deserves fewer opportunities to be activated. Now I automate almost everything in my own finances. Not because I'm lazy, but because I know myself well enough to know that my best financial decisions are made from a place of calm. And automation means the decisions happen whether I'm in that place or not.

And number three is to build safety before strategy. So this includes things like a buffer account. So three months worth of expenses sitting in a high interest savings account or your offset account that you don't touch. Like that is just

Finance is 101, right? But for someone who carries difficult experiences, it's more than finance 101. Having money that's yours, that's safe, that no one can take, that is an act of profound self-protection. So build the buffer first. Then always have some money in your own name, whether it's cash in a bank, whether it is investing that you're starting to do. N just as a foundation. Because everything

The investing, the super, the wealth building helps you feel safe. So I want to close with something I said at the start of this episode. I've spent more than 25 years in finance, and one of the most important things I've learned hasn't got anything to do with compound interest or ETFs or investing or bad debt, even though all those things are freaking important. It's this.

You cannot separate your nervous system from your bank account. And the way you were taught to respond to threat, to danger, to uncertainty, to people who held power over you shows up how in how you manage your money. Every single time. I've seen it in thousands of client conversations. I've seen it in my own finances. And I want to say that this is not weakness. I'm saying that to myself as much as to you. This is being human. Because trauma response.

Or survival adaptations. They kept you safe once. They were the right response to the situation you were in. They just sometimes, a lot of the time, outlive their usefulness. And once you name them, once you can see them clearly without shame and without self-judgment, you can change them. And that's the whole point. That's why I've made this episode.

If this has resonated with you, share it with someone who needed to hear it. And if you're working through difficult experiences, please reach out to a qualified therapist because you absolutely deserve that support. I'm Mel Browne, this is Uncensored Money. Thank you so much for being here.

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