Real Money, Real Experts
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Real Money, Real Experts
From Trauma to Healing: Redefining Money Stories with Rahkim Sabree, AFC®
In this episode of Real Money, Real Experts, hosts Rachael DeLeon and Dr. Brandy Baxter sit down with financial therapist, author, and AFC®, Rahkim Sabree, to explore the complex and deeply human realities of financial trauma.
Rahkim breaks down the six sources of financial trauma, from generational cycles and workplace dynamics to systemic barriers and societal expectations. He shares how financial professionals can adopt a trauma-informed lens, why empathy and language are essential in client interactions, and the importance of shifting from shame-based approaches to healing-centered ones.
The conversation also gives listeners a behind-the-scenes look into Rahkim’s upcoming book Overcoming Financial Trauma (Wiley, 2025). He reflects on how writing the book transformed his own money story, the healing he’s found in revisiting his past, and why the theme of healing will anchor his keynote at the AFCPE 2025 Symposium.
Whether you’re a financial professional, a community leader, or someone working to redefine your own relationship with money, this episode will leave you with tools, language, and hope to build a healthier, more compassionate approach to financial wellness.
Show Notes:
01:56 Get To Know Rahkim
02:25 Defining financial trauma
06:29 Who is impacted by financial trauma?
10:11 Becoming trauma-informed vs. trauma-responsive
24:10 The power of personal stories in healing
34:42 Empathy, bias, and client relationships
35:38 Looking ahead to Rahkim’s keynote at AFCPE Symposium
37:14 Rahkim's 2 Cents
Show Note Links:
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Connect with Rahkim on Twitter!
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SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Real Money, Real Experts, where we bring you interviews with leading financial professionals, sharing their stories, their challenges, and their advice for helping people manage money in the real world. I'm your host, Rachel DeLeon, Executive Director of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education, or AFCPE.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm your co-host, Dr. Brandi Baxter, Accredited Financial Counselor, AFCPE member, and your 2025 AFCPE Board President. On every episode, we take a deep dive into the topics and stories that you care about the most, helping clients, building community, and growing in your work and your career. Rakim Sabri is an award-winning financial therapist. accredited financial counselor, best-selling author, and speaker with an emerging voice in the fields of financial therapy and financial empowerment. He is particularly renowned for his efforts in demystify financial trauma among underserved communities as a thought leader. With a dynamic background that bridges financial services and trauma-informed financial wellness, Rakim is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations challenge traditional views of financial freedom, self-building, and personal growth. His forthcoming book with Wiley is titled Overcoming Financial Trauma, How to Break Free from Guilt, Build Wealth, and Redefine Success, which introduces his two frameworks, the three E's of overcoming financial trauma and trust for direct to consumer professionals. Fun fact, this will be Rakim's third full-length solo author book and his sixth book in total. Welcome to the show, Rakim.
SPEAKER_02:Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_00:Rakim, it's been about two years since we had you on, and I think to say you've been busy would be an understatement. Yeah. I know. When you first came on, you know, that was the first time we kind of introduced our listeners to the idea of adding a trauma-informed lens to their work. But for someone who might be hearing this term, financial trauma, for the first time, how do you define it and what are some common signs you look for? So I
SPEAKER_02:find financial trauma is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way someone views, interacts with, or believes about money. This definition is an expansion of what you might see out in the wild, right, around financial trauma. And I think the distinction here is that most perspectives on financial trauma are first person. So that's based off of the individual's direct experience rather than maybe some observational or vicarious forms of financial trauma. I'll lean into talking about the systemic impact on individuals through a financial trauma lens, and even cultural and familial influences. So this expanded definition certainly encapsulates a lot of our normal financial socialization and really kind of begs the question, who is not impacted by financial traumas? Regarding some of the signs that I look for, I think that that's an interesting question because taking it out of, let's call it a fairly clinical lens, right? Most of what my interactions with individuals one-on-one or organizations who, of course, have individuals that they're working with is to give them the language to describe financial trauma. So I'm not looking for signs. I'm more so giving people the language to connect what their experiences are to what I'm describing through the lens of financial trauma. And I talk about six sources of financial trauma. So we'll talk about source number one is generational or genetic. Source number two is the vicarious or observational that I just mentioned. So what did you observe about money or what was your financial socialization? Did you learn how to categorize people inadvertently into groups of the haves or the have-nots? And what is the impact of that on you and how you engage with money. I talk about poverty and financial instability as another source. And I think that's probably the source that is most common when people talk about financial trauma. Workplace and employment as a source. So what kind of behaviors are people engaging in in order to secure a paycheck, in order to live? How does that impact their interactions or their views on money? How does that impact their motivation to climb the corporate ladder, if you will? Institutional and systemic is another one. So talk about the impact of institutions, financial systems, historically and present day on Americans and Black Americans specifically, but Americans at large. And then lastly, familial, societal, or religious expectations is another source that I point to. So when I cover those six, I think a lot of people are like, oh, that's something that I experienced, or oh, that's something that I experienced. And they kind of surface among themselves where they identify financial traumas showing up. And I think also equally important, where across their lifespan, those instances show up. So you can be impacted by multiple sources out of the six that I've listed simultaneously, or you may have been impacted by one of the six at an earlier stage in your life and then, you know, be impacted by another of the six later in life or revisit one of the sources that you may have felt like you overcame because you secured the high income job or whatever your story of overcoming looks like. And so I think that is a variable in the conversation that really differentiates it from what we've seen in the past.
SPEAKER_00:Rakim, what I think is really interesting about the definition of financial trauma and all the various ways it can affect individuals is, and I'm just curious, I think more often than not, most of us have probably experienced or will experience some form of financial trauma in our lives. Are you seeing that? Is that a kind of a correct assumption?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that that's kind of like my thesis when we talk about financial traumas that, you know, if we're engaging with money and specifically through the economic system that we navigate, right? So that is capitalism. What is the impact going to look like on the everyday person? And I don't think that there are many people, if anybody, who escapes the impact of financial trauma. And so, you know, as I shared, I think, you know, the question then becomes, as I surface this definition and these approaches to understanding financial trauma, who isn't impacted by it? And, you know, I'm hard-pressed to... identify someone who hasn't been touched by one of these six sources or who will not be touched by one of these six sources.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think what's really interesting, too, in a strange way, there's sort of a connector in this and like an opportunity to really have a like a richer understanding around our relationship with money.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And I think where some people might find that daunting and that's certainly feedback that I've received. Right. Like, you know, you're focusing on financial trauma. You're talking about financial trauma all the time. It feels kind of depressing or almost defeating people. is that point of connectivity that we talk about in recognizing that, first of all, so much of our financial socialization does not take into account these variables that make us more alike than we are different and takes things out of the framing of guilt and shame and fear or even class-based hierarchies and puts us all on a level playing field. And I think that that's something that I guess we can call as a silver lining in the these discussions around financial trauma because through that lens, many of us are more alike than we are different.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness gracious. Okay, so you honestly got me thinking a lot when you mentioned vicarious financial trauma as one of the things that we deal with and how we often think of it as the first person like I've experienced this trauma. But vicarious financial trauma really is about trauma around you and how you are impacted by that. So as financial professionals who are listening to the show, how can they help their clients or how can they even identify when someone is experiencing signs and symptoms of financial trauma and what resources might be available for them?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I love this question because when I get to talk about vicarious financial trauma with financial professionals, I could go through this exercise where I'll ask, what are the sources of shame that your clients experience? Right. And, you know, we'll go and we'll survey the audience and they'll surface all of these definitions or rather all of these examples. And then I throw the meanest curveball and I say, could you, as the financial professional, or could we, as financial professionals, be one of the sources of shame that our clients navigate? And then they're always like, you know, like there's silence, right? Like, exactly, that
SPEAKER_03:response.
SPEAKER_02:And I think, you know, the determination that I came to around this is actually, you know, I want to credit AFCPE's curriculum because, you know, The section on transference and counter-transference is the example that I surfaced, right? Sometimes what the experiences, the biases, the financial trauma that we have experienced or that we have perceived ourselves as overcoming can shape what our approach looks like to engaging with clients, which may prompt them in response to feel a sense of shame or a sense of guilt. or fear in reengaging with the financial professional because we are often viewed as an authority, right? And so if we're going into these interactions and, you know, certainly I hope this is not the case with AFCs, but when we look at from a broader perspective, financial professionals or financial educators who are communicating with a shame-based or fear-based approach or even a really aggressive goal-based approach, right, that says this is what the goal is. When you come back, I expect X, Y, Z to be done. And then the client comes back or they never get the opportunity to do those line items. And so they don't come back because they are worried about, well, how is this going to be reflective of my value? How is this going to be reflective of my ability to execute on these instructions? And in the same exercise that I do with financial professionals, ask them, what is it about your clients that frustrates you? So we have like a venting session where, you know, oh, you know, they can't want it more than, you know, or they can't want it more than I do, or I'm saying this wrong. I can't want it more than they do, or they don't stick to the plan, or, you know, any number of things. And I understand the passion that many of us carry into these sessions, into these interactions. But I think when we talk about it from a trauma-informed lens, and we recognize that that the trauma is not just an instance of something that had happened and is no longer impacting the individual, right? This is something that is pervasive, that is existing in the mind and in the body. And so when individuals are reacting to this trauma without having the vocabulary to understand that it even is trauma, without having the educational foundation and understanding how their nervous system is seeking safety, and how we are often socialized to not view money as the threat that our body is responding to, right? There's a mismatch in what our body is telling us and what our mind is telling us. And so you ask, you know, about what financial professionals can do and what resources there are out there. I think that financial professionals can become trauma-informed. And I use, you know, these two terms not interchangeably, but often together. Trauma-informed. in understanding how not to cause trauma, right, or that trauma may be present in the situation, and trauma responsive in being able to provide an avenue for people to work through the trauma that they have experienced. And so not every financial professional needs to be trauma responsive, but I do believe that every financial professional should be trauma informed. And so resources, I mean, I always point to the Financial Therapy Association and, you know, their financial therapist directory. I'd certainly point to AFCPE and define the AFC. I know I haven't worked directly with the Center for Financial Social Work, but I know that they are doing great work specifically around financial trauma and viewing financial trauma through a systems lens. And then I know that there is a program called the Trauma of Money founded by Chantel Chapman. And many financial professionals are getting certified in the Trauma of Money method or non-financial professionals are going through the program just to get an understanding of somatic awareness and how financial trauma or money trauma, as she calls it, shows up through our day-to-day interactions.
SPEAKER_00:So Rakem, you provided a few examples of where, you know, listeners can find But you are actually in the process of developing a resource yourself with the launch of your first solo book with Wiley.
SPEAKER_02:including myself in the bunch. I think what's really interesting about the different resources that I've listed is that I check off most of the boxes, right? I'm heavily involved with the Financial Therapy Association. Of course, I'm an AFC and heavily involved with the AFCTE community. I have the trauma of money certification. So, you know, I consider Chantel a peer and colleague in the space. But yes, overcoming financial trauma has been It was an unexpected surprise, if I'm going to be very frank. I did not seek out the book deal. I don't want to oversimplify the process, but a friend of mine who I was connected with, who I am connected with on social media, had probably around Christmas of two years ago, had posted their book they're like hey you know i published a book with wiley this is the book and i'm like why did you decide to go with wiley just you know random question and it was like you know they approached me and i was like oh okay cool like you know i didn't expect it to go anywhere and he's like do you want me to introduce you and i'm like sure why not But I didn't really have a plan. I didn't have a book idea. Up until Overcoming Financial Trauma, my flagship book product, if you will, was Financially Irresponsible. That was self-published back in 2019. And I've grown significantly since publishing that book,
SPEAKER_03:grown
SPEAKER_02:in knowledge, grown in experiences, grown just in a lot of ways. And so although I'm very proud of that work, I feel, especially last year, as looking at things from a more trauma-informed perspective, that the version of me that existed when Financially Irresponsible came out is no longer present, and that there's so much that I can expand on, clarify, or even contradict in that book. So So in my mind, I was gearing up to rewrite and re-release Financially Irresponsible when this opportunity came across for me. When I met with the acquisitions editor at Wiley and I surfaced this idea, they were like, no. Like, we don't, we don't, we wouldn't have a product. Like what, you know, do you have something, an idea that You could talk about that would be, you know, novel. And I'm like, absolutely, like financial trauma. And, you know, for people that don't know me, you know, you guys certainly do. I've been talking about financial trauma now for almost half a decade, which is crazy to think about. But almost exclusively have I dedicated my energy and intellectual capacity to understanding trauma generally. and making connections between this phenomenon that we call financial trauma. So there's not a ton available for the everyday consumer around financial trauma. And of what is available, there is still, it's still kind of floating in limbo, right? Like there's like, there was no standard definition for financial trauma. There was no, you know, standard diagnosis or diagnostic criteria for financial trauma. It's kind of like, well, you know, if you're experiencing anxiety or you're demonstrating avoidant tendencies when it comes to your money, or you experienced this flashpoint financial experience, would you might be impacted by financial trauma. And I felt like there was a huge opportunity there. So they asked me to write a proposal And I did. I already kind of had in my mind who my target audience was, what would my marketing plan look like on an extremely high level, and what would I want to talk about. And I came at it through the financial therapy initially. That changed as I started to write the book. But You know, it took almost a year of going back and forth with them before I actually signed the contract, signed the contract in November of last year. And then they were like, OK, you have until April to write these 50,000 words. And so I immediately got to work. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, Rakim, you're not a stranger to writing. You have published articles for several media sources to include Forbes and your regular contributors. So this is a good question. I think that when we talk about Forbes as an example, right, when
SPEAKER_02:I'm writing for Forbes versus writing for I know that the Forbes audience has a certain level of expectation in terms of how things are packaged, how things are communicated. The Forbes audience is a little bit more conservative. And I generally have kind of an idea of what is going to do well and what is not going to do so well. So the question as a writer that I have to ask myself when I get ready to write an article for Forbes is, what do I want this article to do for me? Actually, a two-pronged question. What do I want this article to do for me now? And what would I like this article to do for me in the future? So I generally try to stick to writing evergreen pieces because I want the pieces to have longevity. I know that some writers do chase trends and feel they're like, oh, there's a trending topic right now. I'm going to write about it and then I'm going to get a ton of views. I've done that. It doesn't feel as natural for me. So that's Forbes. With Substack, which is, you know, my personal newsletter, I could write and share whatever it is that I want to. I can be a little bit more loose in my language. that has a lot less of a filter and a lot more intimacy in terms of the delivery of content. The reason why I draw the distinction between the two is that when I'm writing Overcoming Financial Trauma, I initially went into this project thinking that I was going to write through mostly academic lens. It was going to be very formal. It was going to be very devoid of emotion. I was not going to tell very many personal stories. I wanted to focus maybe more so on client stories and understanding that Wiley is considered more so an academic publisher. They're really big in the colleges and universities space. They're really big in the business and professional spaces. I had this apprehension of maybe Establishing intimacy in the way that is natural for my writing style. As I started writing, though, and as I realized that I had this uphill battle and writing 50,000 words, you have to fill that space. And in filling that space, I started to tell stories. And in telling the stories, of course, it became more personal. So you didn't ask this question, but I'll share anyway. Writing this book has been as healing and transformative an experience for me as I hope and expect it to be for the individuals that read it. Because many of the sources of financial trauma that I discuss were sources of financial trauma that I have experienced. that I've had to then go and process and metabolize in the development of the content for the book. So that kind of speaks to the approach in the writing. I expected that Wiley would have their editor go through the content when we got to that point and say, hey, you know, maybe the language around this needs to be changed, or maybe this is extreme, or maybe we don't agree with this in terms of the phrasing. But that was not the case at all. Most of my edits were technical edits around sentence structure and the words that I used and, you know, those kinds. So they gave me really kind of broad brush to paint with in terms of how I wanted to communicate these things. And, you know, for that, I'm quite grateful.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I think it's really those personal stories that have that connection with the reader. You know, it's how do you connect the research and the academic side that you went in sort of expecting to share and to tell, but it's really the stories that make that content real and relatable. And like you said, it was really therapeutic for you. And I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing that too. I'm curious, you know, for someone who feels like they have a story like you did to tell It depends
SPEAKER_02:on what feels comfortable and natural for them, right? So, you know, I have a foot in two worlds, right? I'm a writer and I'm a speaker. And so I can, I can develop and deliver content through both of those mediums. I have a friend colleague who is also a speaker and writer, and, you know, we're going, we're tossing ideas around. And he says to me, are you a writer who speaks or a speaker who writes? And, you know, I have to think about that. I think, you know, what is more natural in terms of The inclination that I have to sharing my message is writing and that speaking is the close second. I speak the way that I write or I will structure my speaking from my writing. Whereas some people, it's the reverse. There's so many avenues for communicating your messaging in today's world that it's very easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you need to be on all of them. Right. So you're posting on LinkedIn, you're posting on Facebook, you're posting on TikTok, you're posting on Twitter, you're posting on Substack, you're posting on wherever. Right. And I'm saying you, but really like me, like I've been everywhere. I've fallen into this trap. And I think that it's not sustainable, especially if you're one person and you don't have a team who is, you know, taking these bits and pieces of content and repurposing it for you. So I would say figure out what is easy and natural for you to do first, do that. And then you can always build on top of that, right? So if that is writing, you know, through blogging or contributing to publications or, you know, whatever the medium that you want to communicate your writing through, do that. And if that is speaking, then, you know, speak, get video of you speaking, talk to the camera and, you know, the TikTok, the Instagram reels, you know, what have you. Like some people, that is what is more comfortable for them. And I think that you will find and curate. an audience that consists of multiple people, right? You'll have people who are fans, you'll have people who are collaborators, you'll have people who are skeptics, but they're just kind of like curious about what it is that you have to talk about. And as time moves on and as your message becomes even more clear or your message shifts, because that certainly is possible and or likely, your audience will reflect that. And so I don't know if that answers your question. And if it doesn't, please feel free to ask a follow up question. But I think focusing on the thing that you that brings you joy, that's easy to you, that you have more of an inclination to engage with is a good first step and do that well. And then, you know, you can obviously build on it and branch out. when you feel comfortable and when the opportunities arise.
SPEAKER_01:I don't want to talk to you all day and hijack your schedule, but I do have one more question I think our listeners will find interesting. So you've shared that during this writing process for your upcoming book that you found it to be healing and awakening for you as you were processing some of this. So I'm curious, what was a big shift that you experienced and the impact that it had on your life, kind of most recently throughout this process?
SPEAKER_02:Interpersonal relationships broadly, and specifically the relationship that I have with my father was something that I had to revisit some childhood wounds around. So I often tell the story of we'll call it overcoming, right? Where, you know, I became aware of the fact that we were navigating poverty at a particular point in time. And my mom had food stamps. My mom had Section 8 and that I had to help out. And, you know, this is the foundation of the story that I tell, right? And we can call it the money story. In writing this book, I had a conversation with my dad, because I think, you know, not that, you know, anybody has asked me explicitly, but I think it would be reasonable for people to be like, well, where was the dad while this was all happening, right? Like, what was the dad doing while this was all happening? And, you know, I've always had my dad in my life. Like, my dad's not, I've never not known where he was or who he was or anything like that. But I think, you know, our relationship was strained based off of some of the anger and frustration that I had internalized in him and my mom's separation from my mother. And that influenced the positioning that I had in the household, which ultimately had financial implications, right? I'm, you know, jumping off the deep end here and understanding how to manage the household finances. And I think that that anger was I held on to for a very long time until, you know, very recently where we've been able to kind of like talk to each other as men and love and understanding, like, what is, what's your version of the story of what was going on during this period of time? And so I opened up this book with the realization that this money story that I had been carrying for, you know, a very long time until very recently was a money story that existed within the realm of perception in my household. So for example, I have an immediate younger brother. So he's like 16 months younger than me. And he was living with my dad part-time. And although he was aware of the circumstances that were present in my mom's household, he was not impacted in the same way that I was because in many ways he had an out. And so when I was writing the book, I reached out to him and I'm like, hey, do you remember this happening? Do you remember that happening? Do you remember this impact? And my brother's like, honestly, I wasn't there. And I'm like, of course you were there. Because so much of my identity was wrapped up in being a good son, being a good big brother, being a good steward of money. And then I had a conversation with my dad and my dad goes, you know, I hate to hear how you struggled. but your experiences was not your brother's experience, right? Like, the things that you experienced financially, that you absorbed financially, that you observed financially, were not, like, that wasn't the story that was happening at my house. And he went as far as to say that my struggle in that time period was a choice. Like, that's what you chose. You could have came over here. And so, you know, there was, yeah, it was kind of like a gut punch for me. And hearing that, I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I chose that. But I think, you know, he was good about following it up very swiftly and saying that maybe the experiences that I went through during that time period, although he views them as a choice, were experiences that I had to go through in order to deliver this message for people that don't have a choice. And I think I really kind of paint this picture and highlight how you can have multiple members of a family and a household with completely different perceptions of money and the money narratives that they carry and how those narratives will shift and show up in adulthood. what is the impact of those experiences, even though, you know, What is objectively true is not always subjectively true through the lens of the individual's impact. And so as we talk about financial trauma, I talk about it through a lens of individual experience, but also a collective experience. And so I think that was a big turning point in my understanding of my relationship with my parents. It was a big turning point in understanding my relationship with money. And, you know, working through some of these experiences that had been painful, like I think we learn or we socialize to just, okay, this happened, but that was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, however many years ago, we move on. But that trauma, and I'm talking about trauma generally and broadly, trauma doesn't just disappear, right? Like it's something that we have to work through. It's an embodied experience. I think that's the second thing that I'll share. In understanding trauma, I've learned that because it is not just a psychological experience, but a body experience that our body engages in in order to protect us, that we have to engage in an embodied approach to healing. that involves an awareness of somatic practices in tandem with, you know, some instruction that may come from a narrative-based or cognitive behavioral approach to kind of repositioning how we perceive things.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Rakim, first, thank you for that moment of vulnerability. I think our listeners will appreciate the fact that you shared that candid story and the learning that you took from it. And I think it's a great example of what you talked about earlier, how sometimes even in our own work as financial professionals, if we're not careful, we can bring our own biases and our own filters to the conversation and it can have a different impact on the client. And it sounds like that's almost what happened with you and your dad. You know, you had one lens of this experience and then he had a totally different lens. But the fact that you were able to take it and learn and have a deeper understanding for yourself brings a level of empathy to the work that you're doing. And I just want to thank you for sharing that with us and our audience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, my pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:Rakami, you are joining us. in November for the AFCPE Symposium as a keynote speaker. What are you looking forward to most to share with our audience?
SPEAKER_02:You know, as we talk about this theme of healing, right? I think that is the intent, right? So as I develop my messaging process, both specifically for this event and broadly in just the interactions that I have with different groups, that has been a consistent theme and feedback that I've received, right? This has been a healing experience or I'm walking away from this experience. I'm feeling healed. So that's the forefront of my messaging. I know that trauma is a heavy topic. And so financial trauma, of course, is going to be a heavy topic. My hope is that the audience is... primed to be receptive to the messaging in a way that even if they can't connect to the examples that are surfaced, they can connect to the theme of healing, both for themselves and for the people that they serve. And so I think that's the, I don't think that is the intent when it comes to what I'm hoping the audience will walk away with and I expect that they will. I've not missed, if we could call it that. I've not missed yet, so that's the end. That's what they have to look forward to.
SPEAKER_01:Rakim, again, thank you. But I want to let you know, so Rachel and I have this thing that we do where we ask our guests to share their two cents. So we like to think of it as building our knowledge bank. And if I could get you to share like one last tip or comment or whatever you feel with our audience, what would be your two cents that you'd add to our knowledge bank?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, so many come to mind. Here's one that I'll leave the audience with. Financial trauma is not a personal failure. It's a societal one. And I'll get more into that in the keynote, but I want to leave that as a message. I think so often when we look at what has happened to us, when we look at, and I'm using the we and the us voice as a collective human experience, when we look at what has happened to us financially or we look at the impact of financial decisions making. I've recently been working on, and I haven't been 100% successful yet, but I've been working on removing the phrasing bad financial decisions from my vocabulary. Because I don't think that people make bad financial decisions intentionally. I think that people make what they feel like is the best financial decision in that moment, and that we can always look back in hindsight with 2020 vision and with the shame and the judgment and the education that we have around what we could have, should have, would have done differently, but that individuals and do not want to be in a bad situation. And so then the question is begged, what was that individual trying to solve for with money in that particular instance? And I think if we dig deep enough that we can point to some break systemically or institutionally that has created a dysregulated person who is looking for regulation in the way that they engage with money.
SPEAKER_01:Ooh-wee. I feel like that was dollars,
SPEAKER_00:not two
SPEAKER_01:cents.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Thank you, Rakim, for coming on today. And can you tell our listeners where they can connect with you?
SPEAKER_02:I'm pointing everybody to my website, RakimSabri.com. That will have links to all my socials that will have links to the new book but I'm also available on you know all of your traditional socials so Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, wherever I'm there, TikTok. And I'm also very active on Substack. I know Substack is not really considered social media, but rockhimsabri.substack.com is the direction to my newsletter. And I send out insightful messages around financial trauma that I actually won an award for last year at the AFCP symposium for the best consumer education, consumer financial education award. So definitely want to plug that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Rakim, thank you so much. It was fun to reconnect with you and we're looking forward to seeing you in Phoenix this November.
SPEAKER_02:Likewise.
SPEAKER_01:As usual, Rachel, we have had another engaging guest just sharing such amazing insights. Rakim really delivered when he gave the insider tip on working with a publisher I thought our audience would definitely find that useful. But hands down for me, the number one takeaway was the story at the end where he just was vulnerable and shared the conversation he had with his dad. And it was such an eye-opener for me because it reminded me how often we see things singularly through one lens and not realizing that other parts of the story can color it and help us to see things differently and how he was able to walk through that journey and experience healing and a moment of awareness. Just such an insightful conversation with our guest today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think he brings a really unique lens on financial trauma and his point at the beginning. And as he was listing off all these ways that people experience trauma around finances in their lives, it was kind of an aha moment for me. I think we all sometimes think about certain words as almost disconnectors or things that you know separate us but there's so much of a connector in this and a feeling of understanding and I think that is where he you know when he talks about some of the themes for the symposium session this November this idea of healing and I think that was illustrated perfectly in that story that he shared but I'm really excited for him to continue to share this message and for us to continue this conversation together and just a few months. The opinions of our podcast guests are their own, which means that their stories, views, or lived experiences may differ from yours or mine. However, the one thing you will always find on this show is a common thread. Our guests are passionate about helping people with their money to improve their lives, and they believe in upholding high standards for the clients and the communities that they serve. We encourage you to tune in to Real Money, Real Experts with Open Curiosity. Why? Because it's often times and the conversations where viewpoints or stories differ from our own that we learn the most.