Today I speak with Sarah Carr about the intersection of trauma, neurodiversity, and financial well-being. Sarah shares her journey from growing up in a high-demand high-control religious environment to becoming a financial therapist who helps clients—particularly women and neurodivergent individuals—reclaim their relationship with money.

We discuss how trauma responses show up in our financial decisions, why income became Sarah's security blanket after leaving an oppressive marriage, and how raising two children on the autism spectrum taught her about nervous system regulation and the beauty of different ways of thinking.

Sarah is a Certified Financial Therapist®, Certified Financial Planner®, and wealth manager committed to helping people rewrite money stories, deconstruct old patterns, and cultivate embodied financial well-being without shame.

Raising and educating two neuro-diverse children, Sarah has learned more about the impacts of Autism and ADHD on her clients' financial lives and relationships. Sarah serves on two non-profit boards: Reclamation Collective, a national community advocacy organization providing resources and support for those harmed in religious and spiritual contexts, and Endless Mountains Pride, a local non-profit providing education, advocacy, and connection for the LGBTQ+ community. While Sarah works with clients across the country, she resides in upstate New York where her favorite place to recenter is along one of the many waterfall trails she loves to hike.

• Growing up in high-demand, high-control religion shaped Sarah's early beliefs about women and money
• The identity crisis of becoming a stay-at-home mom after having financial independence
• How leaving an oppressive marriage revealed her money script that income equals security
• Discovering financial therapy while navigating early motherhood
• Processing personal trauma while learning about son's autism diagnosis
• Working with women leaving high-control religious systems and neurodiverse clients
• How trauma creates stuck emotions and disrupted agency
• Permission slips and questioning deeply held beliefs about capability
• We don't heal individually—we heal collectively

Website LinkedIn Instagram Facebook Reclaiming Financial Agency: An Interview with financial therapist Haylie Castillo The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge by Ted Klontz and Brad Klontz Truth and Repair by Judith Herman

#FinancialTherapy #ReligiousTrauma #Neurodiversity #MoneyMindset #FinancialEmpowerment #TraumaHealing #NervousSystemRegulation #FinancialWellbeing #WomenAndMoney #HighlySensitive

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.

Bari Tessler is a financial therapist and pioneer in merging emotional literacy with financial literacy. We talk about her 26-year journey creating the Art of Money methodology. Bari shares how she went from throwing away bank statements in graduate school to falling in love with bookkeeping and developing a somatic-based approach to financial therapy.

We explore her current year-long sabbatical, the importance of adapting business models to different life phases, the practice of money dates with candles and chocolate, and why checking in with our bodies is essential to our relationship with money. This conversation offers both practical tools and deep wisdom about honoring our rhythms, redefining success, and bringing our whole selves to our finances.

• Bari's identity as a highly sensitive person since childhood
• How Bari has adapted her business model five different times over 24 years
• The power of group work for unshaming money stories
• The courage required to pivot when business models stop working
• How Bari's father shaped her early relationship with work and money
• The ritual of money dates: candles, chocolate, and celebrating small steps
• Why 85-95% of money decisions are based on emotions
• Money as a doorway to understanding relationships, intimacy, and worth

Bari Tessler, M.A. is a Financial Therapist and a pioneer in the Financial Therapy field. She has a Masters degree in Somatic Psychology from Naropa University, 1998. She then ran a bookkeeping business for therapists and artists. In 2001, she merged all her training and created a somatic-based Financial Therapy methodology that she has been teaching for 24 years. She is also the founder of The Art of Money, a financial therapy program and a Mentor Program for therapists, coaches and financial professionals.

Bari is the Author of two books: The Art of Money: A Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness and The Art of Money Workbook. Her work has been featured on Oprah.com, Inc.com, US News & World Report, Reuters Money, The Fiscal Times, USA Today, The Cut, Girlboss, Nerd Wallet, Real Simple, MindBodyGreen, and REDBOOK. She has also been featured on the cover of Experience Life and Mindful. Bari loves to read, dance and enjoy dark chocolate. She lives in Boulder, CO with her husband, son, many cats + a big puppy. You can find her here.

Website Instagram Cheers to 10 Years of Money Memoirs "The Art of Money: A Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness" by Bari Tessler "The Art of Money Workbook" by Bari Tessler

Rick Kahler on the importance of money emotions in financial planning

"Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

#FinancialTherapy #ArtOfMoney #SomaticFinance #MoneyDates #HighlySensitiveMoney #Sabbatical #EmotionalLiteracy #FinancialLiteracy #BusinessPivots #MoneyAndEmotion

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.

In this episode, I talk with Chantel Chapman, founder of the Trauma of Money Institute, about how trauma—both personal and systemic—profoundly shapes our relationship with money. Chantel shares her journey from financial literacy educator to developing the Trauma of Money after recognizing that traditional approaches couldn't address her own destructive money patterns rooted in childhood experiences. We explore capitalism as a traumatizing system, the concept of financial fawning, the importance of discernment over shame, and why healing our relationship with money requires addressing both our individual experiences and the broader economic context we live in. This conversation offers a compassionate, trauma-informed framework for understanding money behaviors that goes far deeper than budgeting advice.

• What trauma-sensitive approaches to money really mean
• How capitalism creates trauma through profit-over-everything values
• Chantel's journey from mortgage broker to creating the Trauma of Money
• Why Chantel trains professionals rather than working one-on-one
• Experimenting with reimagining capitalism through profit-sharing
• The acronym PAUSE: Perhaps An Unseen Solution Exists
• How any trauma can impact your relationship with money
• The difference between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellbeing
• Why we need dopamine reset periods to get off the hedonic treadmill

Chantel Chapman is an International Bestselling Author—named to the USA Today Bestseller List and #1 on The Globe and Mail's Canadian Non-Fiction list—for her book The Trauma of Money (Wiley, September 2025). She is a trauma survivor, financial trauma educator, and the creator of the Trauma of Money (TOM) Method. Her journey through complex PTSD—and her realization that traditional financial literacy couldn't shift her own destructive money patterns—led her to uncover the profound link between trauma and financial behavior. In response, she spent years researching trauma, addiction, behavioral science, and economic systems to develop an innovative method for financial healing and empowerment.

Chantel is the founder and CEO of the Trauma of Money Institute, an internationally recognized certification program that has trained thousands of professionals across more than 22 countries. The TOM Method is reshaping how we understand money—not just as numbers, but as something deeply shaped by emotion, lived experience, and systemic forces. With over 20 years of experience in financial education and fintech consulting, Chantel has taught and written curricula or programming for institutions such as Humber College, Wilfrid Laurier University, Adler University, and Simon Fraser University, and has worked with organizations including United Way, YMCA, NDN Collective, the American Psychological Association, JP Morgan Chase, and YPO. She also serves on the National Task Force for Economic Justice, supporting CCFWE's mission to end financial abuse. A sought-after speaker and advisor on economic justice and trauma-sensitive practices, her work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, and The Globe and Mail. Chantel is a settler of European descent who works and resides on the stolen traditional lands of the Kwantlen (kwaant·luhn), Musqueam ("mus-kwee-um"), and Tswassen (saa·wa·sn) peoples.

Trauma of Money Institute Instagram "The Trauma of Money" by Chantel Chapman "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl

#TraumaOfMoney #FinancialTrauma #TraumaSensitive #BeyondCapitalism #FinancialHealing #FinancialFawning #HedonicVsEudaimonic #MoneyAndTrauma

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.