Everything Is a Skill Set

I encounter some variation of this fairly often from clients when I start working with them. I hear something like “I don’t know what I’m doing with money. I should know how to do it by now.” or a level of resignation around it like “I’m just bad with money.” They talk about it like it’s a character flaw as unchangeable as their horoscope sign.

Most of what they struggle with, most of what you struggle with, most of what I struggle with isn’t a character flaw. It’s just an underdeveloped skill set.

Individuals and couples who come to me feeling overwhelmed with beliefs and feelings about money, sometimes unable to identify those feelings, or don’t know how to get unstuck with having the same argument about money over and over again, these experiences often lead people to feeling shame. And that shame they feel often makes it even harder to move forward productively.

Financial literacy, identification of emotions, communication within a relationship; these are all skill sets. You know what else is? Experiential avoidance is too. So are unhealthy overspending patterns. So are unhealthy restrictive behaviors. The same framework applies on both sides of the ledger. Skills can be learned. Skills can be unlearned. And that changes things considerably.

Financial Literacy Is a Skill

Nobody is born knowing what a budget is, how interest compounds, what an emergency fund is for, or how to read a pay stub. These are things people either get taught, or many times they don’t. And if you grew up in a household where money was a source of stress, a forbidden topic, or simply never discussed, chances are you didn’t get a lot of instruction in this area (formal or informal).

Again, that’s not a personal failing at all. It’s just a gap in your education. It’s not something you’ve learned yet.

Financial literacy is just understanding how money works, how to track it, what your patterns are, how to make more intentional decisions with it. That’s something that can be developed at any stage of life. It doesn’t require a degree in finance. All it requires is some curiosity, some patience, and a willingness to look at the numbers without immediately wanting to close the tab. The learning curve is almost never the issue. It’s almost always the fear of what they might see or not see that’s a barrier.

Emotional Identification Is a Skill

Here’s one that surprises people: knowing what you’re feeling is also something you have to learn.

I regularly sit with clients who can tell me they feel “bad” or “off” or “stressed” but struggle to get more specific than that. And that specificity matters. There’s a real difference between feeling anxious, feeling sad, feeling ashamed, and feeling overwhelmed. Each one points to something different. Each one calls for something different in how you respond to it.

Most of us weren’t explicitly taught to identify emotions. We were told to calm down, cheer up, not cry, or get over it. We weren’t often taught to slow down, name what we’re feeling, and get curious about what that feeling might be telling us. I mentioned this in a previous post. That I describe emotions to clients this way: they are outputs for the inputs we have in our lives. The situations we encounter or the people, situations, events are the inputs. The emotions, and the physical sensations that come with them, are the outputs. That framing helps take the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” out of feelings.

Like any skill, emotional identification gets better with practice. It can feel clunky at first. You might find yourself reaching for “good” or “bad” long after you’ve started working on it. That’s okay. You’re building something that wasn’t built before.

Talking About Money Is a Skill

Most people find money conversations deeply uncomfortable, even with the people they’re closest to. This isn’t weakness at all. It’s conditioning. Money is one of the most emotionally loaded topics in most families and cultures. It gets tied up with power, shame, identity, love, and survival. No wonder it’s hard to talk about.

Communicating effectively about money, whether that’s with a partner, a family member, or even just with yourself, is a learnable skill. It involves being able to say what you actually need, being able to hear difficult information without shutting down, and being willing to stay in the conversation even when it gets uncomfortable.

In my work with couples, I often notice that money arguments aren’t really about money. They’re about values, or fear, or dynamics such as feeling controlled or dismissed or unheard. The same argument on loop isn’t a sign that a couple is broken. It’s often a sign that two people haven’t yet developed the language or the tools to talk about what’s actually happening underneath the surface.

These are just skill sets that haven’t been developed yet. Good thing is there’s always another opportunity if all parties want to keep working on it.

Self-Soothing Is a Skill

When financial stress spikes in situations like a surprise bill, a difficult conversation about spending, the end of the month rolling around faster than expected, the nervous system responds. Your heart rate goes up more than likely. Your breathing may also become more shallow. The urge to either avoid the whole thing or react impulsively gets loud. This is a completely normal stress response. Your body is doing what it’s supposed to be doing in those situations when it is interpreting a threat.

What most people haven’t been taught is how to work with that response rather than be hijacked by it. Self-soothing, or what we sometimes call emotional regulation, is the ability to bring yourself back to a more grounded state when things get intense. We’re not trying to suppress what you’re feeling in that moment or ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t exist. That doesn’t usually work long term. IIt’s about creating enough space between stimulus and response so that your frontal lobe can wedge itself in there just enough so that you can act thoughtfully rather than just react.

This might look like a few slow breaths before reopening a hard conversation. It might look like stepping away from a financial decision for 24 hours when you’re feeling flooded. It also might look like noticing where stress is showing up in your body and naming it before you do anything else.

These are small subtle practices that can be repeated over and over again. I find that more importantly, it’s also sustainable! Also, the more we practice them the more we’re able to access them in moments of incredibly high stress.

The Other Side of the Coin

I want to come back to something I mentioned earlier, because I think it’s important. I also hope that you’re still with me. This is a long post and I realize at this point I am rambling. What I wanted to say though was that some of the unhelpful patterns we develop are also skill sets when you think about it.

Experiential avoidance is the habit of steering away from uncomfortable feelings, situations, or information. This is something people get very good at over time. Overspending as a way to manage stress or reward yourself after a hard week. Restricting spending to the point of anxiety even when the finances are stable. These aren’t character flaws either! They’re learned responses that at some point served a purpose. Maybe they still do in some ways. My job is to help people to find a way to get that same need met but in a healthier way.

Understanding these patterns as skills that were developed and reinforced over time is actually useful. Because if something was learned, we can learn healthier or more sustainable ways of navigating through those same situations. It’s definitely not easy, but it’s possible. All I’m trying to do is instill some hope for change.

Why This Reframe Matters

When we treat these narratives as ingrained traits that we can’t change “either you’re good with money or you’re not, either you’re emotionally intelligent or you’re not” we close off possibility. We also pile on a lot of unnecessary shame. And shame, as I mentioned at the start, tends to make it harder to move forward, not easier. How much harder is it to move through quicksand?

When we treat these things as skills, something different opens up. Skills can be learned and practiced. You can also get better at them over the course of time. I like to find personal examples for each of my clients that helps highlight this point. Maybe you’ve recently taken on rock climbing as a sport or learned to ride a bike.

You are not behind! You’re right where you are. (This is cheesy I know but bear with me).

If any of this resonates, if there’s a skill set here you’ve been treating as a fixed part of who you are, that’s worth paying attention to. I want to reiterate. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not a clock and you’re not broken. We’re just trying to build awareness around what skills you have and what skills you need more support developing and to me that’s a terrific place to start!