Overcoming Fear-Based Emotions: Guiding Wealthy Clients to Emotional Clarity

Understanding the most common fear-based emotions your clients experience is crucial to helping them trust you and sleep better at night. Helping them to step away from the primitive and subconscious brain is key to encouraging logical decision-making. While you can't control your clients, you can provide them with tools and support to cultivate a Calm Optimal Brain State (as we call it in SelfSync Financial Therapy).

What you may not realize is that your clients have fears they aren't sharing with you—not because they're keeping secrets, but because they struggle to articulate their feelings. Society's mixed messages often lead to misunderstandings and suppressed fears. Your clients might be confused, and they need your guidance.

Innate Fears

Fear, an innate emotion we are born with, takes various forms as we navigate life's complexities. The two fears we are born with are the fear of the unknown and the fear of falling. Any other fear is taught to us by our loved ones or stems from our misunderstanding of societal messages. Though we have somewhat overcome our fear of falling with activities like bungee jumping and skydiving, the fear of the unknown still lingers in many aspects of our lives.

Among the most common Fear-Based Emotions are the fear of making mistakes, fear of not being accepted, and fear of being taken advantage of. Yet, the most powerful fear of all remains the fear of the unknown, deeply ingrained within us from birth. While this fear originally served to keep us safe, it has also kept us stuck in many ways over the years.

Common Fear-Based Emotions

While you may think of other Fear-Based Emotions your clients have experienced, most of them can be traced back to one of these four. To effectively guide your clients through their financial journey, you must help them differentiate between factual concerns and emotions rooted in past experiences. Fear-driven decisions can lead to costly mistakes.

In an attempt to be accepted, your clients might lower boundaries or be more generous than they are comfortable with. They could engage in risky behavior, such as surrounding themselves with the wrong crowd or becoming the group's scapegoat. When teenagers or young adults indulge in these behaviors, they can also put their parents at risk.

Growing Up Doesn’t Mean Maturing Emotionally

However, Fear-Based Emotional decisions are not something your clients merely grow out of; these emotions can persist into adulthood. They may have a business partner that talks them into doing something illegal, a spouse that persuades them to overspend, or a sibling that bullies them into investing in their ideas.

Impulsive Behavior

Another behavior triggered by Fear-Based Money Emotions is acting impulsively. This act-now-think-later behavior can be related to the fight or flight response. Impulsiveness can also arise from taking too long to make a decision, leading clients to become paralyzed by indecisiveness and eventually forced into hasty, poorly thought-out choices.

Your Role

As their trusted advisor, your role is to guide and support them in moving away from debilitating fears and towards more logical expressions. This can be a delicate process, sometimes requiring gentleness and other times necessitating tough love.

You can serve as an authority on money decisions. Not to tell them what to do, but to talk through all options with your clients before exercising their own discernment. Encourage them to find clarity amidst uncertainty, align their actions with their goals, and embrace the idea of mastering their emotions. Make sure they know they are not alone and that the partnership they have with you will help them hit their targets.

Societal Programming

Society perpetuates old programming that instills fear into wealthy individuals, such as being taken advantage of or being labeled as greedy. These opposing programs make it hard to strike a balance. The notion that "rich people can't be trusted" or that "it's better to give than to receive" further exacerbates negative emotions that leave your clients feeling fearful. They may also feel Lust-Based Emotions like guilt or Lonely-Based Emotions like being misunderstood. 

Other Money Emotions

We will address the other Money Emotions in future blog posts, so be sure to subscribe to this newsletter and community by clicking here. My goal is to provide you with Financial Therapy resources to support your journey in growing and preserving your clients' wealth. Each week, I'll present a Financial Therapy principle and answer your questions. If you have any pressing questions right now, join the community, and I'll provide the answers you're looking for. 

By proactively understanding and addressing your clients' Fear-Based Emotions, you can help them gain emotional clarity, enabling them to make informed decisions that align with their financial aspirations.

More to Come

There’s more to discuss when it comes to Fear-Based Emotions, but you can learn more when you are ready. There are more resources in the community portal. In the upcoming blog posts, I’ll dive deeper into each of the other three Money Emotions. The blog posts are designed to give you awareness. If you want more information let me know in the community and I’ll provide you with more details.  

Together, we will unlock the path to financial success and emotional well-being for your clients. I’m with you on this journey. Your clients aren’t alone, they have you, and you have me. Join us in the community as we unravel Money Emotions and guide our wealthy clients to lasting emotional clarity.

Remember, the key to financial abundance lies not just in numbers or earning, but also in understanding and mastering the intricate world of emotions that influence our financial choices. That’s what’s meant by it’s not what you make, but what you keep what you make. Remind your clients of that the next time they make an emotional decision that costs them (and you) money.