Somatic Therapy Tools for Healing Financial Trauma

Have you ever noticed your shoulders tensing when checking your bank balance? Maybe before you even process the numbers, something shifts inside you. Your chest tightens. Your stomach clenches. Your heart speeds up, or your jaw locks without you realizing it. It’s not just worry—your body is reacting. But why?

Financial stress isn’t just in your head. It also lives in your nervous system, triggering fight, flight, or freeze responses just like any other form of stress or trauma. And if money struggles have been a long-term battle—whether from debt, instability, or past financial hardship—your body may be stuck in a cycle of tension and hypervigilance, even when you’re not actively thinking about money. These physical responses aren’t just uncomfortable—they can impact your financial decisions and overall well-being.

The good news? You don’t have to think your way out of financial stress. Somatic approaches—body-based techniques designed to regulate the nervous system—can help you ease that tension, shift out of survival mode, and regain a sense of control over your financial decisions. Whether through self-help techniques or therapist-assisted methods, these tools go beyond traditional talk therapy to help restore a sense of calm and safety.

The Need for Somatic Tools

Before diving into specific tools and techniques, it’s important to understand exactly how financial stress manifests in our bodies. When we grasp the physical impact of money-related trauma, we can better appreciate why body-based approaches are so vital for healing. Let’s look at how financial stress affects different systems throughout our body, creating patterns that may persist long after the initial trigger.

How Financial Trauma Affects the Body

While researching this series on financial trauma, I noticed a pattern: Many people who struggle with financial trauma don’t just have an emotional reaction. They have a physical response too, like chronic tension, stomach pain, headaches, even panic attacks. It made me think: trauma isn’t just an emotional experience. It’s a full-body experience.

When we go through financial hardship—whether a job loss, overwhelming debt, or a history of instability—our bodies register the threat just like any other form of trauma. Stress responses affect our nervous system, hormones, muscles, and even cells. Here’s how:

Nervous System – The brain and spinal cord don’t just record traumatic events; they store sensory experiences, emotions, and physical responses. Key brain structures—the amygdala, hippocampus, and insula—play a role in how financial stress imprints itself on us, shaping how we react to future money-related situations. This is why a past experience of debt collection calls might make your stomach drop every time your phone rings—even if it’s just a friend. (See our entire post on the brain science behind financial behavior.)
Endocrine System – When faced with financial uncertainty, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, repeated surges of these hormones can rewire how the body responds to stress, keeping us in a heightened state of vigilance—even when the immediate threat is gone. This is why you might feel your heart racing when opening a bill.
Muscles and Tissue – Ever notice how your shoulders creep up to your ears when you’re stressed? Trauma often manifests as muscle tension, pain, or inflammation, creating a physical imprint of past distress. This explains how an old financial struggle might leave you with chronic jaw clenching or back pain—even years after your money situation has improved.
Cellular Level – Stress can change how our cells function, even affecting how our genes behave. One process, called epigenetic change, can turn certain genes “on” or “off” in response to chronic stress. This may be why someone who grew up in financial instability is more prone to health issues like high blood pressure, even if their finances later improve.
Psychological Processes – The way we process and interpret traumatic events shapes how they manifest physically. If we suppress financial stress or dissociate from it, it may show up in physical symptoms instead, reinforcing the cycle of distress.

Everyone’s experience with financial trauma is unique, and its impact can vary in intensity. But one thing is clear: it’s not just in your head. Your body remembers.

Given the profound impact of financial trauma on our bodies, somatic approaches present promising healing tools. Although their effectiveness is sometimes questioned, it’s worthwhile to explore these therapies.

Addressing Skepticism: What’s the Science Behind Somatic Therapy?

Skepticism towards somatic therapies often stems from their divergence from conventional medical treatments. While research is still evolving, many trauma-informed therapists incorporate these methods because they recognize that trauma isn’t just a mental manifestation—it’s also experienced in the body. Even if not every somatic approach has extensive clinical trials behind it, many people report relief and healing from these techniques.

Easing Financial Trauma Through Somatic Therapy

Financial trauma manifests in both mind and body, so effective healing often requires approaches that address both. This is where somatic therapy comes in—a body-based approach that helps regulate the nervous system and release the physical imprint of stress. While traditional talk therapy focuses on cognitive and emotional processing, somatic techniques engage the body directly to restore a sense of safety and control. This makes somatic therapy for financial stress a powerful tool for those struggling with the physical effects of money-related anxiety.

Healing financial trauma isn’t one-size-fits-all. Certain people find relief through cognitive or behavioral strategies, others through holistic approaches, some through somatic methods, and many from a combination of tools.

This post focuses specifically on somatic techniques for nervous system regulation, since financial trauma often triggers chronic stress and anxiety. These approaches help release the physical tension created by financial distress while also building self-awareness around the body’s stress responses. Over time, they can make the financial dimension of your life feel safer, more grounded, and less impacted by fear or survival instincts.

Healing from financial trauma isn’t just about numbers—it’s about reclaiming a sense of empowerment in your financial life. When you feel more regulated, you can make choices from a place of peace and confidence rather than panic or avoidance. The goal isn’t just to manage stress—it’s to create a relationship with money that feels safe, stable, and sustainable.

Let’s explore specific somatic approaches you can begin using today. We’ll start with self-help practices you can try on your own, then move into therapist-guided interventions for deeper healing. While some of these techniques may feel unusual at first, remember that their purpose is to help your body release stored tension and create new patterns of safety around money.

Somatic Approaches for Financial Trauma Recovery

Self-Help Practices

Breathwork

Research findings show that breathwork holds potential as an effective intervention. There are many types of breathwork, some rooted in long traditions such as Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine and others developed more recently. Click these links to see video demonstrations of common techniques: diaphragmatic breathing, box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, alternate nostril breathing, five finger breathing, and breathwork meditation.

Breathwork, particularly slow breathing techniques, works by influencing the connection between our body and brain. When we breathe slowly (about five to six breaths per minute), we activate our body’s natural calming system, primarily through the vagus nerve—a major communication pathway between body and brain. This activation helps regulate our heart rate, reduce stress, and create a more balanced nervous system, improving our ability to handle stress—including financial stress and trauma.

Try diaphragmatic breathing now: When learning this technique, it helps to lie on your back with your knees bent and head supported. Place one hand on your upper chest and another below your ribs so that you can feel your diaphragm move out as you inhale, causing your hand to rise. Your chest should stay relatively still. As you exhale through pursed lips, the hand on your stomach should fall inward. If you’re new to the technique, practice a few times a day for 5 to 10 minutes. As you master this technique, you can use it when you’re stressed about financial matters or as part of a routine wellness practice.

While breathwork helps calm the nervous system directly, grounding exercises offer another powerful way to interrupt stress responses.

Grounding Exercises

Grounding exercises are techniques designed to help individuals feel more present and connected to their surroundings, reducing stress and anxiety. Grounding involves focusing on the current moment through sensory experiences and cognitive anchors. For example, if going to your bank triggers panic, a grounding exercise—like naming five things you see—can help interrupt the spiral of fear. This practice distracts your mind from anxious thoughts and activates the body’s relaxation response, lowering your heart rate and muscle tension and leading to a calmer state.

Grounding can help with stress, PTSD, negative self-talk, and overthinking, making it particularly useful when facing financial stress, such as negotiating a payment plan, or dealing with financial trauma, such as wounds from childhood poverty.

Techniques like pressing feet into the floor, silently describing an object you’re holding, or experiencing temperature (warm tea, cool water) can help bring awareness back to the present instead of spiraling into financial worry. Or, it can be useful to repeat calming phrases to yourself, such as “I am safe,” “I am grounded,” or “I am present.”

Here’s another grounding exercise you can try right now, the 5-4-3-2-1 Method: In your surroundings, identify five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This article from Trauma Research UK explains why the technique works.

Beyond techniques that anchor us in the present moment, we can also draw strength from positive internal resources.

Resourcing

Resourcing involves identifying and focusing on internal/external sources of comfort (for instance, recalling a moment of financial security, safe relationships, or physical relaxation). If you’ve been exposed to money trauma or you’re experiencing financial stress, you’ll need to find a “safe space” from those experiences to maintain your well-being and work on healing.

Resourcing provides a sense of stability and safety during the healing process, enabling you to better process traumatic memories without feeling overwhelmed. It builds a foundation of positive coping mechanisms. Here are two examples of resourcing. Why not try one now?

Your Inner Circle: Imagine one to four people in your life, living or not, who have supported and believed in you—people with whom you have mutual caring, safety, and trust. Perhaps they encouraged you when you faced financial struggles or reminded you of your resilience during tough times. Imagine being in their presence and feeling their care for you. Become aware of the sensations in your body and enjoy the positive sensations.

Be Good–Feel Good: Connect to your body’s experience by noticing changes in things like your posture, facial expressions, breathing, and sensations when you think about something you’re good at doing—for example, gardening, cooking, a sport, speaking another language, or telling jokes. If money stress has left you feeling powerless, this practice can reconnect you to your strengths, reminding you that financial struggles don’t define your worth or abilities.

These resource-building practices work best when combined with a fundamental skill of somatic healing—body awareness.

Body Awareness

Body awareness is foundational to somatic healing. Awareness of physical sensations creates a deeper connection between mind and body. This pathway provides access to process and release physical manifestations of trauma—including money trauma—and promote overall well-being. By noticing bodily sensations, one can identify patterns of tension or discomfort that may be related to emotional states, enabling targeted healing through somatic practices.

One key example of somatic awareness is the body scan. You can use it to check in on your physical sensations when thinking about money decisions (for instance, noticing a tight chest when you think about your recent unplanned purchases). This process can give you important feedback about your body and mind’s reactions to the stress. When you become aware of your physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts, you can take steps to manage them better.

If you’d like to perform a body scan, here’s how:

Relax and start scanning: Begin at the top of your head, gradually moving down your body, noticing sensations in your scalp, forehead, eyes, cheeks, jaw, etc.
Observe sensations: Pay attention to any sensations you feel, whether it’s tightness, warmth, tingling, or simply a sense of “being” in that area.
Release tension: When you encounter tension, mentally “let go” of that area with each exhale.
Move through your body: Continue scanning down through your neck, shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, legs, and feet, noticing sensations in each part and releasing any tension.
Non-judgmental awareness: Observe your sensations without judgment, simply acknowledging what you feel in the moment.

While we’ve explored several key somatic practices in detail above, there’s a wide range of other effective techniques available for processing financial stress and trauma in the body. Here’s a curated collection of resources for exploring additional approaches.

Guided Video Resources from Johns Hopkins Medicine

Johns Hopkins Medicine has created a series of short videos demonstrating additional breathing patterns as well as the following techniques:

Additional Somatic Practices

Progressive Muscle Relaxation, clinically shown to reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality, can be learned through this video from the University of Toledo.
Walking Meditation, which research links to reduced stress and improved well-being, is demonstrated in this video by esteemed Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.
The Voo Breath, a research-supported Somatic Experiencing technique for nervous system regulation, is demonstrated in this video.
Shaking Out Tension (TRE or Tension Release Exercises), verified by many pilot studies to help release chronic stress, is explained in this video guide.

While self-help practices can provide immediate relief from financial stress, some people benefit from professional guidance to address deeper or more resistant patterns of financial trauma. Therapist-guided somatic interventions offer a structured approach to processing and releasing trauma, combining body awareness with professional support. The following approaches integrate and expand many of the body awareness skills above.

Therapist-Guided Somatic Interventions

Somatic therapies emphasize body-oriented mindfulness, where clients learn to observe, identify, and respond to physical sensations during sessions. This heightened awareness serves as a catalyst for healing and transformation. Let’s explore some common therapist-led somatic approaches.

Somatic Experiencing (SE)

Somatic Experiencing helps process and release financial trauma by guiding the body through unfinished stress responses (like fight, flight, freeze). Among all somatic therapies, SE is often considered the most applicable to treating trauma, and research results are promising.

SE works by helping people complete stress responses that may have become “stuck” in place during financial hardship. Consider Marissa, who experienced a sudden job loss during the recession. Years later, she still feels physically tense when thinking about her finances, even though she’s now financially stable. Through SE, her therapist helps her track physical sensations while gradually processing the old trauma. She learns to recognize when her body is responding to past threats rather than present reality.

Some key aspects of SE for financial healing:

Pendulation: Gently moving between states of activation (financial stress) and regulation (safety)
Titration: Processing financial trauma in small, manageable doses to avoid overwhelm
Resource building: Incorporating resourcing skills discussed earlier—developing internal anchors of safety and stability to draw upon during financial stress

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

This approach works with the body awareness techniques we mentioned earlier to shift ingrained patterns and emotional responses. It can be used to recognize the relationship between emotions and posture, movement, and nervous system patterns. Take Jack, who unconsciously hunches and holds his breath whenever he opens his banking app. His sensorimotor therapist helps him notice these patterns and experiment with new ways of physically responding to financial tasks.

Sensorimotor psychotherapy helps by:

Creating new somatic resources for handling money situations
Identifying physical “scripts” that emerge around money
Practicing new movements and postures that support financial confidence
Building awareness of how financial stress manifests in the body

Hakomi

Hakomi is a mindfulness-based somatic therapy that helps people explore their core beliefs and emotional patterns through present-moment body awareness. This gentle, experiential approach can be particularly valuable for understanding how financial stress manifests in the body and uncovering deeper patterns in one’s relationship with money. For example, Miranda noticed that discussions about spending triggered shoulder tension. Through Hakomi work, she discovered this physical response connected to deeply held beliefs about scarcity and safety.

Some key aspects of Hakomi’s core principles for financial healing:

Mindful awareness: Using present-moment consciousness to study how financial situations affect the body
Loving presence: Creating a safe, non-judgmental space to explore money-related tensions and emotions
Little experiments: Carefully designed experiences that help reveal core beliefs about money and resources
Non-violence: Respecting the body’s natural wisdom and working with resistance rather than against it

Neurosomatic Therapy

Taking the body awareness we discussed earlier to a deeper therapeutic level, this modality addresses how chronic stress creates physical pain patterns. Consider Vincent, whose years of financial pressure manifested as persistent neck and shoulder pain. Neurosomatic therapy helped him release physical tension while developing new, healthful patterns for easing financial trauma.

This therapeutic approach focuses on:

Identifying areas where financial stress is held in the body
Releasing chronic tension patterns related to money anxiety
Developing new neural pathways for responding to financial pressure
Integrating physical and emotional healing

Moving Forward: Practical Next Steps

I hope this post has encouraged you to recognize your body’s responses to financial stress. To continue making progress, consider the following steps:

Assessing Your Body Awareness: Start by noticing your own physical responses to financial situations. Keep a simple log of bodily sensations that arise when you check your financial apps, pay bills, make decisions about money, or think about your financial future.

Choosing Your Path: If you’re considering professional help, think about which approach resonates with your needs and symptoms:

If you feel “stuck” in past financial trauma → Somatic Experiencing
If you notice strong physical patterns around money → Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
If you suspect early childhood money influences → Hakomi
If financial stress manifests as chronic pain → Neurosomatic Therapy

Finding Support. If you decide you’d like to work with a somatic therapist, look for one certified in the specific modality of your choice. Request a consultation to discuss your financial trauma specifically. Consider combining approaches (like blending self-help practices with professional support). Finally, trust your intuition about what feels right for your healing journey.

Remember, healing financial trauma is a gradual process. While these therapist-guided approaches offer powerful tools for transformation, they work best when combined with self-compassion and patience. Start where you are, whether that means practicing the self-help techniques described earlier, seeking professional support for deeper healing, or doing both.

Recovery from financial wounds isn’t about achieving a stress-free financial life overnight. It’s about learning to feel safe in your body so that money decisions don’t have to come from fear. With small, consistent steps, you can build resilience, shift out of survival mode, and create a relationship with money that feels empowering instead of overwhelming. If financial stress has taken a toll on your body and mind, exploring somatic therapy for financial stress may help you reconnect with a sense of calm and control.

Key Takeaways

Financial trauma lives in the body, triggering physical stress responses like muscle tension, racing heart, and shallow breathing—these aren’t just emotional reactions but real physiological changes affecting multiple body systems
Your body can get stuck in stress response patterns from past financial hardship, maintaining anxiety and tension even when your current financial situation is stable
Somatic (body-based) approaches offer a different path to healing financial trauma than traditional talk therapy, working directly with the nervous system to restore a sense of safety
Simple self-help practices like breathwork, grounding exercises, and body scanning can provide immediate relief from financial stress and help build awareness of your body’s stress patterns.
For deeper healing, therapist-guided somatic interventions like Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy can help process and release long-held patterns of financial trauma, leading to more empowered financial decision-making

This post is part of a series that combines insights from neuroscience, psychology, social work, and holism to increase awareness about financial trauma. Whether you’re looking to better understand the situation of a friend, loved one, client or yourself—or whether you’re simply curious— you’ll find valuable insights and practical strategies throughout these articles. For a listing of these articles and convenient links to them, visit our series hub.

Start or Join a Conversation

Thanks so much for your dedication to learning about somatic tools for healing financial trauma.

Many different perspectives are possible about this topic. Your thoughts are key to this community. Please share them here. If you don’t already have an opinion at the top of your mind, consider sharing your views on one of these points:

Have you ever noticed a physical reaction—like tension or rapid heartbeat—when dealing with money? What helps you feel more at ease in those moments?
Which somatic techniques (breathwork, grounding, etc.) have you tried before? How did they affect your stress levels?

Resources for Further Exploration

Online:

Searching for certain specialists or in certain locations can be challenging. The US Association for Body Psychotherapy offers a Find a Therapist search tool online.

Books:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. This book delves into the profound link between trauma and the body, shedding light on how unresolved trauma can reveal itself through behaviors, emotions, and physical health. It offers essential insights for those looking to break free from self-destructive patterns rooted in past experiences.
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter A. Levine. In this detailed but accessible book you’ll find both an exploration of the neuroscience of trauma and a practical overview of how Somatic Experiencing can help you process difficult experiences.

Videos:

In this playlist for a series of 14 short videos from Johns Hopkins Medicine, you’ll find demonstrations of helpful somatic exercises.

Notice

This post is for educational purposes only and is not legal, medical, psychological, financial, or any other type of professional advice. The content reflects personal insights and general strategies, not clinical diagnostic or treatment recommendations. Individual experiences with financial stress vary, and what works for one person may not work for another. Always seek professional support for serious or persistent psychological or financial difficulties.

Please understand that facts and views change over time. Posts reflect the author’s understanding at the time of writing, as well as the perspectives of external sources for this post. While maintained for your information, archived posts may not reflect current conditions.