Financial trauma is real, and you can heal it. This book gives what you have been carrying a name and a way through. Written for anyone who was told they were just bad with money.
Most money advice assumes the only thing standing between you and financial stability is information. Learn to budget, the thinking goes, and the behavior will follow. But anyone who has ever known exactly what to do and still not done it understands that this is only half the story.
Overcoming Financial Trauma is about the other half — the emotional, psychological, and generational weight we carry around money: the lasting imprint left by financial hardship, instability, and the lessons we absorbed long before we earned our first dollar.
You were never “bad with money.” You were responding — intelligently — to experiences nobody ever helped you name.
Drawing on lived experience and years of advocacy, this book reframes financial struggle not as a personal failing, but as a response that made sense given everything you’ve been through. And from that more honest starting point, it offers a way forward.
Part reframe, part roadmap — the book moves from naming what you’ve carried to rebuilding how you relate to money.
Why money behavior is a trauma response, not a discipline problem.
Where financial trauma comes from — and how to recognize yours.
How avoidance, scarcity, and overspending protect you — and what they cost.
An embodied path for moving from awareness to lasting change.
How to build new financial behavior on self-trust, not shame.
How generational and institutional forces shaped your money story.
It’s not a budgeting manual or a get-rich plan — it’s the inner work that makes all the outer work finally stick.
I’m Rahkim Sabree — a financial trauma expert, author, and empowerment speaker. I wrote Overcoming Financial Trauma because understanding the emotional side of money changed my life long before it became my work.
My writing and speaking have reached audiences through the New York Times, Forbes, TIME, Black Enterprise, and beyond — and the book rests on two frameworks I created: The 3E’s of Overcoming Financial Trauma™ and The TRUST Framework™.
Rahkim gave language to something I’d carried my whole life. After the keynote, our entire team talks about money differently — with less shame and more honesty.
The most important voice working at the intersection of money and mental health right now. Essential for anyone who serves clients around their finances.
I finally understood why I felt panic looking at a bank balance that was perfectly fine. It wasn’t about the math. It was never about the math.
The book is available now on Gumroad — one click and you can start reading today. Additional retailers can be listed here as they go live.
Yes — the book is available in both eBook and paperback. Format options and pricing are shown at checkout on Gumroad.
Not at all. This isn’t a technical money book — it’s written for anyone who has felt anxious, ashamed, or stuck around money, regardless of income or financial knowledge.
Neither. It’s an educational, trauma-responsive look at the relationship between money and emotion. It can sit alongside therapy or financial planning, but it doesn’t replace either.
Yes. Beyond the book, Rahkim delivers keynotes and train-the-trainer workshops on financial trauma.