59: A Millennial Therapist’s Money Journey with Danielle Wayne
Danielle Wayne is an online therapist and helps high-achieving professionals and recovering perfectionists like doctors, attorneys, and business owners with anxiety. We cover having a complicated relationship with money, scarcity mindset, and financial privilege in this episode.
Takeaways from Danielle
Our Money Journey is Ongoing
This theme has come up time and time again, but it bears repeating: your relationship with money will change and evolve over time. There is no “once I have $X I can check out” when it comes to money.” Instead of being overwhelmed by this, see if you can embrace it with an open mind. As in, “I’ve gotten really comfortable with my spending plan. Now, I’m excited to move onto my retirement.”
Notice Scarcity Mindset
Scarcity mindset is the idea that there isn’t enough to go around. To me, scarcity often intersects with perfectionism. Rember, perfectionism isn’t about doing things the “right way,” it’s a belief that doing things a certain way will control feeling uncomfortable. If we can start to see that there is more than enough to go around, and that we can tolerate discomfort, we’ll be in a better place to develop a healthy relationship with money.
Acknowledge Your Privilege
Our privilege is multifaceted; too often it’s thought about only in binary terms: you are white or non-white. You are straight or LGBQ+. But privilege is nuanced and it can also show up in forms of social capital, connection to others, and in terms of access to resources others don’t have. Acknowledging your privilege simply means understanding you had a head starting a certain area. Most of us have parts of our identity that are oppressed and parts that are privileged. It’s about asking ourselves what we’ll do with that privilege that matters.
Learn More About Danielle
Danielle Wayne is an online therapist and helps high-achieving professionals like doctors, attorneys, and business owners. with anxiety and perfectionism. In her work, she helps millennial professionals dial down anxiety and stress, so they can perform at their best. Danielle sees clients who live in Iowa, Idaho, and North Dakota. Learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram or YouTube.
Catch Up on Past Episodes
I shared that this is the last episode of season 2 of the Mind Money Balance podcast and that I’ll be hitting “pause” on it for a little while. While you wait, go ahead and catch up on some listener favorites!
Episode 46: Overcoming Scarcity Mindset with Danielle Bailey
Episode 43: Dr. Devon Price and Financial Anxiety
Episode 17: How to Have an Abundance Mindset without Spiritual Bypassing
Stay in Touch!
The best way to stay in touch with me is to join my email list, especially as I’ll be hitting pause not only on the podcast, but also on Instagram. To join my email list, and have a little fun, take the Financial Archetypes Quiz here. You’ll learn more about how you view money and be added to my email list to stay up to date on so many exciting things that are happening in my business!
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Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Hey Danielle, thanks for joining me on the Mind Money Balance podcast. So I wanna jump right in to having you kinda share with the listeners what your current relationship is with money.
Danielle Wayne: Complicated.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah, a Facebook status.
Danielle Wayne: It's complicated. I don't know.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: You and I both are not on Facebook, so we are the wrong people to ask.
Danielle Wayne: I feel like that is my status with money. I don't feel like I've ever had a consistent relationship with money, so that's the summary right there. That's it.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. So tell, tell us what's going well right now in your relationship with money.
Danielle Wayne: I feel like I've been very privileged and like that has also probably been a very consistent thing.
But that is a very, that's something that's going well in that, like I'm in a place where I can be a therapist first off. I can like have, be someone who has finished grad school and like have a, I can have an accountant. I've never done my own taxes. Never. I don't, nope. I have my own business and I have money goals; my money goal isn't to like get above food stamps, that kind of a thing.
So all of that is going well for me. So that is something that. It's going well, but it's also something that sometimes I feel guilty about because of like how it happened, which is sometimes I think a weird thing.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. And we'll get into what got you there. What I heard you say is like some pretty like tangible things. You're like, I have an accountant, I have financial goals, I have my own business. Those are all things that are going well. Check, check, check. What about the mindset pieces that are going well in terms of your relationship with money, less the tangibles?
Danielle Wayne: I think being at a place where I can recognize when my mindset stuff is coming up and say like, "Oh, this is like, I'm overcompensating, overcompensating, or compensating." Pick one. Like this is how my mindset is impacting like the verbiage in my website, for example, or how I might be showing up in a consult with a client, for example, or that kind of shit. So being able to recognize, oh, that, like I'm presenting myself in that way, first off, because nobody taught therapists this stuff, but also because like that's coming from a place of trying to compensate for feeling as though like there's scarcity or that kind of stuff. So being able to recognize that and then also realize, oh, I don't have to do that, and trying to do all of the things doesn't help.
And also comes from a place of like a money mindset. It's a different one, but it doesn't make it any less of one. Yeah.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: So the things that are going well are, are having the ability to label what's going on. Yes. And go, oh, that thing is happening. It's not super helpful for me. And now I have the wherewithal and the choice to kind of choose a different adventure as it were when it comes to money mindset. What about some of the things that you mentioned maybe are still a work in progress when it comes to your money and money mindset?
Danielle Wayne: I mean, it's all a work in progress. I think that if we look at it as though I just do this one thing and I flip a switch and then I get there, that's not the most helpful.
And it's probably the kinda shit that we tell our clients all the time, but then when it comes to us, it's like, oh wait, that applies as well. So I mean, it's all a work in progress. I mean, I feel as though not having as much anxiety when looking at my bank account. That's something that is a work in progress.
Creating a budget and sticking to a budget is a work in progress. All of that verbiage and trying to not be very black and white. So trying to not plaster everywhere to compensate for the fact that one client was like, "oh, I didn't know that." That's something that is also kind of a work in progress because sometimes I have in the past and sometimes probably still do act from a place of like scarcity and have this frenzied marketing where I'm like, "oh, one person said this one thing, and so now I have to plaster it everywhere so everybody doesn't make that same mistake." And I've done that in the past and I still have people do the exact same thing and then it's like, "oh, well I don't, I don't need to do that." Yeah, so a lot of a lot of my website and like my branding and a lot of stuff with like that business type stuff is a work in progress. A lot of spending for me is a work in progress cuz I'm usually okay with everybody else.
I'm okay with spending money on the kids. I'm okay with spending money on the partner. And like that has not been as much of a journey, but spending on me, money on me, like heaven forbid, like I have to be the first person to sacrifice. So realizing that the same compassion can be applied to me that's also one of those journeys as well.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Thank you for bringing up that there is no check done. You're all good with your money stuff and noticing that there are always going to be areas that we're working on. And for you, it sounds like there are three kind of key things. One is the dreaded B word, the budget. Another is giving yourself permission to spend on yourself and not just for others.
And then the other sounds like it kind of comes up in business in terms of adhering to financial boundaries and, and sitting with the, maybe, reflex to overcompensate for somebody who might have missed something on your website or who didn't adhere to a financial boundary, how, how are you upholding financial boundaries in your therapy practice?
Danielle Wayne: I think this is the first year where I haven't done like over a hundred CEUs in a year. So that's a thing. I think I'm only gonna do like the minimum which I'm, I'm sure my paycheck will appreciate. But also like, and that of course ties back to this idea of like, "oh, am I good enough? Like, let's spend money to like, shh."
That's all tied together in one big yarn of, of whatever. So actually like taking the time to look at, you know, cause I'm licensed in way too many states, and actually looking at what, like what is actually required, what have I actually completed? And realizing, "oh, I only need, like, I, I only need 20. I don't need a hundred. Let's, let's only get 20. That's a novel concept. Let's try doing that this year." And that was like a weird moment where I realized that that's a thing that I could try just once.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. And it, it goes along with a lot of the work that you have shared with me that you work on your clients with, with which is the anxiety that comes from being a millennial and the perfectionism that we've all been fed.
That if we do things perfectly, we won't feel uncomfortable, we won't experience imposter syndrome, we will feel good enough. Right. And it's, it's so interesting because so many of us as therapists, we go through, similar things that our clients go through, and often we have to learn the lessons in parallel with them or maybe a little bit ahead of them if we're lucky.
But to back it up, for some folks here who aren't therapists, CE just mean continuing education. And for us therapists, we have to get X number of them every 2, 3, 4 years, depending on where you are licensed. So what Danielle was talking about was way above the amount required for continuing education credits as a way that that kind of anxiety and money anxiety was showing up.
Danielle Wayne: Oh. So 100 hours instead of 20 hours.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: That's kind of a lot.
Yeah.
Danielle Wayne: Definitely.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Did you see any other areas where your scarcity mindset was showing up in your business?
Danielle Wayne: I mean, that was the biggest one cuz that's super tangible. Like, you know, you have a spreadsheet. I do cuz I have way too many states that I'm keeping track of.
And so to be able to see that and say, "oh, I, I only have to do this many kind of things." I mean, I'm sure at one point in time if someone had looked at my website and like hit control F and actually searched for how many times the words online had shown up, that would've been a big thing. I have dialed that down considerably cuz I, I would have people who would reach out to me and say that this is like before Covid.
So before online therapy was super normal and people would say that they loved everything about me. But then as soon as I mentioned that all of my work was online, it was like, oh, but I don't love that. And so I, I compensated by plastering the word online everywhere. It was everywhere on my psychology today. It was everywhere on my website. And now I've, I've really toned that down because I think I've reached this point that if someone really does love the work that I do, they're probably reading it and I don't have to put it a billion times into one sentence. . So I guess kind of seeing like the, if someone had kind of seen like, I guess probably a year ago now, my website now versus, or my website a year ago versus now, that probably would've been a huge change in just like diction that I use.
I don't, I haven't even looked at the exact diction on my website in a while, which again, probably shows a huge mindset change by itself. The fact that I'm not checking it that often. . So things like that I think are how it shows up. I, I do check my bank account quite often though.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Your business bank account or personal bank account?
Danielle Wayne: I hardly check my personal bank account.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: That's fascinating.
Danielle Wayne: I check my business bank account a lot though.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. What are you looking for?
Danielle Wayne: That I have enough money.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Got it. Okay. Yeah, I'm just curious. Some people like to check because they wanna make sure that you know, a client's copay went through, some people check because, you know, it's just a part of their routine, so I'm just curious if there's a reason that you're checking it as often as you are?
Danielle Wayne: No, it's like, I guess we're really getting into it. I have like reminders for when all my bills come out, and then it's like, oh, I need to have this money transfer out of this account in order to have it be in this account. It's a lot of juggling accounts, and so it's kind of like, With all of those reminders and like different things coming out at different times, it's kind of like checking that I have enough money so I can transfer them in time to pay all those bills. So it's that kind of a thing.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Got it.
Danielle Wayne: Yeah.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: And then what about how you learned to set up your business stuff in a way that works for you? Like I heard you say, oh, I have reminders so that I know when my bills are paid. How did you end up using the current system that you're using?
Danielle Wayne: Guessing trial and error. Nobody teaches these things, so like. I have an accountant, so like, my dad owned a business for who knows how long, I think he started it when I was three. And I use, I use his accountant because he started doing my taxes when I was 16. And when I started a business I was like, which I didn't even mean to start it.
It was just kinda like, I think I want like liability protection, like what kind of business entity should I use? And he just told me and it was like, oh, okay, I'll go do that. And then he was the one who was like, okay Danielle, you gotta do QuickBooks, and you gotta like gimme these reports. And then I was like, okay, but like how do I do that?
And then he was like, oh, and also make sure you get a business bank account. Okay, cool. But beyond that, nobody has ever told me anything, and I've just kind of like stumbled my way through. However you do businesses.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: And how long have you been in business for yourself?
Danielle Wayne: Two years now.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. So Danielle, that's also relatively new to be in business and to already have some things that, to be honest with you, plenty of therapists don't have, which is some sort of accounting system, a separate bank account.
Some sort of structure to protect them and their business, whether it's an L L C or a P L L C or an S corp. So you actually have quite a few things in place that a lot of people don't have. So I heard you say yes, some luck was there, but something else had to be behind you. Getting these things in place.
Danielle Wayne: I feel like it's a lot of me looking at this accountant whose like done my taxes for forever, who like can do no wrong in my eyes. And he just like told me what to do and I was like, okay, I'll go do that. So it, it doesn't feel like I'm the one who did all of that when he told me what to do. In fact, when he goes, when he goes out of business, I am going to not have a very good day cuz I will have no idea who to go to. The man's done my taxes for very long time, over 10 years. So, it's a lot of like people that I trust who they tell me to do a thing and I don't know anything otherwise. So I'm just like, oh, okay. Cool. That sounds like a good idea. I guess I don't, I don't know anything else. And then I just kind of go with it and I, I know I've had conversations with my dad cuz my dad had an and Inc Incorporated and what, whatever that's called. And I was like, why did you do that versus an L L C? He's like, oh, I don't know your aunt who's also an accountant, which I didn't know that like set it up for me cuz she thought it would be a good idea. So apparently my family just has a history of people who know money stuff making decisions for us.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. That's also really important to point out, because that is how a lot of money stuff gets passed on. You know, research shows that most people who have somebody do their taxes found out about that tax person through their family, right? And so we also learn things, whether it's budgeting credit cards, how to take out a loan, how much money to save for a house.
We usually learn that through our family. So what you're talking about is. Abnormal or atypical in any way. We learn money stuff through the people we are around. And thankfully for you it sounds like you've got a reputable person on your side. You don't have somebody who's like, you know, scamming your taxes or doing it inappropriately.
But yeah, I, I wonder if that kind of touches on, you know, the P word that you said at the top of our conversation, which is the money privilege.
Danielle Wayne: I mean, yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of the privilege is this idea that I, like I had a college fund and so I was able to take my first year of college at a really expensive college, like astronomically expensive. Because my parents had a college fund and partof it, I'm like, I don't know how the college fund was built.
It's not like something that my parents always shared with me. I just know that existed. But like that was there. So for most of undergrad, I didn't have to take out student loans, and I was able to take one year at the stupid expensive college. And like one of my aunts passed away when I was really little.
I apparently had a small inheritance that came from that. She left me some money that was supposed to go into that college fund. So that that was a part of that too, where I just like, that is something that I did not recognize was privilege until you talked to people who didn't have that, who have to take out a stupid amount of college loans.
And so that was definitely privilege. And then to be able to go straight from undergrad to grad school. And, you know, other things like being able to get a house and car and like these things that you have like I had growing up, all of that is privilege. But of course, you know, I was an only child.
I didn't even have to share my fucking bedroom. I didn't recognize that any of that was privilege. I've recognized it now being a social worker, but at the time I didn't.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. I appreciate you bringing that up because I think for a lot of people, we think of privilege as it existing in one place, as in I have racial privilege or I have gender privilege, but there is also socioeconomic privilege.
I come from a financially privileged background and some of my source of money shame was how am I living paycheck to paycheck when my parents saved a lot of money for me to go to school, and yet as a social worker, I was really not making enough to make ends meet. And I had so much shame for having like, in my mind, wasted their money or not known enough to do better with my money.
So I appreciate you talking about the financial privilege that you also had access to. Outside of, you know, just getting your information from your family, are there certain. tools or resources that you often use or recommend when it comes to money management or money mindset?
Danielle Wayne: No, because that would require doing research and things like that.
And I have found that with myself, if I allow myself too much time to do that stuff. That's no bueno. So I have to like, set an amount and then just stick with it because it's one of those things where, so like with budgeting, if I'm sitting here debating the, like the difference between 500 or 600 for this one thing, if I have the luxury of debating that, does it really matter?
So I mean like, I will set a budget and then try to stick with it within reason kind of a thing. I, but I don't like, and like if I'm looking for something, like if I'm gonna open up a new credit card, I might Google and see if any there are any commonalities between a few top articles. But if there's no commonalities, I am not gonna spend who knows how much of my life researching all of that kind of stuff.
So . Think about money or do money stuff or books or any of that shenanigan, which maybe I should, but I don't.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. Which is so interesting because you and I met because of the money shenanigans.
Danielle Wayne: Oh, the irony. Actually, you and I met because I liked Monica's websites and then she promoted you kind of a thing somehow through the Instagrams.
So it wasn't the money stuff by itself, it was the connections and we're all about connections, so that was how. I don't go seeking out money stuff. I also don't read, sometimes my clients are like, oh, you should read this book on anxiety. And it's like, that's the last thing I'm gonna do after a day of...
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: One thing that you have shared with me in the past was that how, talking about this money shenanigans actually showed up in your practice in that you are able to talk about money with your clients in ways that maybe you, either A, hadn't before or B didn't realize was abnormal. Can you say a little bit more about how money shows up when you talk to your clients?
Danielle Wayne: Yeah. I mean, I, from, like, from my perspective, I have less resistance about saying, let's have these conversations about money. Instead of it being something where I feel like I just kinda like slink off into the darkness and avoid all of those conversations. But it sometimes it ironically feels like after we talk, like the day after we talk or something like that, a client's like, oh, here's, you know, there's something that I wanna talk to you about, but I don't know if we can talk about it.
And in my mind, I'm like well, what the fuck could it be? Like we've talked about who knows what, right? Like we've talked about anxiety, we've talked about you with some clients, like we talk about sex and relationships and all this other bullshit, but for some reason money is more shameful and they're hesitant to bring that up more than all this other bullshit in their life.
And so being willing and able to have some of those conversations about that, it always seems to happen right after we talk. So I'm anticipating something happening tomorrow. .
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Hmm. Interesting. But isn't that so interesting that your clients are able to talk to you about anxiety, perfectionism, sex, but money is like, Hey Danielle, I have to give you a heads up that I'm gonna talk about something really deep and dark.
Danielle Wayne: Well they ask for permission to like, can we talk about this? And like, they give me the room to deny them, which of course I'm not gonna do. But they don't with other stuff. With other stuff, it's like, Hey, here's this thing that we're gonna talk about. And it's like, okay, cool. We're gonna talk about that. But with money, I find it interesting that it's like, Ooh, can we talk about this?
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Have you ever asked them why they seek permission now? I'm just being nosy.
Danielle Wayne: No.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah, I'm, I'm so curious. I assume it's the same reason that, yeah.
Danielle Wayne: I mean the same money mindset stuff that makes it so my own tendency with money, like talking about a fee, like, Ooh, let's talk about the money you're gonna pay me to have this conversation makes me wanna just like slink into a deep, dark corner and hope that it works itself out and I don't have to have that conversation. I mean, all anxiety has this tendency to cause avoidance.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And it's, it's so interesting listening to you say that, cuz I know you're kind of saying that in just, but I think a lot of therapists get stuck on this idea that we are charging for the 50 minutes or hour that we're spending with the client, but we are also charging for our years and years of expertise. We're also charging for our knowledge, for our, you know, professional maintenance of all of our credentials. Like we're charging the hundred hours so much more. Yeah. The hundred hours a year, whatever.
It's, I mean, we're, we're also charging for all of that, not to mention, we're holding space for their mental health. Mm-hmm. So I just wanted to point that out for anybody who's listening into like, oh yeah, I am charging per hour. It's like, you're not charging per hour. It feels like that, but you're really charging for so much more.
Who do you like to work with, speaking of your practice?
Danielle Wayne: I like to work with anxious professional millennials who are struggling with perfectionism, who probably would really hate to mess up that word just like I did. That's who I like working with.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. And you practice in quite a few states. Where do you practice?
Danielle Wayne: Idaho, iowa, and North Dakota.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. Why? Why that population, anxious millennial professionals?
Danielle Wayne: I've just noticed that that's who I tend to work well with. When thinking about, you know, cause when you start off as a therapist, our field is just kind of like work with everybody because that's what good social workers do.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Mm-hmm.
Danielle Wayne: But then when thinking about what I really wanted to do with my practice and I reflected on the clients that I work well. Those are the people that I just tend to work well with. They tend to work well with me, and if I look forward to my day, then I feel like the meetings that I have tend to go better, and everybody all around has a better experience, which is kind of the goal.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah, and I think that's exactly it is when we as therapists can show up excited to see our clients and fully rested, and then when we kind of clock out for the day, we can turn it. We do better therapeutic work when we see anyone and everyone, we're exhausted. We're on the road to burn out and we're not doing good work.
Danielle Wayne: No, and sometimes it does a disservice, like there are some, some struggles where really if I worked as someone who struggled with those things, I know that I would be doing them a disservice.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Right.
Danielle Wayne: And I'll tell people that.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Mm-hmm.
Danielle Wayne: Because I'm maybe sometimes too honest. But I would much rather have somebody work with someone who's gonna help them more than work with someone where it's like, eh, you are a warm body. That's not helpful. Just because I exist doesn't mean I'm gonna help everybody.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Right, right. And I appreciate you saying that. Like, just because we can doesn't mean we should. And in very few fields, would they say like, oh, you don't specialize. Don't worry about it, just see them anyway. Like, you know, if there was an OBGYN and they were like, "oh, hey, we've got somebody with a broken arm. Can you set it?" They're not gonna say like, "oh yeah, just go for it...
Danielle Wayne: Can they do surgery, remove this guy's cancer. Can you do brain surgery?
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Right. No , that's a hard no. But for some reason in our field, we're expected to be intense generalists for everything, which makes not a lot of sense. Yeah.
Danielle Wayne: Because we're the givers. Mm-hmm. .
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah. Which comes with a lot of baggage, right? Yeah. So where can folks find you if they want to learn more about you and your work?
Danielle Wayne: My website for therapy work is MillennialTherapy.com and my Instagram is @CounselorPlays
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Why @CounselorPlays?
Danielle Wayne: Because I am being super vulnerable and branching out into the world of YouTube and doing let's plays for video games and discussing more of the mental health as it comes up in video games cuz we don't talk about that.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Okay. Can you say a little bit more about that? I'm very curious.
Danielle Wayne: So horror games, for example, it is so common to have like the psychiatric hospital be a setting for the horror game. And, and so how, how does that. Impact somebody who then actually may need to be in that setting. Like in the real world.
Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong, I've, I've worked in a psych hospital way longer than I'd like to admit. They're not fun, but they're gonna be seen like this. We talk about how mental health is portrayed in TV shows. We talk about how it's portrayed in movies, but we don't talk about it when it comes to video games.
And I feel like it's often lazy writing to have mental health be like the bad guy kind of a thing. Cuz it's another really common trope to have it be where you are the bad guy because of schizophrenia. And also to have just like bad writing in the sense of, I was, I was watching one the other day where it's like this person's schizophrenia caused depression.
And I was screaming at my TV going, that's not how schizophrenia works. I get a little passionate about it cuz it really irritates me. But mental health is not portrayed in a positive way in especially like horror games, but in general video games.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: I appreciate your take on that because I think there is so much there are so many think pieces and ideas about the way that mental health shows up in TV shows or on social media, but there isn't a ton of dialogue on how it shows up in video games.
So I'm, I'm sure that your voice. Very welcome there and much needed.
Danielle Wayne: I think so. But yeah, I also think I'm hilarious and entertaining even if I'm not on YouTube. So.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Well, thank you Danielle, for coming on today. Are there any other thoughts you wanna leave the listeners with when it comes to money and money mindset?
Danielle Wayne: I don't think so. Okay. I mean, it doesn't always have to be. It's complicated and [gagging noise]. But...
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin: Yeah, and if you are a little gagging about it, there's, there are resources available out there, is what I will say as well. All right. Awesome. Thanks so much, Danielle.