Therapist To The 1 Percent Weighs in on The Psychological Hardship Of Being Rich

[babylonsister]

< - - - Smallest one I could find.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/therapist-class-warfare-tom-perkins


Therapist To The 1 Percent Weighs in on The Psychological Hardship Of Being Rich

—By Erika Eichelberger
| Thu Jan. 30, 2014 7:57 AM GMT


Last week, billionaire investor Tom Perkins of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers sent a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal likening criticism of the one percent to Nazi attacks on the Jews. He's not an outlier. As Paul Krugman pointed out on Sunday, the rich have been lamenting the "demonizing" and "vilifying" of the one percent for years. "I… suspect that today’s Masters of the Universe are insecure about the nature of their success," Krugman wrote. But the wealthy are not just afraid of losing their money to an angry middle class. Class warfare also makes the rich uncomfortable because they worry the non-rich are judging their character and personality by how much money they have, according to therapists who counsel the rich.

"I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger," Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist who counsels people who earn tens of millions of dollars a year, told Politico on Thursday. "There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth."

In 2012, Mother Jones reported on how banks, including Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, are increasingly hiring psychotherapists like Traeger-Muney to help their extremely wealthy clients deal with the complications that come with being extremely wealthy. Here's a bit more of what wealth therapists can tell us about how the rich may be feeling right now:

Although wealth counseling has existed for years, the 2008 financial crisis really sent the aristocracy sprinting for the therapist's chair. The 2010 Capgemini/Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report, a survey that takes the pulse of zillionaires around the world, found that after the crisis, spooked clients were demanding "specialized advice." Financial advisers must "truly understand the emotional aspects of client behavior," the report warned…

"Any time there's an outside focus on wealth," it's not fun for the wealthy, {Traeger-Muney} says. Heirs, she adds, have it the worst: "They feel like they're in this 1 percent position. They get bad press from people who make fun of them. It feels like their worst nightmare coming true: the idea that they're now responsible for other people's unhappiness and lack of wealth, when they didn't ask for {their millions}."

Ultimately, having lots of money shouldn't be cause for alarm. "There's a difference between money causing problems and a lack of ability to explore feelings around money," Traeger-Muney says. "That's what leads to psychological issues." She just tries to get her clients to acknowledge the fact that they're rolling in dough and learn how to enjoy it. "What would life be like if they didn't have any restraints and could really create what they wanted?"

[bemildred]

1. Money

To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money, or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don’t have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?

-- Henry Miller in "Tropic of Capricorn"

What I find is that when you have too much money, it owns you.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Poverty can also own you.

[bemildred]

22. Poverty owns you worse for sure. nt

[roguevalley]

53. to these half wits... boo hoo. when the revolution finally comes they will be easy to find

They live in the big houses

[cinnabonbon]

2. If they feel so terrible about getting millions they never asked for

I know of ways to solve their terrible problem.

[Armstead]

3. The last sentence is interesting

"...She just tries to get her clients to acknowledge the fact that they're rolling in dough and learn how to enjoy it. "What would life be like if they didn't have any restraints and could really create what they wanted?"..."

Based on evidence in the real-world, I don'lt think many of them feel many restraints. They're ":creating": pretty much what they want.,...and "to hell with everyone else."

[Brigid]

11. I noticed that too.

There are few, if any, restraints on the wealthy. The rest of us, we're just thinking about survival.

[Blus4u]

5. Ohhhh...

Boo hoo hoo....

Peace

[Newsjock]

6. Sounds like a job for the guillotines

Poof, no more "psychological hardship" ... or psychological anything. Poor babies.

[Ikonoklast]

7. The mind reels...

[smokey nj]

8. My heart fucking breaks for them.

[Brigid]

9. Too bad the rest of us can't afford counseling . . .

To deal with the stresses the wealthy created for us: Like unemployment, lousy pay and benefits if you do find a job, student loan debt, a degraded environment, threats to Social Security, reduced SNAP benefits, and stolen pensions, just to name a few.

[laundry_queen]

17. Truth

My kids need counselling as do I thanks to a divorce from a sociopathic husband. I grew up with narcissistic parents and likely need some deep counselling to overcome the damage. Can I afford it? Nope. One of my kids was in therapy for a bit, my ex promised to pay and did for awhile until he found out that the child psychologist we were seeing met with me too every so often to make sure I was doing the right things. She also counselled me a bit. It was part of the treatment plan for my daughter but when my ex found out that I was seeing the psychologist as part of the plan, he stopped paying for it. I had to cover the last bill (which I could ill afford) and I couldn't take my daughter back because I was broke.

Anyhow, I don't feel sorry for the rich. Maybe the therapist would be worth their salt if they said, "hey, I know a good fix for that stress - use your money to help people! Give away so much you are no longer so rich. voila! problem solved."

[eShirl]

10. Oh my!

"There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth."

Kind of like how someone using an EBT card at the grocery store is judged?

[marions ghost]

12. Bottom line--

Most people who are filthy rich in America really did not "earn" it, but they feel they are entitled to it anyway.
And they almost never share it. (If they have to share, they resent it). They are sucking this country dry and at some level they know that. What power.

With this world view--it's not hard to understand why the rich feel hurt that anyone would think them a greedy narcissist creep. They think of themselves as so deserving of everything good.

The rich must be curbed because they cannot curb themselves. Money obsession and accumulation of wealth on the backs of others--this is a disease.

So if the rich are feeling the hate--good. They need to have some sleepless nights, like the people they exploit.

[grasswire]

33. must be curbed...

....for other dysfunctions, we might hold an intervention.

For money hoarding, the curbing should be the same. An intervention in the form of strong taxation.

For their own good. Just like a hoarding intervention.

[marions ghost]

39. I'm down with that idea...taxation

to curb hoarding of money and relieve income inequality. Works in other parts of the world. If we learn nothing from this "recession" we should learn that the rich WILL NOT willingly share the wealth. Instead they have squeezed us even more. It makes sense to see this destructive behavior as an addiction that we need to treat. Exploitation and abuse of power--is not normal. It's sociopathic. We are being victimized.
Mitt Rmoney's "47%" -- was there ever a more outrageous statement from a presidential contender?

But they have wrestled SO much power now...who will bring about any meaningful reforms of any kind?

Who will administer The Cure for this very sick society?

[Fumesucker]

13. "What would life be like if they didn't have any restraints and could really create what they wanted

Has this person ever read Ayn Rand?

[jwirr]

14. I don't think anyone is upset about how rich they are. It is more about what they do with their

money. Do they pay their fair share of taxes? Do they pay a living wage to their workers? Do support policies that help the poor? These are the things that they get judged for not the amount of their money. Only when what they have begins to destroy the country and the people within it does the question of income inequality come up.

They need to ask if themselves what kind of damage they may be doing by continuing this inequality. Unfortunately most if them cannot see the forest for the trees.

[marions ghost]

15. I'm upset at how rich they are

relative to the rest of us, and the fact that they are destroying this country.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/09/3_ways_the_super_rich_suck_wealth_from_the_rest_of_us_partner/

Monday, Dec 9, 2013 11:15 AM EST
3 ways the super-rich suck wealth from the rest of us

The facts are indisputable, the conclusion painful. The wealthiest people in the U.S. and around the world have used the stock market and the deregulated financial system to lay claim to the resources that should belong to all of us. This is not a matter of productive people benefiting from their contributions to society. This is a relatively small number of people extracting massive amounts of money through the financial system for accomplishing almost nothing.

1. They’ve Taken $1.6 Million Per Family in New Wealth Since the Recession

The richest 5% of American families each gained at least that much in five years, mostly from the stock market. Using data from Credit Suisse, the Economic Policy Institute, Pew Research, and the Census Bureau and two separate analyses (shown here and here), this extraordinary wealth grab can be calculated.

To briefly summarize, the richest 5% (six million households) own about two-thirds of the wealth, or about $10 trillion of the $15 trillion in financial wealth gained since the recession. That’s $1,667,000 per household. Calculations based on alternate sources resulted in a gain of over $2 million per household. It is noteworthy that most of their windfall came from stock market gains rather than from job-creating business ventures. The stock market has, once again, been forming an overblown bubble of wealth that does not reflect the relative degrees of productivity of workers around America. The market has more than doubled in value since the recession, and the richest 5% own about 80% of all non-pension stocks.

2. They Create Imaginary Money That Turns Real

The world’s wealth has doubled in a little over ten years. The financial industry has, in effect, created a whole new share of global wealth and redistributed much of it to itself.

In the U.S., financial sector profits as a percentage of corporate profits have been rising steadily over the past 30 years. The speculative, non-productive, and fee-generating derivatives market has increased to an unfathomable level of over $1 quadrillion – a thousand trillion dollars, twenty times more than the world economy. With the U.S. driving the expansion of this great bubble of wealth, our nation has become the fifth-most wealth-unequal country in the world, while global inequality ( between rather than within countries) has become even worse than for any one country. Just 250 individuals have more money than the total annual living expenses of almost half the world - three billion people.

3. They’ve Stopped Payment on Productive Americans

Reputable sources agree that the working class has not been properly compensated for its productivity, and that the “rent-seeking” behavior of the financial industry, rather than changes in technology, is extracting wealth from society. As a result, our median inflation-adjusted household wealth has dropped from $73,000 to $57,000 in a little over 25 years. We’ve lost another five percent of our wealth since the recession. Shockingly, only one out of four Americans, according to a survey by Bankrate.com, “have six months’ worth of expenses for use in emergency, the minimum recommended by many financial planning experts.”

The End Result? That suction-like sound is the financial industry soaking up our country’s wealth.

[Thirties Child]

16. When you have more money than you can ever spend

Why do you need more? I would think that's the question the therapist should ask.

[TroglodyteScholar]

36. Bingo

This isn't a therapist, it's a coddler and an enabler of sociopaths. Shameful.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Life catches up with sci-fi: from "So long, and thanks for all the fish", published 1984

He turned and opened his arms in a wide gesture, 'Do I look rich? he said.
'Don't know', said the girl. 'Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you'll get rich. I have a very special service for rich people ...'
'Oh yes?' said Ford, intrigued but careful. 'And what's that?'
'I tell them it's OK to be rich.'
...
'You what? he said.
The girl laughed and stepped forward a little out of the shadow. She was tall, and had that kind of self-possessed shyness which is a great trick if you can do it.
'It's my big number,' she said. I have a Master's degree in Social Economics and can be very convincing. People love it. Especially in this city.'
...
At the end of the alley a steel grey limousine crawled past.
Hey look,' said the girl, 'if you get paid, look me up. I'm a working girl, and there are people over there who need me. I gotta go.'
She brushed aside Ford's half-articulated protests, and left him sitting dejectedly on his garbage can preparing to watch a large swathe of his working life being swept away into the electronic ether.
...
Walking north again he passed a steel grey limousine parked by the kerbside, and from a nearby doorway he hears a soft voice saying 'It's OK, honey, really it's OK, you got to learn to feel good about it. Look at the way the whole economy is structured ...'

Douglas Adams was a prophet.

[marions ghost]

20. "look at the way the whole economy is structured"

thanks for posting that--yes, Adams was a prophet. The goals and policies of this nation are now perfectly aligned with the demands of the greedy. And still they whine and complain.

Greed is a disease. Not very treatable with any amount of money.

Everyone who got their money through excessive acquisition and exploitation of others knows it, but they will never admit it.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. Wealth inequality sucks for everyone.

It certainly sucks more for those for whom needs are unmet, but the effects are felt everywhere.

[Lunacee_2013]

21. If its so hard, then why not just give up the burden?

And by burden, I mean money you whiney fuckers.

[Rex]

23. So she makes the owners feel better about their slaves.

Why would someone feel guilt, if there was no reason to? Good to know some of these rich assholes understand just how badly they are fucking over the world at our expense.

[LiberalEsto]

24. Awwwww, poor babies

How they suffer

[marions ghost]

25. Thom Hartmann sees greed as a psychological disorder:

"Another psychological disorder which is related to greed is hoarding, which is when a person accumulates a massive amount of valued objects for which that person has no practical use. Hoarding is usually only associated with socially isolated people who never throw anything away, resulting in extremely cluttered and unsanitary living conditions. However, the most damaging form of hoarding is money hoarding, yet this is routinely done by those who can and desire to do so, and celebrated by society and in publications such as Forbes Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. The richest among us have far more money that they could possibly ever need, or even use, but to them it is a game in which the richest one is the "winner." If we are to even casually consider where all this money comes from, it is immediately apparent that it comes from people who are not rich, people such as the United States' shrinking middle class, and that the rich are simply draining resources built by the sweat of others.

As a consequence of the previous consideration of psychopathology, I propose here that greed itself is a form of irrational behavior which should be considered a psychological disorder when too extreme. Greed is irrational and maladaptive because it hoards resources which the hoarders neither need, can use, nor deserve. Greed is also irrational and ultimately maladaptive because it represents a self-delusional mindset typified by Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or possibly Antisocial Personality Disorder. However, greed differs from any of the previously mentioned disorders in that the pursuit of financial wealth takes on a life and a power of its own, a power which can take over, and in some cases, ruin, a person's life, but more importantly, can lead to the ruin and/or degradation of many innocent person's lives. Greed is also correlated with the need for power and influence over others, which leads to people being drawn to politics for the wrong reasons. Money also stacks the political odds in favor of the rich, as we are seeing play out in American politics now. Until we have a system which does not allow excessive wealth or poverty of any one individual, until we have a system which does not allow the conflation of money and power, we will continue to have a corrupt political system which disproportionately draws from among the greedy and favors the greedy among us. Once we identify greed as a psycho-pathological behavior, and divest the political system of the greedy and the effects of greed, it will be as though we are waking up from a nightmare, to see a beautiful new day of social harmony and shared prosperity.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/users/natural-lefty/blog/2010/10/greed-psychological-disorder

[KansDem]

26. Ah, cry me a river!

And don't dump a lot of toxic chemicals in it so we can't drink the water! Savvy?

[unblock]

27. if only there were a way they could be not wealthy. sadly, it's completely out of their control.

[grasswire]

40. there is a way. Taxation as an intervention.

As noted above, extreme hoarders require an intervention. And so do money hoarders. That intervention can be in the form of taxation to relieve them of a good part of the wealth.

[unblock]

47. of course there are ways for *us* to cure them

my point is, as much as they whine about the problems of wealth, how many of them simply choose to give it up for a life of non-wealth?

[Tree-Hugger]

28. I can definitely relate to this

The other day, I found $15.00 in a jacket pocket. I was like, "I'm rich! I'm rich!" I even took a picture of my money. #poshlife Then, the wealth anxiety set in as I tried to decide what to do with it? Do I buy food? Do I buy gas? Do I splurge an bump the heat up to 61 degrees? Do I split it between food and gas? Do I put it towards my delinquent electric bill? I mean, there's so much anxiety that comes with having money.

[grasswire]

41. I hear you, friend.

I hope good fortune comes your way soon.

[Tree-Hugger]

49. Thank you!!

[Buns_of_Fire]

29. "What would life be like if they didn't have any restraints...?"

Pretty much like it is right now, I would guess. You know, like choosing which politician to buy, worrying about which marinade the unwashed masses are picking out for them, things like that.

[defacto7]

30. If it's a hardship to be rich

then they should stop it... Stop it right now!

I can think of some words... guilt, selfishness, immaturity, egotistical, cowardly, afeared...




(yes, I meant the spelling)

[bluesbassman]

31. Spooked clients were demanding "specialized advice"....

So much for not having any restraints.

[Generic Other]

32. Just what kind of assumptions should I make about people

who pay the working poor so little they must seek public assistance to survive;

who criticize those on public assistance for not working hard enough;

who vote to cut social programs like meals on wheels for seniors or reduced and free school lunches for kids;

who gain their wealth by robbing others;

who feel vilified by everyone less fortunate;

who insist their money entitles them to royal treatment;

whose drunk, high affluenza-infected offspring have no respect for other people and expect leniency
when they cause harm to others due to their own poor choices;

who think they can buy anything and anyone;

who want respect and are angry to find it can only be earned, not bought;

who believe their wealth makes them smarter or gives them more rights;

who clearly need the therapy!

"What would life be like if they didn't have any restraints and could really create what they wanted?"

Is that supposed to be a serious question? Clearly, the answer is that life would be exactly as it is today.

[AngryAmish]

34. It sucks when everybody wants a piece of you.

A few Saturdays back I was at the barbershop. A fellow customer and I get to talking and it turns out he is the fire chief or comminishioner or whatever they call it in Chicago. He said the worst part of his job is everyone wants something. He turns down 20 charity requests a day. He would never eat at home if not.

[TroglodyteScholar]

35. They get sad when we fight back?

Maybe they should quit trying to enslave the rest of us. That would go a long way toward ending any prejudice on my part.

[Blue_Tires]

57. +1

[SammyWinstonJack]

37. Meh.

[Solly Mack]

38. Someone needs a Valium and some Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani.

(I slay me)

[TBF]

42. FFS ... nt

[Jefferson23]

43. Does the therapist tell them it's going to be ok..relax, your tax loop holes are here to stay?

Don't we already know what they would like to create?....more money.

[Duer 157099]

44. Sounds like a co-dependency problem to me

We need to stop enabling them ASAP! There, problem solved.

[Octafish]

45. They're all worried that someone will make them poor.

So they bought Washington, DC and no one ever bothered them ever again.

[HangOnKids]

50. For The Win!

All that needs to be said.

[riderinthestorm]

46. This is NOT the Onion??!!

[Incitatus]

48. Get ready to take notes, distraught 1%ers

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1347176/

[bravenak]

51. Well, I'm judging them even more now.

Fucking whiners.
Pay your fucking taxes if you don't want to be looked at like a criminal swindler. Yes, your hoarding of money is causing the rest of us misery. Yep, we hate you. Yes, you built this.

[Skittles]

52. remember that commercial, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" ?

well I didn't hate her because she was beautiful; I hated her because she was a stuck up be-yatch. And I don't hate the rich because they are rich; I hate them because they're getting rich at the cost of the poor and middle class, thereby trashing the America I love.

[raouldukelives]

54. The hardest part would be coping with the damage your wealth causes.

If you were of a liberal mindset of course. For sociopaths, not so much.
If someone is investing their money in the markets. Well, the fruits of resource depletion and climate change are your lifeblood. That money is hard at work 24/7 helping ALEC and crafting legislation like the TPP.
Or perhaps entertainers. Sure, your song is great. But is it touring the world in person great? Releasing carbon into the upper atmosphere to travel to Timbuktu to promote it with 1000's of fans driving and using resources to listen?
Or sporting events. Playing kids games is a lot of fun. But at the time we are in, when every bit of wasted energy is coming back to haunt us and our offspring in the most unfortunate ways, is it really worth it anymore? When I think of the carbon footprint of one NFL game with the countless networks and fans and the teams themselves and the energy required to run it all and then multiply that by 32 it really kinda depresses me.
We have to figure out a way to continue to enjoy the things we enjoy without fucking it up for every life form on the face of the earth. We have to convince people that life is great even without limited edition sneakers. That a tree really is just as cool as a Ford and an unspoiled forest is more magnificent than the finest stadium.
If I were in a position of creating wealth from creating waste, my dreams of my impact on tomorrows life would be nightmares.
But for a sociopath, no worries.

[Gothmog]

55. According to Warren Buffett, there was class warfare and his class won

The 1% can not complain about class warfare since they have been the winners in this battle

[ck4829]

56. Your money's not shackled to you! You are free to give it up.

That's what they on the right say "We don't need to tax the rich, they can give money if they want." Having a stadium in your name is not a charity though.

They don't actually invest in the poor because they CAN'T, it's a compulsion to hold their money, to think that if they even lose a small amount, then their world will come crumbling down and taxes amount to hate and genocide from... SOMEONE, as Tom Perkins himself recently said.

There is an emotional contagion going on, and I think it's making a lot of the 1% very, very sick.