Wealth therapy tackles woes of the rich: 'It’s really isolating to have lots of money'

[LiberalArkie]

It’s a rainy Wednesday morning and Clay Cockrell is sitting in his office at Columbus Circle across the street from 1 Central Park West, which houses Trump International Hotel and Tower. In front of the tower is Central Park, where Cockrell holds his popular walk and talk therapy sessions.

Dressed in comfortable pants and a flannel shirt, Cockrell, a former Wall Street worker turned therapist, spends large parts of his days walking through Central Park or the Battery Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street, as a confidant and counsellor to some of the New York’s wealthiest.

“I shifted toward it naturally,” he said of his becoming an expert in wealth therapy. “We are trained to have empathy, no judgment and so many of the uber wealthy – the 1% of the 1% – they feel that their problems are really not problems. But they are. A lot of therapists do not give enough weight to their issues.”

And as they stroll through Manhattan, what issues are America’s 1% struggling with? There is guilt over being rich in the first place, he said. There is the feeling that they have to hide the fact that they are rich. And then there is the isolation – being in the 1%, it turns out, can be lonely. It seems F Scott Fitzgerald was right, the very rich “are different from you and me”. Especially in 2015.

Snip


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/17/wealth-therapy-tackles-woes-of-the-rich-its-really-isolating-to-have-lots-of-money

[LiberalArkie]

1. The 1% of Problems

Today’s Thing About Rich People Appalling the Internet: “Wealth therapy tackles woes of the rich: ‘It’s really isolating to have lots of money,'” an article in the Guardian about therapists who help the rich deal with the apparent loneliness and isolation of having a shitload of money. Here’s one of the more choice quotes from the piece:

From the Bible to the Lannisters of Game of Thrones, it’s easy to argue that the rich have always been vilified, scorned and envied. But their counsellors argue things have only gotten worse since the financial crisis and the debate over income inequality that has been spurred on by movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 fair wage campaign.

“The Occupy Wall Street movement was a good one and had some important things to say about income inequality, but it singled out the 1% and painted them globally as something negative. It’s an -ism,” said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist and founder of the Wealth Legacy Group. “I am not necessarily comparing it to what people of color have to go through, but … it really is making value judgment about a particular group of people as a whole.”

The media, she said, is partly to blame for making the rich “feel like they need to hide or feel ashamed”.

Snip

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/10/18/the-1-of-problems/

[Warren DeMontague]

4. I like Scalzi, but he dances around a fairly glaring, obvious point there.

Namely, after however many best-selling science fiction books and undoubtedly a whole bunch of Hollywood treatment options, the guy himself isn't exactly poor.

(Edited: He rightly addresses that in the comments)

Also, he grew up in Claremont and went to the University of Chicago, so I question how "poor" he actually, ever, was, despite his anecdote about "knowing from experience that it's easier for people to dislike you when you're poor".

[Kalidurga]

2. I have a hard time feeling sorry for self inflicted wounds

pay your employees better and advocate for people rather than making everything about profit motive, problem solved pay the receptionist as you leave.

[Uben]

3. I am obscenely rich, over a $100 million

What am I ever going to do with that much wealth? Alas! Woe is me.

Yeah, that's a big problem, isn't it? Wanna know how to remedy the situation you are in? Howzabout giving it to people who have been less fortunate than yourself? Oh! The horror! You don't have to give it directly to them......build something, create some jobs, bribe some damned congresspersons to vote for the people and not wallstreet fat cats. If you don't act on your environment, it WILL act on you.

[LiberalArkie]

7. Or even quit paying people to figure how not to make it taxable.

Despite the work done by Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and Clinton Foundation etc, they are still funnels to make your money untaxable. The whole problem they have is "How to I make the money where the government doesn't take it and give it to poor people".

They never seem to worry about money being taken for parks, and concert halls, or buildings with their name on it at a college. But the thought or a poor person getting something causes them great panic.

[marmar]

5. They got 99 problems but a sense of irony ain't one.

[MBS]

6. My heart bleeds. n/t

[City Lights]

8. Oh those poor dears...

[gollygee]

9. Easily solved.

There are lots of charities people could help.

[closeupready]

10. If they're lonely, they could always volunteer. But no.

SOME do (JFK, Jr. did a lot of that, without seeking publicity - in fact, discouraging publicity for it), but give me a break - if you have so much money that you no longer have to work and you are STILL lonely, the problem is YOU.