Unexpected Expenses? Could You Be a Money Martyr?

Sometimes on the path to a higher prosperity consciousness, you reach a point where you’re feeling good, attracting greater prosperity, and then unexpected expenses pop up to drain your bank account. When this happens do you question the effectiveness of your abundance and prosperity affirmations? Do you doubt whether Law of Attraction techniques really work? Do you wonder whether you’ve done something horrendous in a past life and now you’re cursed with a karmic contract that blocks you from manifesting wealth?

The next time you’re zapped with unexpected expenses take an honest inventory and ask yourself whether you’ve been denying your own needs. Have you been focusing on others in order to boost your own self-esteem? Do you help others because you truly want to or because you feel obligated?

These may be clues that it’s time to embrace your shadow aspects of The Money Martyr Archetype. The Money Martyr is one of the 12 most common Money Archetypes. In addition to not being able to hold onto money, Money Martyrs may be under-employed or not realize their true earning potential because they don’t ask a fair price for their services or they put others’ needs ahead of their own.

The underlying motivation distinguishes the shadow martyr from the integrated martyr. Certainly selfless service and altruism are noble attributes. But helping others makes shadow martyrs feel superior and powerful. They do not sacrifice for the greater good; rather their self-denial makes them feel worthy, valued, and needed. For example the woman who puts her career on hold to attend to an aging parent. She feels burdened and resentful but can’t bring herself to ask her siblings to share in the responsibility.

Money Martyrs have trouble setting boundaries because they are so focused on helping others that they have lost touch with their own needs. Over-responsibility masks their feelings of inadequacy and drives them to feel that they have to take care of everyone and everything. This is actually a form of ego and arrogance: they don’t believe that others are capable of taking care of themselves. For example, parents who empty their retirement savings to pay for their children’s college tuition and then complain that they’ll have to spend their golden years in poverty.

By now you may be thinking that the Money Martyr has only negative qualities. But it may surprise you to know that the Money Martyr holds valuable gifts for you. The gift of the Money Martyr is the willingness to lose what you have in order to gain something better. When you transform your need to feel important through rescuing others, you can realize your highest ideals of loyalty and selfless service, free of resentment and self-pity. Once you integrate your Money Martyr qualities you give yourself the freedom to choose how, when and whom to help. You can feel safe attending to your own needs and keeping what is rightfully yours. This opens the space for you to give even more, and to receive with grace and humility.