{"id":282,"date":"2026-05-18T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/?p=282"},"modified":"2026-05-07T09:36:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T14:36:23","slug":"debt-shame-and-neurodivergence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/debt-shame-and-neurodivergence\/","title":{"rendered":"Debt, Shame, and Neurodivergence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to an editorial blog article by Caitlin\u2014the auDHD, OCD, C-PTSD marketing lead for Tree City Tax. My brain is broken, but I am not. And we\u2019re gonna talk about debt today.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had quite an on-again, off-again relationship with my credit score throughout my adulthood. During my Dave Ramsey phase, I closed all of my credit card accounts and took the hit to my credit, with the intention of becoming entirely debt free and no longer having a credit score at all. I would be a cash-only kind of gal.<\/span><\/p>\n

I started my Ramsey journey in mid-2012, after starting my first full-time job and getting my own apartment for the first time in my life. My first goal was to pay off my 2008 Honda Fit, which was much easier to do with a full-time salary than it had been when I was living with my parents, working a part-time temp job, and putting Egg McMuffins on my Discover card because my food stamps ran out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ramsey promotes a completely debt and credit-free lifestyle, often repeating a line from the Bible, \u201cNeither a borrower nor a lender be.\u201d He loves to layer on the evangelical guilt trips, which are the worst kind of catnip for my obsessive-compulsive brain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I took his rules to heart and felt deep shame every time I strayed from his teachings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Every time I felt ease, I felt guilt. Every time I felt pleasure, I felt guilt. I was supposed to be suffering in self-imposed poverty so that every possible dollar went toward fixing my money mistakes. Enjoying my life while I did so was not something I was allowed to do. I became smaller and smaller, unwilling to participate in life because of the shame of falling for the credit game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the other 90% of Americans who have debt.\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

It is far, far rarer to be debt-free than to have debt. Debt is normal. What\u2019s more\u2014debt is <\/span>neutral<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Debt doesn\u2019t say anything about your worthiness as a human being on planet Earth. Debt doesn\u2019t say anything about your relationships or your trustworthiness. Your credit score is not more important than your actions and beliefs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not that special.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the one special flower who has to be debt free to deserve nice things. Not even nice things\u2014I wasn\u2019t allowing myself to deserve <\/span>things <\/span><\/i>at all, beyond the barest necessities. I became a minimalist, selling off extraneous belongings and furniture, only purchasing what I needed, prioritizing secondhand shopping and almost never buying new.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUse it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without\u201d was my mantra.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have made money mistakes. I have also made good money decisions. And the most important thing I\u2019ve come to realize is that my financial circumstances don\u2019t have any bearing on who I am as a person.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Slowly, over a decade and a half since starting on this money journey, I am emerging from the deep pit of shame and realizing that credit cards don\u2019t make me bad, or stupid, or morally unclean. I allow my life to be about more than just paying bills. I allow myself to want, even if I don\u2019t fulfill every whim and desire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is still difficult. I am at war with my own mind, most of the time, and it\u2019s exhausting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every time I buy something I don\u2019t strictly need, I panic. I\u2019m worried that I will end up in a financial emergency and I\u2019ll have no one to blame but myself, because I got pink highlights in my hair and bought new bras.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a cruel twist of psychology, in fact, the only way for me to learn that it\u2019s safe to spend money on myself is to keep doing it, feeling the fear and shame, and regulating my nervous system until it learns that spending money isn\u2019t dangerous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing I want you to know about our business at Tree City Tax: We will never shame you. You can bring us years of backlogged notices from the IRS and a shoebox full of crumpled receipts and we will help you make sense of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Money is hard enough without shame.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing I want you to know about our business at Tree City Tax: We will never shame you. You can bring us years of backlogged notices from the IRS and a shoebox full of crumpled receipts and we will help you make sense of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,97],"tags":[99,98,100,101,75],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-debt","tag-credit-scores","tag-debt-payoff","tag-mental-health","tag-money-shame","tag-personal-finance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/20-May-Blog-3.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treecitytax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}