It may surprise you to know that a new PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) survey found that 59% of employees are currently stressed about their finances. That number alone isn't the story. The story is what Forbes pointed out right after: even in workplaces that have gotten genuinely good at talking about mental health, financial strain and the shame attached to it stay hidden. People will tell a coworker about therapy before they'll tell them their card got declined at lunch.

When I read that, I thought: I've watched that exact silence operate inside marriages. It certainly did in mine. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that the stress of keeping secrets about your finances carries right into the office with you. 

Here's what I mean. In my book, Unspoken Costs: How to Have Relationship-Saving Money Conversations, I write about the Woolly Mammoth in the Room (yeah, a little play on elephants, there) and the way our nervous systems treat a money conversation the same way our ancestors treated a predator in the grass: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Your brain doesn't know the difference between a saber-toothed tiger and a conversation about your checking account. Weird but true. It just knows the pending threat of something uncomfortable about to happen. Doesn’t matter from which environment you’re operating, home or work. 

If your body panics at the thought of telling your spouse about a maxed-out card, it panics just as hard at the thought of telling your manager you're picking up a second shift because rent went up again: same nervous system, different room.

I lived this in my marriage. I was what I now call the Financial Learner Partner, the one who trusted, who didn't ask questions, who told myself that not asking was a form of respect. My husband was the Financial Lead Partner, the one who “handled it.” I found out how badly it had been handled while I was sitting at his hospital bedside. That story is the reason I built a framework, and it's the reason I now stand on stages built for HR leaders and corporate wellness teams, not just marriage retreats, because the pattern is identical. One person quietly carrying the full weight. One person too afraid to ask what they don't know. Silence doing more damage than the actual money problem ever could.

The question I ask every audience, whether they're married or employed, is the same: If something happened tomorrow, if you lost your job, if your partner got hit by a bus, if the bottom fell out, would the people around you have any idea what you were actually carrying? Most of the time, the honest answer is no. It’s not because anyone is lying; it’s because everyone has decided silence is safer than the conversation.

It isn't. The danger was never the conversation. The danger is always the silence around it.

A few tangible places to start — whether you're an employee, a manager, or someone building a workplace wellness program:

• Run your own analysis. Ask yourself one question: if I couldn't work tomorrow, would the people who depend on me know where everything stands-accounts, debts, benefits, the whole picture? If the honest answer is no, that's not a personal failing. It's a sign the conversation is overdue.
• Name which role you're in. In every partnership, marriage, household, and sometimes even a team, there's a Lead who holds the information and a Learner who doesn't. Neither role is wrong, but an unexamined one is a single point of failure. Ask: do I know enough right now to be okay if the Lead in my life disappeared tomorrow?
• Recognize the mammoth for what it is. The next time your stomach tightens before a money conversation, with a partner, a manager, a benefits coordinator, name it. Ancient hardware, modern problem. That recognition alone is often enough to keep you in the room instead of walking out of it.
• Use what's already being offered. A growing number of employers now offer financial coaching and wellness benefits explicitly because they know financial stress is costing them productivity, not because they think you've failed. Using those resources isn't an admission of weakness. It's the workplace equivalent of asking your partner where the will is kept.
• Say the smaller true thing first. You don't have to announce a crisis to break the silence. Something as small as, “Money's been tight lately,” said to the right person, does the same job as it does at home: it turns a private weight into a shared one.

None of this erases financial stress. It just means you're not the only one who knows how heavy it's gotten.

If your organization is looking for a keynote or virtual talk that gives your people, in an hour, the vocabulary and tools they've never had for the money conversations they've been avoiding, whether that's in their marriages, their families, or the culture of your workplace, I'd love to talk. Audiences leave with a name for what they've been feeling, a framework to act on it, and, as I've heard again and again: people leave my talks and call their partners.

You can learn more or book me for a keynote or virtual talk at viviancobbspeaking.com.

The mammoth isn't real. The silence is. Let's talk about it before it costs you more than it already has.

Author of Unspoken Costs: How to Have Relationship-Saving Money Conversations.