Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 181 | Money Abandonment: The Nervous System Pattern Behind Hoarding, Overspending, and Avoidance (Part 1)
Transcript
- 0:00Erin Gray: Welcome back to your money your rules podcast with me, your host, Erin Gray.
- 0:04Erin Gray: Today, what I want to talk about, I'm gonna make this a two-part series.
- 0:07Erin Gray: This first part, I'm going to talk about abandonment uh issues, wounds, whatever you want to call them around money.
- 0:14Erin Gray: And then in the next episode, I'm gonna make it specifically of how does that actually show up in your business.
- 0:20Erin Gray: I had this thought the other night, laying in bed, about how probably more so my husband has experienced abandonment issues with humans.
- 0:31Erin Gray: And there was a time where that probably was true for me, but probably a bigger theme in my life has been around money.
- 0:40Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
- 0:41Erin Gray: So obviously, I'm not a therapist.
- 0:43Erin Gray: Everything that I teach you is coming from my lived experience, clients that I've helped, what has shown up in friends and the collective.
- 0:52Erin Gray: But the other night I was laying in bed and I was thinking about I don't necessarily like the word abandonment, but that is the word that came to mind.
- 1:00Erin Gray: And I started thinking about my relationship with money and, you know, why I feel so secure in my relationship with my husband.
- 1:08Erin Gray: And that wasn't always the case when we first started dating because I was married to someone else before him.
- 1:14Erin Gray: And that person and I obviously got divorced and he had cheated.
- 1:20Erin Gray: I don't say like saying on me, because that means like I didn't participate, you know, but there was some infidelity in our relationship from him.
- 1:27Erin Gray: And I decided to get divorced.
- 1:30Erin Gray: And there was a moment in time when I was dating my current husband where I was concerned that maybe he would leave or that maybe he would cheat.
- 1:38Erin Gray: And it took some time for me to trust again, to listen to what he was saying and believe what he was saying.
- 1:46Erin Gray: And I know that that's a decision and a choice, and also like the body.
- 1:50Erin Gray: There's always the body, right?
- 1:51Erin Gray: So as I was laying in bed the other night and I was thinking about this and I was like, huh, isn't that interesting?
- 1:55Erin Gray: Like, I think that there are people that have abandonment issues with people.
- 2:00Erin Gray: I think there are people that have abandonment issues with money.
- 2:03Erin Gray: And then I think that there are people that have abandonment issues with money and people, right?
- 2:07Erin Gray: And it's not a problem on any of the spectrum that you fall in.
- 2:11Erin Gray: It's just something that I thought about that I was aware of, and then I wanted to make an episode, or actually, this will be two episodes, right?
- 2:17Erin Gray: We're gonna talk about why do we feel it will have abandonment concerns or issues with money.
- 2:24Erin Gray: And then how does that actually show up in your business?
- 2:26Erin Gray: So, what I think about when you know we have these patterns around money, what they actually what I'm gonna talk about, what it looks like and then how it shows up.
- 2:38Erin Gray: So we might be, and I'm also going to share like a lot of these that I'm gonna be talking about, I experienced.
- 2:45Erin Gray: So we might hoard money because we fear losing it, which is definitely something that I have, I am very well versed, have been very well versed in.
- 2:55Erin Gray: Um, I would definitely call it hoarding money.
- 2:58Erin Gray: Some people might overspend to soothe this anxiety that they're feeling or like avoid feeling deprived.
- 3:06Erin Gray: Like one of the things when you say, like, I deserve this, you really have to check in with your body and ask yourself, why are you saying that?
- 3:14Erin Gray: Are you saying you deserve it because you feel like you've been deprived and you've withheld for so long?
- 3:20Erin Gray: And then you kind of go, you know, the pendulum swings the other way and you go all the way over to the other side and you just kind of go on a shopping spree or a huge travel vacation or something like that.
- 3:31Erin Gray: Or are you saying, like, I deserve this and this is my standard and this is what I expect.
- 3:37Erin Gray: That's very different energy than I deserve this.
- 3:40Erin Gray: I haven't had this, you know, I've been withholding from myself.
- 3:44Erin Gray: So I I've been working hard.
- 3:46Erin Gray: So I deserve to have this.
- 3:47Erin Gray: Very different energy.
- 3:48Erin Gray: You might even feel guilty spending on even the necessities, which is definitely, you know, something that I have experienced.
- 3:56Erin Gray: Necessities was there was definitely some guilt there, but like anything above that excess, like fun, joy, things just for me, definitely lots of guilt.
- 4:06Erin Gray: Definitely had all the thoughts and the stories around like you shouldn't be buying that.
- 4:10Erin Gray: You also might feel unease, feel anxiety, feel panic when talking about your finances.
- 4:18Erin Gray: You also might choose partners who either might be controlling, you might have had jobs in the past, if you always haven't been an entrepreneur that didn't necessarily feel safe because they provided, and I'm air quoting, you know, that financial security for you, like that paycheck that you stuck with it, right?
- 4:43Erin Gray: Like if you either have been married before or you currently are in a relationship where you are allowing it's one thing to be in your feminine energy and allow your spouse to take care of the money and you either steward it or you are definitely involved in the process.
- 4:59Erin Gray: It's another that you feel like you're having to ask for things because they are providing that financial security to you.
- 5:05Erin Gray: And you might feel deeply unsafe, which is definitely how I have been, is when my bank balance or my investment accounts would go below a certain amount.
- 5:16Erin Gray: And one of the things that I've really worked on, like just the other day, you know, we've invested in silver and it's gone, you know, crazy, tripled almost double uh quadrupled.
- 5:27Erin Gray: And then, you know, within a day, it even though it still is probably a triple for us, it, you know, it changed multiple six figures in our account.
- 5:36Erin Gray: And I checked in with my body and I was like, man, I'm so proud of you, Aaron.
- 5:39Erin Gray: And like I didn't even feel anything in my body, no twinge, no like, you know, like that inhale of like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen?
- 5:46Erin Gray: Or no, nothing.
- 5:48Erin Gray: Like I've really gotten to the place where money, and I don't do this perfectly, right?
- 5:52Erin Gray: But just noticing how far I've come of like this inhale and this exhale.
- 5:56Erin Gray: Like true prosperity is having this inner sense of plenty.
- 6:01Erin Gray: True prosperity is allowing things to move in and out of your life.
- 6:05Erin Gray: Let's just we're talking about money, right?
- 6:07Erin Gray: In and out of your life, and not this, like I told a client the other day, if you can imagine, it's not like we're trying to do this with our money.
- 6:14Erin Gray: Like continue to inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale, right?
- 6:18Erin Gray: We have to exhale at some point.
- 6:19Erin Gray: It needs to circulate.
- 6:21Erin Gray: Money is feminine and masculine energy.
- 6:23Erin Gray: And the feminine part of it is it wants to flow, it wants to go to places that it loves and being is is being received in, right?
- 6:30Erin Gray: And so when we're constantly like holding on to it, like our little, you know, I don't know if that cartoon is chicken little, like where he squeezes the, I don't remember what it was, you know, the little animal, it's like, oh my gosh, you're crushing it.
- 6:41Erin Gray: It's just like it's okay for money to go.
- 6:44Erin Gray: It's okay for money to come back.
- 6:46Erin Gray: But if you have had some type of event or several events, you know, either big T trauma, like a big event, an emotional impact, or a little T trauma, like multiple little things that happened throughout your life, that it was, you know, like that some financial change, drastic change, then when your bank balance or your investment accounts drop and they change value, you know, like we don't have thoughts like, oh, it went up four times.
- 7:17Erin Gray: What's going on?
- 7:18Erin Gray: What's wrong?
- 7:19Erin Gray: Right.
- 7:19Erin Gray: We only look at it most of the time when it goes the opposite way.
- 7:23Erin Gray: So allowing more freedom to flow in and out with your money.
- 7:27Erin Gray: And so the mind treats the money not as a resource.
- 7:32Erin Gray: And I don't even want to say the mind, the body.
- 7:35Erin Gray: The body treats money not as a resource, not as a tool, not as this partnership and relationship that you're in.
- 7:42Erin Gray: It treats it more so as it looks at it as safety, as security, as something that cannot, you know, cannot leave you.
- 7:51Erin Gray: It has to be with you.
- 7:52Erin Gray: Like in order for you to feel safe and secure, you have to have a certain amount of money in your bank account, a certain amount of money in your investment accounts, right?
- 8:00Erin Gray: That is where we have been putting our external, not just validation, but our security, something outside of us, our power outside of us to money versus money, allowing money to just be this thing that we use as a tool and steward and move to where we want it to go and to allow it to come in and to allow it to come out.
- 8:23Erin Gray: So let's talk now then about what those symptoms, right, that you might be feeling if you're feeling constant anxiety, if you're feeling like that no matter how much money you have or have had or continue to have and grow, like if you're thinking like it can disappear at any moment, which is definitely some feelings that I used to have, it was almost like I was living in this like, when's this other shoe gonna drop?
- 8:51Erin Gray: Right.
- 8:51Erin Gray: It was never enough.
- 8:53Erin Gray: And that was coming from this dregulated, unsafe feeling that had occurred in my childhood.
- 9:02Erin Gray: If you are feeling deep guilt about spending and I like to say circulating your money.
- 9:08Erin Gray: So if even little, like just checking with your body, if even little tiny purchases, if they feel wrong, if they feel unsafe, noticing where do you think it's okay to spend money on some things and where do you not think it's okay to spend money in other areas?
- 9:27Erin Gray: You know, I've shared before, like it was always okay to invest in real estate, invest in your business, invest in investments, buy houses, uh private education.
- 9:38Erin Gray: Like those were things growing up, I was taught like that was okay.
- 9:41Erin Gray: Spending money on fun, spending money on vacations on yourself, that was something that I was not taught from either of my parents.
- 9:48Erin Gray: So that when it became time that I wanted to do that for myself, I had a lot of mind chatter, right?
- 9:53Erin Gray: The body didn't feel safe with that.
- 9:55Erin Gray: If you feel undeserving, right?
- 9:57Erin Gray: If you don't believe that you deserve comfort, nice things, luxury, whatever that might mean to you.
- 10:04Erin Gray: Like luxury to me is not a name brand thing.
- 10:07Erin Gray: Luxury is like, I love nice experiences.
- 10:11Erin Gray: I love like when I went well watching, I did a private, like it was um like six of us, right?
- 10:16Erin Gray: Instead of like the 25-person boat.
- 10:19Erin Gray: I want, I love to have intimate, small, slower experiences.
- 10:25Erin Gray: So if you're someone who doesn't believe that you are worthy or deserving of having nice things, of having luxurious experiences and whatever that looks like for you, then it's going to show up in obviously when it comes time to circulate your money, right?
- 10:45Erin Gray: You're gonna choose the, let's just use this as an example, right?
- 10:48Erin Gray: You're gonna choose the 25-person boat that's maybe less costly versus what do you actually desire?
- 10:55Erin Gray: If you desired to be on a six-person boat and to have a longer time out on the water, then just notice where are you acting from, maybe those old patterns versus what do you actually want?
- 11:09Erin Gray: What would you love?
- 11:10Erin Gray: If you have any fear around checking your bank balance or sitting down with your QuickBooks, right?
- 11:15Erin Gray: Avoiding your banking app or your bills because it feels overwhelming.
- 11:20Erin Gray: So this is something that I encourage clients.
- 11:22Erin Gray: If this is you, you've got to tap back into your body.
- 11:25Erin Gray: You have to assure yourself, your body, that you are safe, you are okay.
- 11:29Erin Gray: You can do this through tapping, you can do this through emotion release therapy, you can do this through breath work and grounding and journaling.
- 11:38Erin Gray: Like there's so many different ways to get into the body.
- 11:40Erin Gray: But the thing is to notice is like what the body is actually signaling is hey, money doesn't feel safe because money either came and it left quickly, or maybe money came slowly and then it left quickly, or there's something around abandonment, and we come back to what were our caregivers like?
- 12:01Erin Gray: What were our caregivers teaching us and our parents teaching us about money?
- 12:05Erin Gray: What happens to money?
- 12:06Erin Gray: Did we grow up, which most of us didn't?
- 12:08Erin Gray: We didn't grow up in a very abundant, expansive mindset when it came to money.
- 12:14Erin Gray: And so if you are coming from that place, obviously looking at your bank balance, looking at your QuickBooks is going to feel like a threat to your body.
- 12:23Erin Gray: If you feel clingy to money, you know, if you were, this is me, used to be me.
- 12:29Erin Gray: If you are, you know, saving excessively, or you're being afraid, you're you're feeling afraid to invest or to circulate, right?
- 12:39Erin Gray: Because money, like I said, money feels safe.
- 12:43Erin Gray: Having money feels safe.
- 12:45Erin Gray: And one of the things that I journaled about, this is probably six months ago.
- 12:48Erin Gray: I'm like, what is the mindset of a consciously aware and abundant millionaire?
- 12:55Erin Gray: Because I have been a millionaire who has been poverty conscious, right?
- 13:00Erin Gray: But I want to be an abundant millionaire, right?
- 13:04Erin Gray: That is a very different energy, you know, because I have been someone who has accumulated my wealth in the past from a very poverty conscious mindset, from a very lack and scarce mindset.
- 13:17Erin Gray: It was just like, I have to save, I have to invest, I can't spend.
- 13:20Erin Gray: Which when I look back now, I probably could have accumulated and allocated so much more money if it had come from such an abundant place.
- 13:27Erin Gray: Cause I always say, like, you can't put scarcity in and get abundance out.
- 13:31Erin Gray: But that was a lesson I had to learn, right?
- 13:33Erin Gray: And so now it's like, okay, how do I want to grow my wealth from a very abundant and wealth-conscious and loving, compassionate place versus a fear-driven place.
- 13:45Erin Gray: If you are using your money for any type of emotional soothing, if you are overspending to not have to feel sadness or not have to feel grief or shame or any type of loneliness or stress, like this is very common with a lot of women in their business, is like you may look at your books and then you're like, oh gosh, you know, this is not going so well this month or whatever it might be.
- 14:09Erin Gray: And then you go and you shop and you spend, or maybe you say things like I already mentioned, like you feel like, oh, well, I deserve to take myself because I've been working so hard.
- 14:17Erin Gray: That's very different energy than I deserve.
- 14:21Erin Gray: I am a deserving person and I deserve to treat myself and take care of myself.
- 14:27Erin Gray: Very different energy.
- 14:28Erin Gray: So this is why we really have to learn where I always say money doesn't equal safety because we know lots of people in the world.
- 14:43Erin Gray: You probably have lots of friends, and this might even be you, where they have plenty of money and they act like they don't.
- 14:49Erin Gray: In their bodies, they don't feel safe, they don't feel secure.
- 14:54Erin Gray: So there will never be something outside of you that is going to bring you the feeling of safety and security.
- 15:00Erin Gray: That is an inside job.
- 15:01Erin Gray: That is what I have had to learn, and that is what I help clients understand and learn.
- 15:06Erin Gray: And so I think the biggest thing here to take away with is that understanding why, you know, like looking at why you are doing some of the things you are doing, it's probably coming from that place of abandonment, recognizing that.
- 15:24Erin Gray: And then also here you go back to reparenting yourself, being the parent that maybe you didn't have, being that kind, compassionate, unconditionally loving parent, and to teach yourself how to be with money that maybe you didn't get and didn't learn when you were younger.
- 15:41Erin Gray: Like I was sitting at the pool, it was the day before I was ready to go home.
- 15:46Erin Gray: And I just tears just started streaming down my face.
- 15:49Erin Gray: And it was when I asked myself, are like they tears of sadness, and I got a no.
- 15:53Erin Gray: And when I asked myself if they were tears of gratitude, I got a yes.
- 15:56Erin Gray: And when I journaled, it was just like, I'm just so proud of myself for doing the work that I have done to love myself unconditionally, to have such compassion for myself, to have such a beautiful relationship with money and with God and with my spouse and with my child and in my business and all areas of my life that I didn't get growing up.
- 16:18Erin Gray: And this isn't a knock on my parents.
- 16:21Erin Gray: This is just a recognition and a realization that I'm just so proud of myself.
- 16:26Erin Gray: And so we have, when I say have to, what I mean is like we get to do this work.
- 16:32Erin Gray: We get to do this work for ourselves because we are going to be the ones that teach it to our children.
- 16:38Erin Gray: And so that our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren and all down the line, they get to have a different experience with money because we did the work on ourselves, right?
- 16:48Erin Gray: And I believe that like when we do work, it goes down our generational line as well as up, right?
- 16:53Erin Gray: Like to our ancestors and down to, you know, to our children and and beyond.
- 16:58Erin Gray: And so we get to do this work.
- 17:00Erin Gray: We get to be the person we have waited.
- 17:02Erin Gray: Like I wrote down in my journal, like I am the person I've waited my whole entire life for.
- 17:07Erin Gray: And I didn't know it, right?
- 17:09Erin Gray: And that is what I want for each of you.
- 17:11Erin Gray: Like each of you, you are what you have waited for your entire life.
- 17:16Erin Gray: You have everything within you.
- 17:18Erin Gray: It is just a remembering, like anything that I'm talking to you on the podcast, it isn't anything that I'm telling you that is new.
- 17:24Erin Gray: It's it's why you resonate with it is because it's a remembering of who you are.
- 17:29Erin Gray: It is a revealing of who you have been and maybe have forgotten.
- 17:33Erin Gray: That's all that it is.
- 17:34Erin Gray: And so, really starting to have compassion and unconditional love for yourself and for that little girl that didn't have someone that said, Hey, you know what?
- 17:45Erin Gray: I got you.
- 17:47Erin Gray: You know, we're gonna be totally fine.
- 17:49Erin Gray: And that money doesn't bring security.
- 17:51Erin Gray: That's found within you, baby girl.
- 17:53Erin Gray: Like nobody, a lot of us didn't have that.
- 17:55Erin Gray: And we get to give that to ourselves now.
- 17:59Erin Gray: So think about the things that I mentioned today on the next next episode.
- 18:06Erin Gray: I'm gonna dive into how abandonment issues or wounds or patterns.
- 18:10Erin Gray: I don't like all those words like issues or wounds.
- 18:13Erin Gray: I like more so patterns actually show up in our business because they do.
- 18:16Erin Gray: And so if we aren't aware of them, we can't change them.
- 18:19Erin Gray: But ponder, journal, take out your journal, really start to think about like where's this showing up?
- 18:24Erin Gray: Where were some of the things that Aaron mentioned to me?
- 18:27Erin Gray: Where am I actually playing that out in my life?
- 18:29Erin Gray: And what are some of those deep core-seated beliefs that are there that are creating that for me?
- 18:34Erin Gray: And if you are someone who is been listening for a while and you're like, you know what, I am ready to sit down with Aaron and I want to see how she can help in my business andor in my personal life.
- 18:47Erin Gray: Maybe it is, you know, really diving into the numbers and looking at where you are and where you want to grow and around your money mindset and also the emotional side of what's going on in your life and in your business and or in your personal life, right?
- 19:02Erin Gray: If that is something that resonates with you, if you're wanting some support and not someone to tell you what to do, because that is not what I do, but someone that asks really good questions, that has years and years of experience and expertise in finance and in business, and someone that can ask you questions that actually get you to think at a deeper level so that you can tap into your intuition and honor and make decisions and start to trust yourself.
- 19:28Erin Gray: I would love to support you.
- 19:29Erin Gray: If that is something that is of interest to you, all you have to do is go to the link in the show notes and you can schedule a call.
- 19:35Erin Gray: Okay, as always, I'm reading for each of you.
- 19:38Erin Gray: I love you.
- 19:38Erin Gray: I think the world of you, and I think the more of us that change our relationship with our money, ultimately with God and ourselves, our our whole life changes.
- 19:48Erin Gray: So I will see you in the next episode.