How did ‘gratitude’ make you think you had plenty and turn that into even more? My first instinct, if one is self-aware about being “poor and in-debt” would be that an *attempt* at gratitude would be met with sarcastic disregard, because it just sounds like gaslighting! How do you make yourself BELIEVE it? How do you turn that into even more (because, if I *did* believe it, my instinct would be to sit on laurels of whatever job I DID have).
I am currently working on a substack article about my childhood conditioning around money. For years I assumed my money issues were related to all the information I was uncovering via conspiracy rabbit holes, something I’ve been doing since the late 90s. The money system is evil! Is pretty much what I concluded. And while there is certain truth in that, there’s not really a single system that ISN”T corrupted. So I need to either go live in a cave somewhere, un-alive myself, OR start investigating my childhood conditioning and work on integrating all the emotions around it I’ve been resisting, etc.. It only took 55 years, Joe! But I’m doing it and boy the things I’ve been unearthing…
This is such a clear naming of how money becomes the carrier for something that was never really about money.
The line that stayed with me is:
“What did I call this before I knew what money was?”
Yes.
That feels like the doorway.
Because the charge around money is often not about the number itself.
It is about what the body learned the number meant.
Safety.
Love.
Approval.
Worth.
Freedom.
Protection.
Proof that we will not be abandoned.
Underneath the money story is often a nervous system imprint: the body has learned that not having enough, wanting more, needing support, receiving, charging, earning, or being seen with money may cost something relationally or existentially important.
That nervous system imprint can resolve.
There is a physiological mechanism here.
When the body is no longer carrying the old prediction that money equals love, danger, safety, shame, or worth, money stops having to carry the whole emotional world.
It can become information.
A resource.
A tool.
A number.
Not the place where the old ache keeps trying to get answered.
How did ‘gratitude’ make you think you had plenty and turn that into even more? My first instinct, if one is self-aware about being “poor and in-debt” would be that an *attempt* at gratitude would be met with sarcastic disregard, because it just sounds like gaslighting! How do you make yourself BELIEVE it? How do you turn that into even more (because, if I *did* believe it, my instinct would be to sit on laurels of whatever job I DID have).
I am currently working on a substack article about my childhood conditioning around money. For years I assumed my money issues were related to all the information I was uncovering via conspiracy rabbit holes, something I’ve been doing since the late 90s. The money system is evil! Is pretty much what I concluded. And while there is certain truth in that, there’s not really a single system that ISN”T corrupted. So I need to either go live in a cave somewhere, un-alive myself, OR start investigating my childhood conditioning and work on integrating all the emotions around it I’ve been resisting, etc.. It only took 55 years, Joe! But I’m doing it and boy the things I’ve been unearthing…
This is such a clear naming of how money becomes the carrier for something that was never really about money.
The line that stayed with me is:
“What did I call this before I knew what money was?”
Yes.
That feels like the doorway.
Because the charge around money is often not about the number itself.
It is about what the body learned the number meant.
Safety.
Love.
Approval.
Worth.
Freedom.
Protection.
Proof that we will not be abandoned.
Underneath the money story is often a nervous system imprint: the body has learned that not having enough, wanting more, needing support, receiving, charging, earning, or being seen with money may cost something relationally or existentially important.
That nervous system imprint can resolve.
There is a physiological mechanism here.
When the body is no longer carrying the old prediction that money equals love, danger, safety, shame, or worth, money stops having to carry the whole emotional world.
It can become information.
A resource.
A tool.
A number.
Not the place where the old ache keeps trying to get answered.