12 Days of Giving Day 3: Your Presence Is Enough: Rethinking Holiday Gifts & Money

What happens when your generosity becomes the very thing that threatens your future?

In this 12 Days of Giving episode, I sit down with therapist and member of the NoBS Collective, Rachel Duncan, to unpack a story that honestly describes way too many people: late 50s, single, big heart, strong friend group, steady nonprofit job — and quietly terrified that retirement might not be possible because she gives so much away. Not to institutions. To people. To friends. To every GoFundMe, every “I saw this and thought of you” moment.

Rachel walks us through an amalgam of clients who live this reality: the friend who always picks up the tab, drops off the $50 candle, buys gifts nobody asked for, and then goes home worried about the future. We dig into where that pattern really starts — teenage years, money as social capital, using spending to feel “safe” in relationships — and how it gets locked in when nobody ever talks about money honestly.

We also talk about the shadow side of generosity: people who love to give but damn near refuse to receive. The discomfort of being on the other side of a big gift. The awkward “you didn’t have to do that” text. The pressure, the unspoken expectations, and the reality that a lot of us already have too much stuff and not enough real connection.

Then we flip the script. Rachel shows how her clients shift from “I have to buy everyone something” to “my presence actually is enough”. We go into handmade gifts, small creative expressions, experience-based giving, and, honestly, the power of just showing up. No performance. No price tag. Just you.

If you’re the generous one in your circle — the giver, the fixer, the one who quietly worries about money while still swiping your card — this episode is your wake-up call and your permission slip. You’re allowed to change how you give without changing who you are.

🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/CFiYwlaPibM

This is part of our 12 Days of Giving series (December 12–23), where every day we tackle the emotional, psychological, and financial side of money during the holidays. No fluff. No guilt trips. Just truth, tools, and stories that sound a lot like your life.

As always we ask you to comment, DM, whatever it takes to have a conversation to help you take the next step in your journey, reach out on any platform!

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Chapters

• 0:00 12 Days of Giving: the generous friend who can’t retire
• 3:04 Why holiday giving quietly turns into money anxiety
• 6:08 The BS advice: “just stop spending on holiday gifts”
• 8:32 How teenage money habits fuel adult over-giving
• 10:57 Presence vs presents: what people actually want from you
• 11:55 Holiday giving on a budget: homemade and creative gifts
• 14:20 Why most of us want less stuff and more real connection
• 16:22 What to do next: new traditions for chronically generous people

Transcript

Stoy Hall: 0:10

Happy holidays. Woo. And we just had Rachel on, you guys saw her like for Thanksgiving. So apparently we're just gonna have her on for all the holidays. It's gonna be our thing from now forward. Um, I'm moving

Rachel Duncan: 0:22

in. I'm moving in.

Stoy Hall: 0:23

Just move on in, move on in. You can see right over here by the Christmas tree. It's, I love it. Um, but as everyone. We know how these, these days go for 12 days giving, being our third season where we get to talk, talk about a topic, go through some client's story from our expert at hand, from our collective, and then figure out and say at the end of the it going like, Hey, either that's me, I'm in this position, or that's someone I know and I, and I care for that maybe this episode can help'em, or the resources provided can help them. So without further ado, Rachel, it's your show. It's your story. I'm just here to guide it.

Rachel Duncan: 0:58

Wonderful. Thanks for having me on. Okay, so I'm a therapist. So the story I'm gonna tell is an anonymized story that's actually an amalgamation of so many clients I've worked with that there, there's been some real common themes that I'm pulling from. So the specifics are anonymized and just know it's sort of a, yeah, it's a combo of a bunch of stories. Okay, so one common thing that comes up with the clients I work with, um, and we'll, we'll make this, uh, this fictional person, she is in her late fifties. She is single, has a really strong friend group. Um. No kids, no spouse, uh, is active in her community. She does work, she works for a nonprofit, so she makes a, a steady income, but you know, not a huge one. And, um, she, she comes to my door because she's actually really worried about her future. And namely the, the behavior that she is most concerned about is how generous she is. She's the kind of person who picks up a sweater that is beautiful for her best friend, or if there's a book club, you know, she'll bring a little trinket for everyone, even though no one asked for that. Um, if you know any GoFundMe, cause she sees on Facebook, she's like, immediately 20 bucks, 50 bucks, like easy. Right. Um, and what she's realizing, kind of picking up is she's been doing this for a while and seeing that. Well, she's not sure if retirement is something she's gonna be able to do, and she hasn't really given the, she hadn't given that a ton of thought. Um, so she's a very social person, very generous, and she loves giving. Is it like, she finds it a, um, expression of her creativity, of her connections with people. Um, but the thing she's kind of been picking up on is like. I don't know if everyone's doing this way, I'm doing it and, um, I probably need more money, but I don't know how to stop this and I don't really wanna stop. That's the thing. Like, I don't want to stop this. I love it. I love giving with no expectation of return. So super important, like very values led. Thing because when she has looked on the internet, how do I get better with money? It's like, stop spending so much money. And she was like, well, that's not advice I'm gonna take. Um, so she is a very like, emotionally attuned person, so that's why she came to a financial therapist to try to get help with this. So that, that's setting the scene. Do you want me to keep talking?

Stoy Hall: 3:26

That alright? Yeah, I bet a lot of people are kind of in that. My mother, um, was a, was a giver, right? Yeah. And if, if she would've made it to retirement age, I. I would guarantee she'd be in that same spot. Right?

Rachel Duncan: 3:39

Oh, this really hits home. Yeah. I would love also to hear like, yeah, if you're like, oh wow, that's, that's where my mom was. I love that It

Stoy Hall: 3:45

does. And the thing like for me on the other side, right? Like since I'm a financial planner and it's always a balance with their clients to be like, yeah, you can give some, but if you give too much, then. We take from later. Right? And then it, it's all a balance. So yeah, this one hits home. This one definitely hits home.

Rachel Duncan: 4:01

Lovely, lovely. Yeah. So, okay, so she comes to me, she lays it all out. It feels pretty hopeless. She's like, well, I'm not, I'm truly, I'm so committed to, um, giving my money away and supporting causes. She wouldn't say giving my money away. She would say, I'm so committed to supporting causes. I love giving gifts. It's an important thing for me. I feel like the responsible thing to do would. To change that, but that would really mean like changing who I am inside. So my approach is absolutely no, no pressure to spend less. Right? Um. So I would really sit down in the first few sessions and we explored maybe a, I always start with the current day before we get into the past, the current day. What's a recent gift that you gave? Tell me the whole story. So she's telling a story about how she, um, let's say maybe picked up a candle for a best friend that was the exact scent that this friend loves. And it was, you know, candles are really expensive. Like the good ones you guys get, you know, it's crept up. This also used to be a cheaper thing, and now because of prices going up and her wages haven't gone up, like it used to be more affordable to be able to do these, like, um, here and there things. But she buys this candle, let's say. It's like, it was like a$50 candle and she just drops it by her friend's house. Just, she just loved that. Right here, it's just, it's your cent. I know you've been looking for this candle. What happened was the, her friend wrote back like, thank you very much. You didn't need to do that, but like, you didn't need to do that. And, and her friend who's very close with her was like, actually kind of pushed back a little bit. Like I. I'm actually uncomfortable with this gift and that put my client in a really like, kind of a unbalanced place, right? Like, whoa, oh, I don't expect anything return. And the friend is like, I know that, but now I feel like, like, do I need to give you something back? Also, I'm just uncomfortable with this. Like, I'm not spending money like this. I. We've never talked about money, but I'm wondering if you, I know what kind of job you have. Let's say she works at a library. You're a librarian. I don't know if you can afford this. Right. So it, it kind of came on the heels of a friend lovingly pushing back like we are friends that. Does not mean you have to maintain it with these gifts, even though that was not what my client was feeling or experiencing. So she was kind of in like, it's a bit of an existential crisis because her friend group really is her family, right? She doesn't have a lot of her own family. So her friend group is very part of this, and this is like a long standing habit that she's had. So this was like, oh shoot, like I didn't mean to make her uncomfortable. Then what do I do? So our conversation is backing up and looking at. What does generosity mean to you? Right? What are the many ways we can feel generous? Have you received generosity? Because here's the shadow side of a client like this is, it's really hard for them to receive. So, okay, so we explore that a little bit. What's it like to receive and, and, and pulling up some, some recent examples. Um, and then as that starts to get more comfortable putting herself in her friend's shoes, actually a little bit, what would that be like to receive a, um, not only generous but maybe expensive gift that maybe doesn't quite fit the occasion, or it feels a little bit off? How does that sit? Right. So we're just, all I'm doing is slowly. Opening the field, looking at more possibilities, looking at different points of view, and um, and seeing where it goes. I have no agenda in this, right? Remember, I have no agenda. Right. So then we can start getting into the past. Right. What was gift giving like in your family growing up? Uh, what was your role in that? What did you see of the grownups around you? What was their generosity like? And so, um, let's say in this fictional client. Let's say she was part of a family that was very upwardly mobile like, had come from humble beginnings. Like her parents had come from humble beginnings, but they were growing a business and actually had like really changed classes, right? Living in a very different neighborhood than they had grown up in and participated in things they hadn't participated in before. And when she turned 12, let's say, um, was given like a debit card that she could really do whatever she wanted with. And, um. It was never checked. It was always just paid for, uh, so that she could have fun with friends and buy things that she wants. And so she started buying things for friends as an adolescent. So she became very right. Immediate feedback, positive feedback. Like, dude, this girl's fun, right? She's paying for pizza, she's filling up gas in people's cars. Like she's a great time. And so it really got concretized that her. You know, being generous, not checking the amount, like actually gave her so much, right? It really developed her friend group. She really needed that at the time, as all teenagers do. That's like a huge focus, right? So like, okay, now we see this, this link between spending and, um, social capital, we could say our social safety really solidified, um, in those early years. And I love talking with clients about. They're adolescents. They don't think it's a time we talk about enough, um, in therapy, but particularly with finances because it tends to be the time where you start having a little bit of your own money and you're having more independence and some of those early lessons, positive and negative. Really can kind of sit with us, because also we're not allowed to talk about money. So those habits, that, right, those habits that depe develop like in your first job or, you know, any of those things when you're first independent, um, there seems to really be a remnant of that throughout adulthood if we don't look at it. So we expand on those stories and I give a lot of, um, validation and understanding. Oh wow. You know, um. When you bought pizza for everyone, when you filled up all your friends tanks of gas, um, that must have felt so empowering, right? And to really sit with that and to really like, get into the layer of what that did for that person and also what it took away. Could you just be a friend? Could you receive generosity? What kind of place did it put your friends in? Right? Just like really open-ended questions. So. In this process of like really expanding some current examples and then. How that is mirrored in those earlier years. Things just start moving y'all. Like, this is what happens at therapy, right? We start talking about the thing that we haven't talked about that has been, you know, maybe that's really been in our mind or even in our subconscious and stuff, just starts moving and this person starts realizing, I, I worked with several people in the holiday season, right? Where maybe they come to me in November, so it's like, okay, we got a lot of. I got a lot of data happening right here. Right. And feeling those pressures, feeling the compulsion, oh, maybe this isn't so much me, it's, it's me responding to, um, the societal pressures to consume, the societal pressures to, uh, be generous uncorked spending, um, as some clients call it, and, and really realizing, oh, I felt really compel, I found, I found the scarf that my friend would love. But you know what? I actually walked past it'cause I was thinking about our conversation. Right. It's like backing up, what does friendship really mean? Are you also the kind of friend who shows up? Well, yeah. How would you compare that to the candle? Is showing up more or less important to the candle? I mean, it's kind of a leading question, but we know the answer, right? Because actually this person, without looking at it, has weighed at the same. But when we really look at it, what's more important, your presence. Or your presence. Oh my God, that's what you should call this. What's more important? Your presence or your presence? Title. Hello. There it is. So, um, and then, okay, the sort of idea though of expression, I never want someone to pull back or feel restricted about this. How else could you express, sorry, express your love for somebody. Um, so. Many of my clients, this, this, uh, avatar I'm thinking specifically starts getting back into their craftiness. Oh, I love, I love, um, making salad dressings. Cool, right? What if I give salad dressing to my friends? Okay, now we're talking. Right? And, and so what I love is, um, when we start recovering things, we really love to do that consumerism. Replaced with consuming, but actually the spirit was to make something to express myself, to connect something with somebody. Um, so quite often my, my, my clients get into remaking homemade gifts and then starting realize, ah. I can just, I can just be there for someone. I could just send a text message, um, maybe for the holidays I'll do a homemade gift. And it starts to rightsize a little bit where, um, not only the person is spending less money, which is great. That feels good. Now we, now we can talk about that. Um, but is also like cheesy, but getting to the heart of what it is to be a person. What, getting to the heart of what's important in relationships.'cause that that is actually what was going on in, in that question. So that's sort of. That's, that's my holiday message. Presence over presence.

Stoy Hall: 13:06

I think a lot of that has everything to do with the cycle of humanity of where we're at. Right? Mm-hmm. Um,'cause everyone think about the old school presence, and I'm talking about, yeah. A hundred thousand years ago, right? It wasn't going to buy something, it was to make something. It was, yeah. If I'm a sheep farmer, I'm giving you milk or cheese, right? Those types of presents, which, which are different. It's about you. It's about living style. It's not about, you know, I saw this candle and it's frivolous and I can give it to you. It, it has something to do with more, I better, only word I can think of is more oomph. Right. You know what I mean? It feels better. It is more of a, just a, a feeling and to, to have your clients go from like Yeah. To, Hey, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm, maybe I make the Campbell maybe. Mm-hmm. It is salad dressing or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. I think if we get back to that as society. One. Yeah, we're gonna save more money. Right, obviously, but I think we're gonna become closer. That's exactly it. That's what we're missing,

Rachel Duncan: 14:06

I think. And, and what is it like to receive a gift like that? Like oh. Like, I just feel so touched. I'm a maker myself and, and also I'm not expecting that, you know, I also, you know, there, there's also a, we all have too much stuff really, you know, at a certain point. Like, is this a burden? I'm dropping off a thing now. It's a thing they gotta deal with that's gotta take rent in their house. And you know, I think we're also like really contending with the stuff. That we have. And, um, you know, and that's, that's another expansion of, okay, well if you do wanna give a gift, is it an experience gift? Is it a heartfelt letter? Like we can really, we can start to shake it up to, um, not be so much about the thing. My mom was very attached to the thing. There needs to be a thing. And I, I honor that. If that's where you're at, great. But I, I think too. Also look at what it's like from the other point of view that we all want less stuff. We do. We surely do. We

Stoy Hall: 14:57

really do.

Rachel Duncan: 14:58

So it's a gift not to give a gift

Stoy Hall: 15:00

sometimes

Rachel Duncan: 15:01

we

Stoy Hall: 15:01

really do.

Rachel Duncan: 15:01

And my, my,

Stoy Hall: 15:02

yeah. If I can't consume it shortly, I really, I really don't. I don't, I don't need it. I don't need it. Oh

Rachel Duncan: 15:07

man. Gimme a plate of cookies over a candle any day. Yeah, correct. Exactly. Good

Stoy Hall: 15:12

lord. We have enough candles anyway.

Rachel Duncan: 15:14

Yeah. And in my friend group we used to do little, little gifts at at Christmas and at one point I think one of my friends was just like, can we just stop doing this? I was like, yeah, I'll stop it. We just stop. We still get together like change nothing. It was like one less thing that I felt like I had to do, save me some money. Just like can we just not just be with each other? Like that's what, let's just be with each other. And I think if your friend group, your family is, is important to you. Um. You can suggest a shift up and it might feel uncomfortable. Like absolutely there might be pushback. Like I remember my siblings and I pitched to our mom, Hey, let's do like a kinda more of a secret Santa than everyone give to everybody.'cause there's three of us. And my mom said, you all can do that. I absolutely won't. I must give a gift to all of my children. I can understand that, but you know, like we, you can propose and let people think on it. Like, Hey, what if we all did an experience gift together instead of stuff? Um, or, Hey, I'm gonna change my gift giving this year. I think the, uh. Speaking of boundaries, which was what we talked about last time. You can say what you are going to do. You can't say what everyone else is going to do. Right. But hey, I'm shifting how I'm gifting this year. Just heads up, right? Most people will be like, girl, go do it. Do it girl. Um, but that's okay. You can try new things.

Stoy Hall: 16:32

Absolutely. So everyone listening, we, we know, you know someone like this and most likely it is you.'cause I'm the same way. Love to give, uh, really hard for me to receive. Mm. We want you to go through this holiday season and maybe, maybe. Change it up a little bit. Maybe propose to change it up a little bit and let us know. Come back to the comments, engage with us, let us know how that little shift, um, was positive or negative, right? Either way. But, uh, definitely during this time, just get together with everyone. Be with your loved ones. If you can't call'em, do something, write a letter. Uh, this is definitely a time where we all want to feel appreciated regardless if we think we don't. Yeah, it is definitely that time of the year where we, we truly want to be, um, part of a, a, a bigger group. So again, Rachel, appreciate everything you brought to the table with, with your story and I can't wait for people to hear it, but also engage with us and let us know Yeah. What they did differently year.

Rachel Duncan: 17:26

Yeah. And your presence is present enough, really.

Stoy Hall: 17:30

Yeah. Happy holidays everybody. Beautiful.