#51: Self Care During Tax Season (or whenever you’re doing hard financial things!)

Are the jitters you feel every time you peek at your bank statement normal? 

Do you go into a fight or flight response every time you try to complete a financial task?

Are you feeling UGH about preparing for your taxes? Doing bookkeeping? Paying of your loans etc?

Today, we peel back the layers of financial anxiety and procrastination to uncover the root causes of the dread often accompanying money management. 

We dive into the emotional whirlpool of dealing with debt, taxes, and the stress that tags along with it, dissecting how past traumas and a fear of authority can intensify these financial pressures.

Through real-life examples, you will learn how to recognize and navigate your physiological and emotional responses, providing tools and insights to help you foster a healthier relationship with your finances, and complete your financial tasks with ease and confidence! 

You will learn all about:

• Hypoarousal, how it shows up in your body, and how to manage this nervous system state. 
• Hyperarousal, how that one shows up, and what you can do about it.

Links:

• Receive your free ebook: Emotional Regulation for Financial Success. 
• Learn and apply for CFA.
• Book a 1:1 Money Healing Session.

Thank you for being here ❤️

Join my 6-month program, Create Fulfilling Abundance.
Learn more and apply here: https://www.saveamillioncents.com/cfa

If you are interested in working with me 1:1, send me an email!

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Connect with me on Instagram for free tips, inspo: https://www.instagram.com/nadinezumot/

~Podcast theme song by The Jilted Irony

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello, hello and welcome back to the Money Healing Podcast. I am so happy that we are all here, gathered together for a few moments, a slice of your day, just to talk about financial wellness, and this episode is dedicated to all of you out there who find themselves in fight or flight mode when you're doing money stuff, especially financial stuff. So maybe you're someone who feels the urge in your body to just get up and leave, or maybe you find yourself getting easily distracted when you're doing financial tasks or, if you were doing it with your partner, you always end up fighting, or even you might find yourself fighting with yourself and you're irritated with yourself, or even at the screen, or it might even look like tech rage. Whatever it is, this will actually make sense and in this episode I would love to teach you how to take care of it so you can find more ease in doing financial tasks and completing financial tasks. But before I dive in, I do want to thank you all for your beautiful messages about the three day financial empowerment party, my three day financial empowerment giveaway. That happened on this podcast and if you don't know what you're talking about, no worries. So at the end of now we're in the beginning of 2024, and at the end of last year, 2023, and that was episodes 46, 47, and 48, I hosted an end of year celebration and I offered many gifts at the end of each episode. They're still up there. You can still head over there when you have time to soak in the lessons and receive your presence. So let's dive in everyone. It's January 2024. The silly season, as they call it, is over.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Here in North America, tax season is beginning and fun little trivia. In Australia, tax season is in July. So woohoo, lucky me. As a dual citizen, I get to file my taxes twice every year. Ooh the joy.

Speaker 1: 2:34

But this episode is not just about filing our taxes. It's really about doing any financial task right. So whenever we sit down to do our bookkeeping, or if we're going to be talking about our finances with our partner, or if you're sitting down to figure out your debt payoff, or you're paying off your credit cards, you might feel anxious. And you know why you feel anxious it's because they're scary. That's why I get a lot of anxiety during tax season, and even as someone who gets to pay their credit card in full at the end of every month, I do feel quite uncomfortable looking at my own spending and with taxes it's even worse. It's all these intricate numbers and if you're a business owner, or if you are an employee and a business owner, or if you have a team and you're paying out your team, you know you've got payroll. Oh gosh, it's quite complicated and there's lots of deductions and making sure that you get your books right and hoping that you set enough aside for these hungry, hungry hippos at the taxation office. Oh my God, I can't believe. I said that. I'm just kidding. I actually want to say that I've had a bunch of clients who had some really nice and understanding interactions with these hungry, hungry hippos at the taxation office, and let's just, let's just not say that, let's just call them humans because they are humans. Okay, let's lean into that.

Speaker 1: 4:08

So I really want us to acknowledge that a part of us, you know we're afraid of this particular season the tax season is because we have a fear of authority. Right, and when you, um, when you grow up with trauma, you do have fear of authority pretty badly, I do. Fear of authority is often rooted in our personal experience and even in our evolutionary instincts, and if you're someone who experienced abuse or harsh discipline or any oppressive behaviors from maybe your teachers or your parents or any authority figures, and you were given some harsh punishments. Of course you are going to develop a fear of authority and of course, this whole, like preparing for your taxes is not just about putting numbers together or looking at your past spending, but it's also uh, yeah, you're going to, your numbers are going to be looked at by your accountant and then by the people who are processing your tax return right. So we that fear of authority, that emotional aspect, we have to, we have to acknowledge that it's there and it's real and it makes sense. So not only do we have that fear of authority, but we want to get our documents together and our numbers right, and that could be very highly activating to your nervous system. So what I see happening is two things, usually in our physiology when we work with our finances. So I want us to zoom in a little bit and look at what's actually happening inside of your body, and then I'm going to tell you what to do about it, okay? So sometimes, when I'm working on a financial transaction, I can definitely feel very scared, overwhelmed and even stuck that all the numbers on the screen get jumbled up.

Speaker 1: 6:03

The funny thing is that when I was working in accounting, that never happened. Okay, it only happened when I started doing my own books I love bookkeeping. When I started doing my own books and when I started preparing my own documents my tax documents for my business and I found myself feeling dissociated from the task by thinking about everything else, Like, oh, look, the windows need cleaning. And oh, what about? You know the characters of the show that I'm currently obsessed with, you know? Oh, that interactions between them like, oh, I start daydreaming and dissociating.

Speaker 1: 6:40

And I actually have this very funny story that happened to me a few years ago. I was setting up my bookkeeping and I had a bit of a mix up and I felt so overwhelmed and so helpless and I was like, oh my God, I have to look for someone to help me with this. And I started. I felt really like activated. Then I left it and I came back to it the next day and I was like, oh my God, this particular situation that I was facing at the time was exactly one of the things that I used to do in my previous job in accounting. I was actually the person I was looking for and I shared this and I was able to figure it out within minutes.

Speaker 1: 7:26

But I shared this because I want to show you that when we are in the state, we are not thinking with our logical brain, with our reasoning brain, we are thinking from our survival brain and our instinct is to reach out to be saved. So here's why this is happening your autonomic nervous system is in a state of high poarousal. Okay, so, when we are in high poarousal, our nervous system is in a state of freeze or shutdown responses. And this happens because when you are experiencing overwhelming stress or even, sometimes, financial transactions that can cause a re-triggering of your past trauma, your nervous system copes by activating that freeze or shutdown response to help you survive and to help you cope.

Speaker 1: 8:22

So in your body, you might be experiencing a slower heart rate and that can make you feel a little bit tired, fatigue, lethargic. You might even experience lack of motivation and a general sense of low energy and like just this feeling of shutdown, uggh, like heaviness, you know, and that can definitely lead to difficulties in concentration, in remembering things and in decision making, just like that example that I shared with you earlier. You know, I completely forgot that this is something I'm quite competent in fixing your body. Your muscles might even feel rigid, intense, and you might feel yourself or find yourself stuck in this uncomfortable postures in your chair and it just feels so heavy to move out of them. You might experience numbness or dissociation from your surroundings, daydreaming or becoming easily distracted. So if this is familiar, if this is something that you, you know you sometimes find yourself in when doing financial tasks, I want to tell you how to get out of it. I want you to find some ease in doing your financial tasks, because they're a part of life, right, and they are part of abundance.

Speaker 1: 9:39

We sometimes have this belief that, as soon as we make more money, this burdensome feeling we have with our finances will go away. Well, they won't, unfortunately, because more money means more managing the money. So let's just practice with what you have now so that you become more open to receiving abundance in the future. Okay, so how do we get rid of this? How do we, you know, find a way out of this hypo arousal? So if you're someone who finds yourself in hypo arousal every time you look at your finances you do your taxes, you sit with your partner, you pay your credit card, you do your bookkeeping it just makes sense that you avoid these things. Or because they are not, they don't feel good. And it makes sense that you might even begin the task and never finish it because you keep getting distracted and dissociated. And you know what your survival mechanism in your brain is very, very smart.

Speaker 1: 10:40

A lot of times it gives me these like really urgent things that I have to do and I'm like, uh, uh, I know what you're doing here, I know you're trying to protect me. I love you, thank you, but I know what to do physically to get myself out of that state of hypo arousal. So for you I would and this is what I do I suggest some very gentle movements, Okay, so when you're in this feeling of, like, rigidity, feeling lack of motivation and distraction, I would really suggest that you maybe get away from the task, shut down your computer, for you know, temporarily, maybe go to your bed or your yoga mat and I suggest doing very gentle movements or even a progressive muscle relaxation exercise when we step away from the task and we go to that yoga mat or somewhere that feels really safe and familiar. You can even do some hip circles, grounding exercises, and you know what. There are a bunch of exercises that will be very helpful for you.

Speaker 1: 11:44

On page nine of my Regulate your Emotions for Financial Success ebook, I am going to pop that in the show notes, the link to that in the show notes. Okay, so these gentle movements will communicate to your nervous system that you are safe. And hey look, remember, your nervous system doesn't understand language. You can't just tell yourself calm down or it's okay, it's just numbers. Your nervous system understands the language of emotions and sensations. So, instead of trying to tell yourself, I want you to show your nervous system that it's okay for it to relax. Okay, so we step away, we do these gentle movements and then your nervous system will begin to relax. And then you will eventually find yourself very slowly and very eventually, coming out of that hypo arousal survival mode and back into your logical, critical thinking brain, which you definitely need for doing financial tasks and transactions.

Speaker 1: 12:45

Okay, the other task that you might find yourself in is anxiety. You might even feel that you are mildly too, like fully in aggressive mode, or you're angry, or you might even find yourself that I find this urge to rush through things and just get it done. I just want to rush through and get it out of the way. So you work on it so frantically and you start like slamming down on the keyboard and you feel enraged and you just want to get this done. And that is definitely me. And I have given so many things with typos and mistakes to my tax accountant that he returned to me and says, yeah, that doesn't make sense. So, yep, if that's you, that is me as well. And guess what? That is a sign that your nervous system is in a state of hyperarousal. So hyperarousal refers to a state of heightened physiological and psychological arousal in your body and it is associated with the familiar fight or flight responses.

Speaker 1: 13:54

So you're doing a financial task, you're working on your finances, your taxes, and your nervous system is perceiving that task at hand as dangerous. Because, not because something's going to jump out of you from the screen, but because what your nervous system does is that it is responsible to perceive everything around you and it uses your database, your memory bank, to determine whether something is dangerous or safe or threatening. So if your memories or your past experiences and look, they don't have to even have to do with money again, like they might have to do with authority or your sense of worth or your belonging or acceptance, all these things. They really are stored in the memory bank and your nervous system might then go and misperceive that financial task at hand or just the fact that you're doing your taxes as this danger that it really needs to fight or run away from. So what happens is that the sympathetic branch of your nervous system will get activated and you will go into this increased alertness space in your nervous system or state and you become really ready for action, fighting the source of the threat or fleeing from it. So that urge to like just get it done quickly, that is a flea response. Or like just feeling aggressive and like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm doing my taxes again. This is unfair. Yes, it is. You know we're not going to go there, but that is a fight response in your nervous system and they all make sense.

Speaker 1: 15:34

So when we look at them, when we look at these behaviors from a lens of the nervous system, it all makes sense, doesn't it? So in your body, when you're in high per arousal, you might experience increased heart rate. Your heart might be pumping faster because it's preparing you for action. You might even breathe faster and your breathing will become shallower because your body is preparing you to run, your limbs and your upper body might tense up and the muscles in the front of your body will also tense up because they're fighting you're, they're preparing you to fight or to run right. So all the energy goes into your bigger limbs, your sense of your bigger limbs, your bigger muscles, your limbs, your senses even, might become very acute. You become hyper vigilant and hyper aware of your surroundings and you might start finding yourself becoming irritable and impatient and it will feel impossible to relax. There's nothing wrong with you.

Speaker 1: 16:39

This is a natural adaptive response from your body and your nervous system, and all we need to do is we need to update your nervous system to start understanding that this is okay, that you are now you know 37, 38, 40, 50 and you're no longer a child, and you are competent to do this. And I'm going to tell you later on in this episode how else you can tell your nervous system that doing financial tasks is actually okay and it's safe, because, remember, your nervous system is running on old software. Okay. So what we need to do is update that software and unfortunately, your nervous system is not like a computer. You don't just like upload a software or update the software and, bam, it changes. You know it's like now new. It does take time, okay. So even if you feel like the like you're improving, but very incrementally, that actually makes more sense. Because if you were a client of mine, I would just tell you that you need to go slower. Okay, because your nervous system gets re traumatized when we go too fast. Okay, and another thing I want to point out is sometimes it's not just like you always go in hyper arousal or hyper arousal when it comes to financial tasks.

Speaker 1: 17:58

You might actually have a combination of both. You might start in hypo and then find yourself in hyper, or vice versa, okay. Sometimes certain financial tasks might put you in hypo arousal and others might put you in hyper arousal, okay. So this is not one or the other. This applies to you just because you're human, okay. So to get out of hyper arousal, I would suggest that you try to find a way to eject or expel this extra energy.

Speaker 1: 18:29

So for me, when I find myself in this, like oh, my body wants to get up and run, it wants to fight. So what I do is I allow it to express that desire, to express that feeling. So I get on my exercise bike or I go for a very brisk walk and then I might work out and I might choose a workout that is like, maybe, a kickboxing workout or a workout where I'm doing burpees, where I'm just like expelling this energy, but always after doing my exercise bike or my brisk walking or my working out. And, of course, if you're a runner, this is beautiful. I am not a runner, but what I would suggest is that you do a grounding exercise after that. So, for example, if you choose to do a HIIT exercise or go for a run or go for or do some somatic shaking or dancing, then I would recommend that you go and do something calming afterwards to ground you back and then go back to the financial task.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Okay, again, there are a lot of suggestions in my ebook, so I also recommend that when you download it, you keep it handy. This way, you know that, oh, I'm feeling this way and remember when we were feeling hyper or high-poor-ouse. What is actually happening is that you're no longer in your critical thinking brain, you're in your survival brain. So just remembering oh, I've got that ebook handy that Nadine gave me, so just going through it and be like, okay, I'm gonna do this exercise, so that can make things very easy for you.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Okay, and you know what I really wanna say? That regulation exercise, they don't need to be complicated. Actually, don't do any regulation exercise that feel complicated. The simpler the better. Okay, because animals in the wild they do all foreens of these regulating exercise in their own way every day, all the time in the wild. Okay, so don't underestimate them, because they're simple, they are effective and the thing is, the more you do them, the more effective they become in calming your nervous system. Okay, because we're creating new neural circuitry. That's why they need to be simple, but that's why I would recommend you do them all the time. Of course, I also wanna say that your nervous system, if it's always activated from finances, if you're always feeling like your activation, your states of hyper and hypo arousal from money and finances, is actually keeping you stuck, is actually holding you back from holding in abundance or progressing financially, or it might look like overspending and all that stuff, you might actually have what I call a money wound. And these regulation exercises, they are simply healthy soothing mechanisms, but they're not a solution to healing your money wounds.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Okay, and here's the other thing I really, really, really want to implore you that if your tax situation is complicated, if you maybe you're a business owner, maybe you file your taxes in multiple countries, like I do multiple countries, two countries, if you have payroll, if whatever it is, or if taxes just feel overwhelming, please, please, consider hiring a tax professional. My tax accountant is something that I actually it's an non-negotiable for me, and I save for hiring them every year, throughout the year, in small amounts. So I know that, for example, last year they charged me $900, so it'll be around that. For this year it'll be around 950 or 1,000, whatever. You know everything's going up. So what I do is I divide that $1,000 over 12 months and I create a bucket for them, for that money, for my tax accountant, and I save money so that, when the time comes, I've got the money there and it's not a financial burden, it's not one more thing I have to worry about, okay?

Speaker 1: 22:33

The other thing is that, look, taxes are a science on their own and what I always and often see is that we feel ashamed that we are not naturally or intuitively in the know with what to do with our finances, whether it's our taxes, our bookkeeping, even our day-to-day finances, or debt payoff, even with our money ruins, right. We feel ashamed, like, oh, I don't naturally know what to do and I feel ashamed to reach out for help. Look, just because you have a human body, it doesn't make you a doctor, right. It's the same with money. Just because you handle money, it doesn't make you a money professional. Just because you make money, that doesn't make you a money.

Speaker 1: 23:20

Or a tax expert Just because you have money, it doesn't mean that you should just out of the blue, magically know all these complicated taxation and investment things. There is no shame about not knowing and not asking for help, and not reaching out is actually setting you back, unfortunately. So again, always remember, just because you have a body, that doesn't make you a doctor. Same with money, alright. So make sure you head over to the show notes and get your e-book. And if you need some extra tender, loving care, some extra TLC because your money wounds are holding you back, then please check out my program, create Fulfilling Abundance. We are opening the enrollments again in the month of March, so in a few weeks and upon enrollment, you get direct access to my Money Healing 101 program. Or if you're not ready for CFA yet, you are more than welcome to book a single one-on-one session so that I can be able to give you a personalized roadmap on how to start healing your relationship with money and create fulfilling abundance. Thank you so much and I'll see you in the next episode.