93 | Stressed About Money? How Emotional Regulation Can Change Everything

Ever wonder why you procrastinate on checking your bank account or feel tight in your chest when setting prices? It’s likely your nervous system stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode around finances. 

Money avoidance, guilt, and shame aren’t character flaws—they’re automatic nervous system responses. When money feels threatening, your body activates survival mechanisms that influence your financial behavior without you even realizing it. 

In this episode, I share why this happens with you and money and give you practical tools to help calm your nervous system around money.

Key Takeaways:

•  Nervous System Responses to Money
•  Emotional Regulation and Financial Confidence 
•  Practical Tools to Calm the Nervous System Around Money 
•  The Power of Language and Energy 
•  Building Lasting Financial Confidence 

Want to learn more? Here are your next steps:

Step 1: Join my FREE Facebook Community.

Connect, share, and learn how to master your money with other women just like you.

➡️ Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/941450038160915

Step 2: Grab your FREE Human Design chart

Curious what your Human Design chart reveals about how you're uniquely designed to make aligned financial decisions?

➡️ Get your chart here: https://generatealifewelllived.com/receive-your-human-design-chart

Step 3: Ready to transform your relationship with money and build true financial confidence?

Let’s create a strategy that feels aligned, intentional, and empowering—just for you.

➡️ Schedule your 1-hour Money Mastery Call here: https://generatealifewelllived.com/11-support

Money doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Let's create a strategy that feels nurturing and custom to you.

From my soul to yours,

Erin

Transcript

Erin Gray: 0:00

If you've been feeling overwhelmed when thinking about your money, or maybe you've been avoiding looking at your bank account or your books in your business, I want you to know that you are not alone and that money stress is so much more than just having enough or not. The real issue often lies in how we emotionally respond to our finances. So today on the podcast, I'm going to be sharing how emotional regulation can be the key to developing financial confidence, and I'm going to be giving you simple tools that you can start using today. Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money? Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to finances. Welcome to your Money, your Rules. I'm Erin, a former certified financial planner and CFO, and yet I used to avoid my money and had fear, no matter how much we had. I can't wait to teach you how I overcame my money avoidance and started consistently managing my finances in a really simple way. It's time to get comfortable with money and I wanted to offer. If you're ready to dive even deeper into money mindset and connect with a community of like-minded women, I would love for you to join my Facebook group, money Mindset Tips for Women in Business. It's really a safe space where we can share tips, strategies and support one another to help you grow your financial confidence and create a business that feels aligned with you and your values. I'll put the link in the show notes if you want to join.

Erin Gray: 1:29

Okay, so let's talk about why emotional regulation actually matters in finances. I think this is the part that maybe the financial industry has kind of forgotten about. You know, there's, there's, there's so much to finances, right, there's the actual understanding of how money works, and then there's that emotional part, and I think that a lot of times gets left out. When you're sitting in front of your CPA or you're on a Zoom call with them, or you're talking to your financial planner or you're at the bank, I don't think that they take into account what you're actually feeling and how that's actually driving your money decisions. So, for many of us, money is highly, highly emotional, right, it's not. It's not very logical. Our financial decisions are often driven by our emotions, right, and a lot of our emotions that we feel with money, unless we're very aware and we've done some work on it, are those lower vibration emotions like stress and fear or guilt, right, or shame, and so when we are in that vibration and that energy of those emotions, then we create more of that.

Erin Gray: 2:42

So let's talk about the emotional responses to stress and money there's, you know I call it like the survival state. You know, fight, flight, freeze and fawn. And with fight, if you were in that fight response, you know it kind of shows up like maybe you're trying to control a lot of things, maybe you are obsessing over money or having a lot of financial arguments either with your spouse or just feeling very stressed when it comes to your business finances. The flight part of our survival is where we think about, like, avoiding looking at our bank accounts, avoiding bills, procrastinating on money decisions. You know, I had a client one time say, well, I'm just really lazy. And I told her no, I don't, I don't think you're lazy, I think your body is in flight and your body is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing to protect you. And until we can get some separation from that and understand that that's actually what our body's doing and to thank our body for doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing, we can understand oh, that's why I'm procrastinating. Right, there's some deeper money issues or belief systems, maybe even some I don't like saying trapped energy, but sometimes it's like the energy kind of just gets stuck versus moving that energy and so you know avoiding, you know avoiding the bills, procrastination, or like pretending that the problems don't exist. That's all part of that flight response.

Erin Gray: 4:24

Okay, so the freeze response can feel like, or it looks like feeling stuck. It can also look like you being paralyzed by overwhelm or just feeling overwhelmed in general. Right Like if that's a constant feeling that you are in. You're probably in that freeze response and maybe you're not taking action, like the byproduct is you aren't taking action and then the fun is a newer one. It's more like that people pleasing, so maybe you overgive, maybe you struggle to set boundaries, like if you think about if you're with your clients and you have a one hour call and it ends up being an hour and a half, or you offer Voxer access and before you know it, two hours have gone by. Really, those are part of that FON response and maybe feeling guilty for charging what you're charging. So really starting to see and it's not like you're going to be in one and not another, right Like, if I were to look at myself over the last couple of years, I would fall in all four of these categories. It's just how it shows up, depending on different circumstances.

Erin Gray: 5:35

So, just recognizing, you know, when you are in these responses when it comes to money and when we are in these responses responses when it comes to money and when we are in these responses I always say, first and foremost, like, start with your breath, recognizing. A lot of times when we're doing this work, we we learn that it after the fact, right, like we recognize we've done something and it's it's after the fact, and then it becomes. We recognize it when we're in the middle of it and then we begin to recognize it before it happens. So, wherever you are in the process, it's totally fine. Just recognizing, where are you, where? Where's this showing up for you?

Erin Gray: 6:14

So I think emotional regulation is so important because that's really what is driving our behavior. So you know how emotional regulation like when our nervous systems are regulated, when our bodies feel safe with money, we are able to make clear, empowered financial decisions. Right. When we feel that money is neutral and that it doesn't feel like a perceived threat, we are able to break away from that emotional spending or avoidant behavior. Right, you get to start shifting your financial habits because you're starting to recognize that you're safe, that your nervous system is becoming more calm when it comes to money.

Erin Gray: 7:05

So I want to share a couple of things that I have used to help my nervous system when it comes to money. If you can always start with pausing right, recognizing what is actually happening, pausing before you react. Like I said before, you may not be able to do this in the moment, you might recognize it after it's all said and done, but you can reflect right. So next time you're about to make a financial decision, take a breath and ask yourself am I responding or reacting? Very different energy from a place of stress, or am I choosing this from a place of empowerment? You always have your breath. You can always come back to it at any time. I think it's something that's a beautiful thing, right, it's free, we always have it. It is a highly effective way to calm our nervous system. So, and it's a way that tells your body that you're safe, right.

Erin Gray: 8:11

So make sure that you're taking deep breaths that go all the way down to your belly. You know when they talk about extending your belly, that's because you're pushing the air down, hitting your diaphragm, pushing your belly out, like not the shorter breaths, but like the full, all the way in and all the way out. Right, couple, you know you could do even box breathing, where you breathe in for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, release it for four seconds, pause for four seconds. You could do several of those before you react or make a decision, or respond. Make a decision, some grounding exercises. So when money starts to feel stressful or overwhelming, like I said, try your deep breathing, like I told you about the box breathing. Also, too, you could use the 5-4-3-2-1 method, which is recognizing five things that you see with your eyes and actually naming them right, like my ring light, my microphone, my water bottle, my computer, my phone. Those are five things, so it starts to bring you to the present. Then four would name four things that you can feel, three things that you can hear, two things you can smell and one that you can taste. So really start to bring you back to the present, recognizing you're safe, you're here, you're okay.

Erin Gray: 9:40

Tapping, or what's called emotional freedom technique, is an amazing tool that I have used and that really moves that energy. Insight Timer is a wonderful app that I use, that I use for tapping, and just the more that you do it, the easier it becomes and you get used to knowing where your meridians are and what are the things that you want to say, to release some of that energy also to you. Know journaling, you know, if that's something that sometimes we can get so in our heads that it feels that the story that's occurring up there is true. But really writing it down and then going back and then reading it to see, like what is actually fact and what is all a story, really starting to reframe your money story is another tool. So instead of saying and I think a lot of times in the beginning, when we're new at this, we don't even recognize what we're saying because we just take it as fact.

Erin Gray: 10:42

So if you're someone who says I'm bad with money, you might just think that that is the case, that's the fact, right. But starting to reframe it to I'm learning to make empowered choices with my finances and think about what vibration are you in when you're talking to yourself, right, the vibration that we are in is the one that we attract. So if you're talking down to yourself, if you're saying I'm bad with money, that feels very shameful in energy wise versus. Think about if you were to say that right now I'm bad with money. It's almost to me. It feels like I need to curl in a ball versus I'm learning to make empowered choices with my finances. That feels very expansive and open and my chest starts to open up. So, just recognizing, how are you speaking to yourself? What are the stories that you're telling yourself when it comes to money?

Erin Gray: 11:39

And I always recommend, you know, creating some type of money self-care ritual, right? Maybe it's pairing your financial management with calming routines, right? Maybe it's playing your favorite music I've told you I love piano, guys, guys or just um, different types of hurts music lighting a candle, making it some type of enjoyable ritual that you sit down and you look at your money and you're feeling safe when it comes to that. Okay, so the key takeaways that I want you to walk away with today is that I really truly believe that emotional regulation right, getting our nervous systems to feel safe when it comes to money is crucial. It allows us to help manage the money stress that we might be feeling. We get to recognize how our emotions are influencing our financial decisions and it can really help us break free from those fear-based habits, because a lot of times we are like our bodies just service up the same emotions.

Erin Gray: 12:47

If your body is used to feeling shame when it comes to money, when you start to feel peace, your body's going to be like, wait, what I'm so used to feeling shame? We need to serve up a thought that's going to create some shame for you. So it's going to take some time to build those new neural pathways to feel that in your body and stay with it. Because the more that you practice being in the vibration of peace or calm or neutrality even just neutrality with money versus guilt or shame the better you're going to get at it, the more your body is going to want to feel the peace and the calm because it's a more practiced emotion. Understanding what type of stress response are you in, right, are you in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn? And, like I said, you could probably, you know, gravitate or move throughout all of those different ones, depending on what circumstance you are when it comes to money. So, making sure that you are intentional, right, if you are in that response, like I said, your breath you always have that recognizing that, coming back down from that fight, flight, freeze, fawn response and then getting to a more neutral, supportive place.

Erin Gray: 14:08

Practicing consistently emotional regulation tools, right Pausing before responding, using your grounding exercises on a consistent daily basis can help you manage your money, stress and make more empowered financial decisions, and then really starting to like what we talk about. We create, right that. We create that on the material plane. So what is your money story? Starting to talk about the way you want to be with your money. Start talking about that now, in present form, because that's what we're going to create. So the next time that you feel stress when it comes to money or that stress in your body building up, I want you to pause for a moment. I want you to breathe. You can do the box breathing or you can just simply take in two or three breaths, slowly, fully right, and make a conscious choice in how you want to respond. Try some of those regulation tools that I mentioned above and notice how it shifts your energy around your money. And if you're ready to dive deeper into money mindset and more emotional regulation, I would love to invite you to connect with me for a one-on-one coaching call. Together, we can create a personalized plan that helps you feel confident and empowered when it comes to your money.

Erin Gray: 15:31

As always, thank you so much for being here and listening today. I truly believe that more women need to have a loving, nourishing relationship with money. Okay, I'll see you in the next episode. Did you learn something today? Do you know another female entrepreneur who might be avoiding her money? Will you send this episode over to her for me? Be avoiding her money? Will you send this episode over to her for me? And, if you have it in you, please leave me a review for this podcast. It helps the show grow and I love hearing from you. See you next week.