Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Freedom, Money Management, Scarcity Mindset, Budgeting, Financial Planning

106 | Why Being Clingy with Your Money Might be a Deeper Sign of Money Trauma

• Erin Gray | Financial Coach, Former Certified Financial Planner and CFO

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Are you clinging to your savings out of fear?  What might look like smart money management on the outside can often be driven by unresolved money trauma beneath the surface.

In this episode, I’m diving into how financial fear can manifest—even when you're doing “everything right.” I share my personal experience of saving a large percentage of my income while still feeling anxious and unsafe with money, and how I realized that true financial peace doesn't come from a number in the bank, but from the beliefs we hold about money itself.

In this episode you'll learn:

  • How behaviors like extreme frugality, over-saving, or constant anxiety are often rooted in past experiences
  • What it means to shift from scarcity to sufficiency—and why that matters more than budgeting
  • Practical steps to start healing your nervous system and rewire your relationship with money

Money trauma can live in your body long after the financial event is over. But with awareness, intention, and support, you can move from fear into freedom—and finally feel safe to enjoy what you’ve worked so hard to build.

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

Erin Gray:

If you've ever found yourself holding on too tightly to your money, whether it's hoarding, saving every penny or just feeling anxious about spending, it might seem like that's actually a good thing.

Erin Gray:

And after all, haven't we all been taught to be frugal and cautious with our money? And what if clinginess is actually a sign of something deeper, a deeper money trauma that's affecting your financial well-being? In today's episode, I'm unpacking why being overly attached to our money could be a sign of money trauma and what you can do to shift your mindset and behavior around money. 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.

Erin Gray:

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. I know the fear that you're feeling right now because, like me and so many of my other clients, they have been exactly where you have been, worrying about whether you're truly making the right decisions with your money. Maybe you're feeling anxious about whether you're saving enough, investing wisely, or even if you're even doing the right things at all. The pressure can feel overwhelming, like a constant weight you're carrying. You may wonder if you're qualified to even manage your finances or if you're even on the right path. I want you to know you are not alone in these fears. Every woman that I have ever helped who has overcome her financial overwhelm has felt the exact same way that you do right now. Every success story that begins with someone saying I'm going to take control, I'm going to choose differently. And even though the fear feels real in your body, the truth is you can still take charge of your money and make empowered decisions. If you're ready to stop letting fear hold you back, if you're ready to break free from feeling stuck or unsure about your financial future, then today is the day to make that change. I'm here to help you do it. I'll walk beside you, guiding you every step of the way. Together, we'll work through the fear, break down the emotional barriers and help you create a plan that makes sense and feels good for you, so you can finally feel calm and confident with your money. If you're ready to take charge of your money and make the changes you've been longing for. I want you to say yes For once. Say yes to you. Let's work together and overcome that fear. You can head over to my website generatealifewelllivedcom to schedule your one hour session and let's get started.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so first of all, let me just say I am not a therapist. This is not a formal diagnosis of money trauma. I am speaking just from my own experience and what I have seen clients go through and leaning on therapists that I have talked to and books that I have read on money trauma. So I want you to know take what resonates, leave the wet, the rest. And that's always for my case, for all of my podcasts or advice, and I always want to just empower you to use my teachings, to ponder them and use it in ways that are helpful for you to transform your relationship with money. So now that I've got that whole disclaimer out of the way, I just want you to know that I have been there.

Erin Gray:

I used to have constant fear around losing money. It even sometimes still comes up. As I'm up leveling, those little intrusive thoughts come up and and and those feelings, you know, rear up and it's just an invitation for me to go deeper and to work through even at a deeper level. I have saved. You know, when my husband and I were married before our child, I would call it incessantly like at times probably around 40% of our income, and that wasn't necessarily when we were high earners. You know, I would try to cut out all the air quotes, unnecessary expenses, even avoiding spending money on things that would improve my life, because I was afraid Now one could say that it probably set me up right To be able to take some time off over the last couple of years. But let me tell you, man, oh man, it felt like crap in my body. Getting to that place right, Getting to the place of that dollar amount did not feel good on the way there. So it was when I actually decided to take time off from work is when I truly realized that my relationship with money wasn't just about numbers in the bank account. It was really tied to that deep emotional wounds and past experiences that I had been repressing and suppressing by saving and investing and overworking.

Erin Gray:

I think sometimes our actions can cover up what we're actually feeling because we don't take time to actually be still and to ponder and to be with our emotions and where we are. So what is money trauma? Money trauma doesn't always look like what most people think, you know, like being broke or struggling financially. It's happens to those of us with money and, like I said, I'm not a trained therapist, but what I have seen, what has been explained to me, courses I have taken on money trauma Many of my clients present that way. I obviously had money trauma and we think as a society that money trauma is for people that don't have money. But what I have noticed in talking to a lot of people with money is we experienced this. It can show up with anxiety around spending, having a deep-seated fear of financial scarcity or even avoidance of your finances altogether. Money trauma is the emotional and it's the psychological wounds that we carry surrounding money. It's often rooted in ancestral experiences, family dynamics and beliefs, past experiences, societal influences and oppression.

Erin Gray:

And I want you to know that trauma is not the event, it's the aftermath, it's the debris, it's the displacement, it's the broken trust, it's the loss of feeling safe and it's the disruption of what was known, and then it's replaced with fear and uncertainty about what's next. I had a therapist once explain it to me like this. The example she gave was a tornado hitting your home is a traumatic event. The tornado touches down, it causes a disruption and it goes on about its way, but the trauma is actually the aftermath of the tornado. Right? The broken windows, the debris, the hole in the roof, things that are no longer in their original places. This home is now submerged in chaos. You don't know where things are, you feel violated and there's an increase in sense of vulnerability. If the windows are now broken, there's a hole in the roof, you are now more susceptible to the outside elements and things start to impact you differently. Right, your protection has diminished. The tornado is gone and now you're responsible for the cleanup and the repair, and so it's not just the event, right, that's not really what it is. It's all of the after effect that occurs because of what the event is.

Erin Gray:

So Gabor Mate he's an amazing psychologist. I love him. He describes trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you. So trauma is a psychic injury lodged in our nervous system, our mind, our body, lasting long past those originating incidents and being able to be triggered at any moment based on that circumstance. So I'm going to go over just some signs of money and financial trauma. This isn't an end all be all. I'm not a therapist, but I'm just going over what some of the things I've experienced for myself classes that I've taken, therapists that I've talked to about this. So signs of money or financial trauma are behaviors endorsed by people who have financially induced stress include financial behaviors such as avoidance or procrastination, denial around healthy financial choices and difficulty planning, organizing and managing their financial lives. So why I think clinginess to money might be a sign of money trauma is because when you're excessively clingy or anxious about money, it can stem from that lack of trust either in yourself or the world around you. You know, fear of loss can trigger a cycle of saving and holding onto money, even if it means sacrificing your quality of life in the present.

Erin Gray:

And I know I've mentioned this and I've also been very candid about my experience with my parents when I was younger, around 10. And my dad was trying to inform me and empower me and teach me some things about money. And also as a 10 year old, my body didn't really grasp that right, like our prefrontal cortex in our brain hasn't been built so or fully formed. I should say so. We can't, even though he was coming from a place I know now from such love and empowerment, and he was trying to teach me valuable lessons about money. When you are around people who are extremely stressed and fearful with money, we pick up on that energy, our body picks that up. So that fear of loss that my parents experienced, that impacted me right, I picked up on that. And it doesn't necessarily mean to have to be mean that words that were said right, I picked up on that. And it doesn't necessarily mean to have to be mean that words that were said right. It's the energy that my parents were in for those years that they were going through that often, you know, this fear comes from early experiences of lack or financial instability.

Erin Gray:

So think about, like generations, like what your grandparents probably went through. I know my grandfather was literally in the great depression, like he told me things that he was going through when the great depression was happening and that formed his belief system around money, about the way that the world works, and so if you're not aware of this, and then he parented my dad and he taught them, you know he taught him, and my uncles and my aunt, you know that money's really hard and you have to hold on to money, and I mean my grandpa used to like save screws. I mean just so much. He had so many millions of dollars in his bank account, but he really what I call acted from such a poverty conscious mentality because the great depression was so impactful for him. So when we think about our grandparents teaching our parents which then ultimately, right, our parents are parenting us and they're they're passing down these same beliefs this might cause a person to feel that money is the source of safety and control.

Erin Gray:

So I want to talk about the cycle of clean. It's like cleanliness doesn't just affect our spending habits. It can also prevent us from investing in the future or living life more free and trusting. So if you feel like money is like the means of survival which, on the one hand, there is truth to that right, like we do need money to live, to eat, to pay our mortgage, right, and also, when we come to it from that place of that deep, it's one thing to like understand that yeah, like, yeah, money. It does allow us to eat, it does allow us to pay our mortgage. When it's another thing of like I have to have this money, we might hold onto it too tightly and unable to let it go and trust that more is going to come. And trust that more is going to come.

Erin Gray:

And I think that the more deeper issue here is healing that fear and possibly the trauma that we have around money, you know, rather than just focusing on external actions like I used to, like I would just save more, I'll just make more, I'll just, you know, spend less. You know we actually have to get to the root cause, because what we do, right, what we, what we grow, grows. So if you're thinking that, well, if you just get more money, but you still haven't really gotten to the root issue of your mindset of that, those feelings in your body, there will be no amount of money that is going to ever make you feel safe. So how do we shift out of this mindset? Recognize right, celebrate. Start by identifying where your fear of loss came from. Is it from childhood experiences? Is it from a past financial loss? This is an invitation for you to go within and give yourself so much love. Now, I don't think it is helpful if we're going to go down the rabbit hole and that's where we're going to because we can almost use that as a way to avoid feeling what we're feeling. So I don't necessarily encourage, in the moment when these feelings are coming up, I don't encourage you to go down the rabbit hole and figure out where this came from. And if you are going to go down the rabbit hole, don't spend a whole lot of time there, because it can. It can just keep us in that searching mode versus clearly there's something here that's asking to be looked at, released, and that's what I'm going to focus on. But if you want to, if you want to get curious, then you can and just and and after you felt what you needed to feel, and really just get curious, but not stay in there.

Erin Gray:

The second, and I think is really important, is healing this trauma. I don't know if I I think that the you know spirituality and the personal development space, like I think there's lots of differing opinions. I don't know if we ever fully heal all of our things right Like I. I truly this is my belief but I believe our soul came to earth to experience and to grow, and the way that we do that is to constantly be expanding and working through obstacles, so thinking that there will never be a point where you ever have to deal with X, y, z again. I don't know if that is a very serving thought and it almost feels like resistance in the body because it's like, oh well, once I get to this place, but like, if we can make peace with, we're always going to have this, but it's just going to be less and less intense in our body and our refractory period is going to get shorter and shorter.

Erin Gray:

I think that's the skillset that we're trying to build. So doing the inner work to work through those emotional wounds around money can help you release that grip, that feeling to hold on tight that you have around your finances. You know, work with a therapist or seek out a coach this is something that I do with clients as well that have experience with this so that you can work through it, trust and let go. I think it's easier said than done, it's a practice, it's a skillset, but the more that you can build a healthy relationship with money, where it's seen as a tool for freedom, not as a source of fear, the more that you're going to be able to let go and live more fully. And I think this really has to do with our capacity to have right, as as I expand my capacity to have more joy, more fun, more ease, more flow. I start to bump up against some of this stuff. Right, and that's normal, because we're expanding and we're growing. So this is a skillset, and the way that we get good at things is we practice right.

Erin Gray:

We have to consciously feed the thoughts and beliefs and emotions that we want to have with money. And then I think the last thing is practicing sufficiency. You know, if abundance feels too much of a jump for your nervous system, I think practicing sufficiency. So, instead of hoarding, practicing small intentional acts of giving, of spending money in ways that light you up, and investing in ways that light you up to help you feel more in alignment with sufficiency and abundance, because when you feel abundant and you might have to in the beginning do what I call is grafting, so where is a place that you feel totally abundant in or totally sufficient?

Erin Gray:

What do you think about that situation? Probably might not think hardly anything at all, cause you trust it right. You know it's going to be there. Like I know that my spouse is one that I feel totally abundant in. Like I know he's always going to be there. I know that he loves me. I know that we are going to work through anything it's going to be fine. So, leaning on that, like using that as an example, looking at how, how do I do? I sit there and wonder like, is he out doing something I don't want him to do? Is he cheating on me? Is he going to be there when I come home? Like I don't ever have any of those thoughts, like I don't think anything actually, like I just know he's going to be. Like, if he says he's coming home at X time, he's going to show up at that time. If he says he's going to do X, y, z, he does it right. So there's so much trust there.

Erin Gray:

So, using certain circumstances in your life or certain other relationships that you wholeheartedly trust and feel so abundant and so at peace with you, can use those types of relationships to then graft to how you want to have an experience, money, okay. So to recap, first and foremost, awareness, recognizing the fear right, Giving yourself an invitation to go within and giving yourself so much love, working through, processing and healing some of this trauma, doing that inner work to work through those wounds, those emotional wounds that we have around money, so that we can release some of that grip that we have, learning to trust, learning to let go and surrender and surrender doesn't mean just give up. Surrender means no attachment, surrender means letting go. So the more that you can build a healthy relationship with money, where you get to see it as a tool, where it's neutral, not a source of fear, then the more you're able to let go and then finally just practicing sufficiency, abundance giving and spending and investing in ways that light your soul on fire. Okay, that's all I've got for you today.

Erin Gray:

If you recognize yourself in this episode, I want to say celebrate you right.

Erin Gray:

Awareness is the first step and if you want to work through some of these feelings you might be feeling around your money so that you can start managing it consistently, stop avoiding it, really get clear on your financial position and really start to have a relationship with money that you love, that feels fun and free and maybe that feels too far of a jump right now, but where you get to feel neutral about money, where you look at your money, where you use it as a tool, I would love to support you. You can click the link in my show notes to schedule a call, or you can just go to my website generatealifewelllivedcom and click on work with me and schedule a call. 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 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.