Your Money, Your Rules | Money Mindset, Money Management, Abundance Mindset, Budgeting, Spirituality

141 | What If Resistance Around Money Is Really Nervous System Protection?

• Erin Gray | Wealth Coach, Former CFP and CFO

Share episode

Work with me:  (https://tidycal.com/eringray/45-min-call-with-erin)


Resistance isn't really about procrastination, "laziness", or self-sabotage, more often than not, it’s your body’s way of protecting you. Whether it shows up as avoiding money tasks, feeling paralyzed by financial decisions, rushing through difficult seasons of life, or numbing out with distractions, resistance carries an important message.

In this episode, I dive into how to approach resistance with emotional regulation and curiosity, so you can stop pushing through and start listening to what your body and nervous system are really trying to tell you. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why resistance shows up as protection rather than laziness or self-sabotage
  • The many forms resistance can take like avoidance, procrastination, or emotional numbing
  • How your body communicates resistance through physical sensations (tightness, discomfort, fatigue)
  • Why “pushing through” often blocks deeper wisdom from emerging
  • How working with resistance becomes a practice of self-parenting and compassion
  • Ways this approach can transform your relationship with money and ripple through all areas of life

Want to learn more or connect with me?


Step 1: Join my Facebook Community.

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

➡️ Join here

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

Step 3: Work with Me

Learn how to trust your choices, honor your worth, and feel financial freedom that lives in your body, not just on paper.

➡️ Schedule your free clarity call here


From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

What if the resistance that you feel isn't something that you need to get rid of? What if it's actually inviting you to go within? Today, we are going to be exploring resistance, the way that it shows up with your money and also just in general with your life, like if you're feeling like you just want a certain phase or a certain circumstance to just hurry up and be over. We're going to be diving into that. Resistance is not an issue. I believe it truly is the messenger, and when we learn how to listen, that's when things really start to shift. So, before we dive in, if you have been noticing resistance around your money, around how you're feeling with your money, just in general with your life, if you have been noticing resistance around your money, around how you're feeling with your money, just in general with your life, if you're ready to move through it with support from a place of love and compassion and understanding, not like trying to force it or repress it or make it go away I would love to support you To schedule a call to see if we are a good fit for each other. You can click the link in the show notes. Okay, so let's talk about resistance. First of all. It's not a problem, like everything just is. Nature just is the state of our planet just is what's happening in the world just is world just is we. That's circumstances, right, but we have thoughts, we have feelings around it. Okay, so resistance is not a problem, it just is. And the way that resistance shows up and it can be kind of sneaky, like our brains, our bodies are very, very good at protecting us. Resistance can look like not sitting down with your money when you say you would. It could look like either some other event that's on your calendar and not doing it when you have it on your calendar to do. It can look like wanting a certain season or a circumstance in your life that you are currently experiencing to just be done with. Already I've had clients tell me before I'm just so over this, I'm just ready to be done with this, this part or this phase that's happening in my life, and what that tells me is that they are not wanting to feel what needs to be felt in that moment. Right, because the only reason why we want something to go away is because the feeling that we are currently feeling is uncomfortable. So if we can sink into the feeling, if we can like. The image that comes to my mind is like a hug, right, if we can hug the season of life that we are in, if we can become softer with it and more compassionate and curious with it, like we will get so much information from it. Resistance, you know, even looks like not having those hard conversations that we know and that we have said that we are going to have.

Erin Gray:

And so many of us look at resistance like it's a and I'm air quoting a negative thing. You know, like I've had clients say, well, I'm just being lazy, or you know, I'm just not cut out for it, or just whatever the brain is offering up. You know, well, I'm just being lazy, or you know I'm just not cut out for it, or just whatever the brain is offering up. You know, like we don't have willpower. But in my experience, what I have seen in clients, with myself, with other people in my life, is that resistance is actually a form of protection. Our bodies are so intelligent, so intelligent, our minds are so intelligent. It is this beautiful way of saying that something feels overwhelming right now, or this doesn't feel safe, or this feels a little scary, or insert whatever feeling that may be occurring that is creating this resistance.

Erin Gray:

And this could be sometimes because maybe you are in a normal, like your familiar state of being, is in that fight or flight, right, like I call it that survival. Maybe that's where you are. So anything that you are trying to do outside of that that's added to that, is just like putting extra on your nervous system. Maybe you are already at what I call like that window of tolerance, right, like anything else just feels like too much. Sometimes it's it's because you might have been consistently and maybe even unknowingly right, ignoring grief or fear or anger that is wanting to be felt. Sometimes it's because you're trying to push yourself into making yourself do something that is not aligned with your true heart's desire, is not aligned with your true heart's desire.

Erin Gray:

And the only way we know what kind of resistance this is is if we slow down and we actually get curious, if we actually tend to and go within and stop with the external right. Go within and actually start asking yourself questions, getting in tune with your body, right, because the truth is that when you meet resistance from a place of curiosity, from a place of love and compassion and understanding and not judgment, then you get to gain access to the wisdom that's actually underneath it. You know, asking yourself like what is this resistance trying to protect me from feeling? Like, what am I unwilling to feel in this moment? And this isn't from the energy of like what are you not willing to feel? It's more so from a place of love and curiosity, like how would you talk to the two-year-old? What are you needing in this moment? What's going on right now? What are you feeling? What are you not wanting to feel?

Erin Gray:

You know, if you're rushing, if you're wanting something to just be over with, you know, I've had clients who are either in the middle of a divorce or post-divorce, and there's this back and forth with their previous partners and this is, you know, they've been divorced for years, but there's this, just this culmination of feelings that they have felt, that they've really haven't ultimately been able to release. And you know, sometimes they have told me, like I just want this to be over with. And when you're wanting something to be over, when you're rushing to, rushing to hurry up something, when you're either rushing from something or you're rushing to something, ultimately you are not willing and wanting to feel a feeling, and there doesn't need to be shame associated with this. There doesn't need to be any guilt, it just is a noticing, it is an awareness, and if you are pushing yourself into something that actually doesn't fit, like acting from your head instead of your actual body, like a true intuition, then you can really start to get clear on okay, this is coming from my head instead of a true heart's desire and that's why I'm resisting it of a true heart's desire and that's why I'm resisting it, and that right there will save you probably lots of time, lots of energy, lots of resources, financially and other right that you would have gotten or entered into had you just pushed forward.

Erin Gray:

So resistance I look at it as this beautiful thing that is showing us where do we need to turn in more, where do we need to get more still? Where do we need to get more connected to ourselves and see what's actually going on there? You know, the moment that you start asking yourself these questions, the moment that you start slowing down and you are paying attention to what's going on in your body, you will notice your body to soften. You know the resistance will shift just by actually asking yourself and getting in tune with yourself and your those questions right, by slowing down, by getting curious, by looking at. Am I forcing? Am I not wanting to feel something like what's going on here? And it's not necessarily something that has to be answered, you know, like when you start doing this in the next 10 minutes, right, sometimes this is, this isn't an uncovering, and one of the things that I have been willing to do, which is highly uncomfortable, is to sit in the question for however long it takes.

Erin Gray:

You know, so often I think a lot of us just want something to be done with, because we just want to get rid of that feeling. But the more that you are willing to sit in what I mean I'm air quoting, because I don't think that they are uncomfortable feelings and maybe they are to the nervous system, but like they're just not familiar, right? The more that I sit in that I mean I think about two sides of a. You know, if you think about a river and two sides one on, you know, a bank on each side the more that I'm willing to just be in that river and allow what is actually coming through, allow what is actually coming through, the more insights I get. You know, and I get such clarity by being willing to not rush through something.

Erin Gray:

This is a practice. This is not something that I do perfectly, nor is it something that you know happened overnight, like I just shared, I think, on the previous episode episode 140, like, where I didn't label it as resistance, but that's what was happening. It was this tug of war in my body, between my head and my heart, right, and I felt what needed to be with ourselves and give care and compassion to ourselves. We can't receive the message that is coming to us. So the practice you know that you can start to do is, one, ask yourself questions and two is start to notice how resistance shows up in the body. You know, if you think of resistance on more so of that, like fight, fight, freeze or fawn response, resistance even might look like for you, of like saying yes when you really want to say no, like it's that people pleasing, that is resistance. To say no, like it's that people pleasing, that is resistance.

Erin Gray:

It could look like getting into an argument with someone your spouse or maybe your child instead of sitting back and recognizing oh, this is what I'm feeling right now, and then this is you know why I'm acting like this, or what's bubbling up within me, right? So you really have to slow down and start to to feel the sensations in your body. Maybe it's a tightness in your chest If you're, you know, said you're going to look at your money and you haven't. Maybe it's that like gut right, like, oh my gosh, like that tightness in your in your gut. I don't know what it's going to and it's going to present in all different ways in your body. But the only way that you will start to get familiar with this is if you start to practice this. This is a practice, like that's the way that you get good at something is practicing it.

Erin Gray:

So if you are noticing that you want to numb out and you want to just scroll social media, that's resistance and all of these examples they're not a problem. That's resistance and all of these examples. They're not a problem. It's just to notice what you know, like I used to use self-development as resistance, right, because it's easy to just read more books, it's easy to listen to someone else. It's easy to listen to me on a podcast or someone else on a podcast. What is a little bit more unfamiliar is to sit down and journal, or to sit down and recognize the patterns that you have. So resistance shows up in all different ways for all different people. There's not good or bad. Right, Just recognizing what is the way that resistance shows up for you and when you can start to notice it from a place of curiosity, instead of judgment and shaming yourself.

Erin Gray:

Right, there's this. I don't think it's a poem, but it's. I think a Buddhist monk said right, like it's like. The first arrow is just the thing that occurs. The second arrow is us putting is the struggle that we have because we're labeling it and we're adding so much to it with our thoughts and our feelings. Right, so, with us, with the resistance, we can just notice the resistance. The second arrow is when we add the shame and the guilt on top of it or we like, make this story up. We don't have to make this story up about how we're being lazy. We can just notice that we're not doing the thing.

Erin Gray:

Okay, great, Perfect, celebrate it and then decide okay, what do I want to do with this information? You know, you can lovingly tell yourself, of course, I feel this way, you know. Thank you, body, for protecting me. Now, what do I want to do? You know, from an empowered place, what do I want to do to move me one step forward. I always ask this question what would I love? Like it gets my brain to focus on what do I want instead of what is happening right now in this 3D observed world, and this is how resistance can become a guide. You know, that's how you begin to move through avoidance or impatience or fear or overwhelm or whatever it is that you're experiencing.

Erin Gray:

The solution is not to bulldoze yourself and force yourself to just move through it, which so many of us you know if you probably grew up around the era I did, so many of us kind of that was our, that's what our parents did, right? Like stop crying, put your big girl or put your big boy panties on and just do the thing. Like, what do you have to cry about? Or, you know, ain't nobody got time for that or whatever. The messages that were relayed to us were right, but we can honor ourselves, we can feel what needs to be felt in the moment. We can be our biggest advocate, and actually that is what I help clients do.

Erin Gray:

Right, we are reparenting ourselves and sometimes that means that we have and feel a lot of anger for how we were raised, and that's okay, right, but we don't have to stay there, like we can give ourselves all the love, all the compassion that we ever are seeking outside of ourselves. And actually that's, I mean, what you got to do right, cause you will never be able to to receive it fully until you have done that for yourself. So if you've been pushing yourself, rushing to get to the next place in your life and I'm air quoting place I want to encourage you just to slow down, have compassion for yourself and love on those tender parts of you. You know, if this resonates with you, if you've been feeling resistance in, with your money, certain areas of your life, you know and you want to learn how to meet yourself with compassion and understanding and curiosity, instead of forcing, I'm here for you. You can click the link in the show notes and just see if we are a good fit for each other.

Erin Gray:

I want to say big stuff here. Right, like this is. This is life changing stuff. This is skill sets that you get to take and share with your children, with people that you interact with. Definitely you know you get to take and share with your children, with people that you interact with. Definitely you know you get to change your life with this stuff and it's important that you understand and you know that you are worthy of taking time to do some of this. It's not something, also that we have to sit around all day and do, but when those feelings come up, when that resistance comes up, allow it, get curious, go inward and tend to yourself. I'm rooting for you, I love you and I will see you in the next episode.