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

146 | When Having Fun Feels Unsafe: Releasing the Scarcity Patterns in Your Nervous System

• Erin Gray | Wealth Coach, Former CFP and CFO

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Have you ever been celebrating, enjoying a beautiful moment or spending money only to have your brain suddenly interrupt with scarcity thoughts like, “You shouldn’t be spending this money,” or “You're having too much fun"?

That quick shift from joy to panic isn’t random, I believe it’s your nervous system revealing its limits around how much abundance it feels safe to hold.

In this episode, I share the hidden connection between your window of tolerance, your nervous system, and why scarcity thoughts often show up in moments of joy. You’ll learn how childhood conditioning may have wired your body to associate safety with restriction instead of expansion, and what you can do to change that.

Together we’ll explore:

  • Why your nervous system may equate safety with saving, hoarding, or limiting pleasure
  • How stored emotions in the body can trigger recurring scarcity thought loops
  • The role of your Default Mode Network vs. Task Positive Network 
  • Somatic practices like emotion code, tapping, breathwork, more play, and grounding to expand your capacity for joy
  • Writing exercises to uncover limiting beliefs about money, safety, and fun



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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

Have you ever been having so much fun? Maybe you bought yourself something special that you already planned for ahead of time, maybe you treated your family to an experience, and then what feels like out of nowhere, boom right, you have these scarcity thoughts that show up, like you shouldn't have spent that. Or you're having too much fun, or you're spending too much money just something around scarcity, and it feels like that you went from such joy and expansion and abundance and having fun to shut down and worried in seconds. And if this has happened to you, I want to say welcome here. It actually happened to me the other day, which is why I'm creating a podcast on it, and I want to share with you about why our brains actually do this, how I believe it connects us to our window of tolerance. Also, how I actually think that this reveals how our emotions are coming up, are actually stored in the body, and then they actually need to be released, and then how to start expanding your capacity to have so that you can enjoy your money, enjoy more time, more freedom, more play, more fun, without all of the fear and the shame and the shutdown. So if this is something that has been on your heart for a while, like if this is something that you have been going through and you feel like that. You are like in the mindset, wise, you understand it, you intellectually get it, but you haven't actually taken it into the body and you understand, you know and you have embodied it to change and make that transformation. I would love to support you. If you want support with this, all you have to do to schedule a call is just go click the link in the show notes and see a good time that fits for you, and then we can have a conversation and see if we're a good fit.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so let's talk about window of tolerance. I'm no therapist, I'm no psychotherapist, I'm no neuroscientist. I what else? I'm none of those things. I am just a woman who has experienced this for myself and has been willing to play with these modalities and to help clients along the way.

Erin Gray:

So when I say window of tolerance, I want you to think about a rubber band. My husband loves rubber bands. He loves playing with rubber bands. I think there's like something there, but that's a whole topic for another discussion. But so think about a rubber band that has never been used. You take it out of the bag. Now imagine all of your four fingers and put them towards your thumb right. So your hand is basically kind of it looks like a bird. Right Now, if I were to wrap that rubber band around your fingers and I were to tell you to expand your fingers, it may be a little difficult for you to expand your fingers and keep them, because a little difficult for you to expand your fingers and keep them because the rubber band is so tight. That is the way I want you to think about our window of tolerance in our nervous system. So the think about if I were to give you a rubber band that has been, you know, used multiple times and has been expanded, you're going to be able to expand your fingers and hold out that rubber band for a longer period of time and it's going to go farther and that's the way that I think about our nervous system. So think about your nervous systems comfort zone.

Erin Gray:

When I say window of tolerance, think about the range that you feel safe, that you feel grounded, that you feel secure, that you feel safe, that you feel grounded, that you feel secure, that you feel able to experience things that don't send you into some type of flight freeze or fawn. So when you are in your window of tolerance, or if it helps you to imagine just me drawing a circle and you're inside that circle, that's your window of tolerance. But the moment that you try to go outside your window of tolerance meaning maybe having more fun, spending more money, whatever it might be for you that your nervous system maybe hasn't built up and is used to that level of spending money or having that much fun or playing that much, or taking time off or for yourself, like that is outside your window of tolerance. And so for so many of us, what a lot of us grew up with we were modeled scarcity, thinking right, we weren't. Money and fun and joy for most of us weren't modeled as this safe, expansive, joyful, abundant activity. And so if you grew up hearing things like you can't have, that it's too expensive, you're having too much fun, like I know, my mom used to say, oh, you're having too much fun. Now, whether she was joking or not, I don't know, but I know that that is a thought that comes in and that sometimes is on repeat for me when I am having, in my opinion, having a lot of fun. And so these experiences that we have, I think that there's so many things that create limiting beliefs, but a lot of what we, you know, our limiting beliefs, come from our upbringing and so if you don't check them, if you don't bring them to the conscious, then they're going to continue to live in the body.

Erin Gray:

So when you go out and you spend money on something that's purely fun, just because you want to not because you have earned it, but you just enjoy it and you want it because you want it, sometimes your nervous system or most times right, unless you've trained it but you just enjoy it and you want it because you want it, sometimes your nervous system or most times right, unless you've trained it your nervous system is going to feel like this is unsafe. And I don't necessarily like using the word unsafe, let's just use the word familiar. It's not familiar for your nervous system to spend money on having fun. It may not be familiar for your nervous system to go and have fun and, you know, take time just for you and to tell your family hey, I'm going to go spend some time by myself or I'm going to go travel by myself, or whatever your next level is.

Erin Gray:

Think about where you are familiar in your life and what your nervous system, you know, is used to and what's unfamiliar. And what I really think that this comes back to is this is showing us, when we have these thought loops, this is showing us that there are emotions that are inside our body that need to be released Right. And so I think that doing some type of somatic practices and you can play with any and all of these Some of these really work well for me. Some of them I don't enjoy doing, and some of them used to work and don't anymore, or vice versa, and so I always encourage clients, and especially you guys that are listening, to play with what feels good. And and when I say what feels good, I don't necessarily mean like it might feel a little uncomfortable in the body right In the beginning, but when I say what feels good, I don't necessarily mean like it might feel a little uncomfortable in the body right In the beginning, but when I say feels good, of like, does it actually resonate with you, does it help you move you along your path and your journey? Yeah, so things like tapping, like emotional freedom, technique or breath work, or grounding, like going outside and walking in the grass or just paying attention to your breath I've talked about, like the 5-4-3-2-1 method, where you start to focus on five.

Erin Gray:

It's basically based on your senses, right. You focus on five things and then, I think, you listen for four things and so it just goes down the list and then taste I think is the last one is one, and so what are you tasting in your mouth? So it brings you back to the present, so that you can get out of that thought loop, because I think that the reason why these thought loops are continuing to come up is because we still have those emotions within us and so for so many of us, right, our nervous system has been wired to believe that safety actually equals restriction, like I know that was for me. Like safety for me meant saving money and hoarding money and restricting spending money. Safety meant scarcity, safety meant not having a lot of fun. So you have to really start to give yourself some time and space to allow for you to see, like, where have I associated safety with right?

Erin Gray:

Like one of the things that I did recently is I just wrote down a hundred things for security, the word security, just write down. If you want to in your journal, write down a hundred things for security, the word security. Just write down, if you want to in your journal, write down a hundred things that come to mind when you think about security. It could be your current experiences, it could be your past experiences, but just notice what all comes up. Write down for yourself a hundred things that comes to mind when you think about money. Write down a hundred things that comes to mind when you think about money. Write down a hundred things that comes to mind when you think about fun, and just notice, like after you've done this exercise, notice what actually comes up. Is it something that wasn't allowed? You had to earn the fun. Just notice. I think that would be a really good awareness tool for you.

Erin Gray:

And so I also want to talk about because when this happened to me, I was, I believe I was laying on the couch, I was kind of in my imagination envisioning some things that I wanted to have happen, and then I noticed this thought come up right. And so then I recognized it for what it was. I mean, I used to totally attach to it, but I kind of did some research and I kind of want to go over and explain these two different networks. One's called a default mode network, one's called a task positive network, and I want to dive into that. And then I kind of want to explain how they both work together and then also recognizing how we can use these to help us, along with the body work, see that the thoughts we are, not our thoughts.

Erin Gray:

So the default mode network when it's active is when your mind is at rest, right. So when I think about when I was on the couch the other day, I definitely was probably in that default mode network because I was at rest, my mind was allowing to be, you know, in that daydream state. It was wandering, I was envisioning things and I was reflecting on myself and you know what I've accomplished and what I want to have in my life. And so I was kind of more in this, like what you might even say, like this feminine flow or this just very relaxed state, right. And the function of this, what they call DMN or default mode network, is it's this self, you know, reflection, thinking, right, it's also future thinking and planning, which is what I was doing, and also sometimes it can be like around rumination or replaying past events. You know, when I was in this kind of wandering state and then I had that thought come in. You know I'm having too much fun. That was kind of like where I was kind of more in the default mode network than I was in the task positive network.

Erin Gray:

And so when the task positive network is active, that's when you're more focused on a task, solving you know a problem, or thinking about things that you want to solve, or paying close attention kind of to the external world, right, so it might be, you know, focused on think about, like I think about when, like you're doing your money or you're doing QuickBooks or something like that, right, like you're very, you can be very focused. Or maybe you're cooking, you're like following a recipe, like you're very focused on something outward of you versus internally. And they say that these two networks are supposed to work kind of like a seesaw, like one or the other. Right, but just like anything, I think sometimes we can get a little over in one area than we are in the other. And so typically when the default mode network is active, then your task positive network isn't right, vice versa. But what happens a lot of times is we might be over concentrated in one area and we aren't as focused, maybe, or it hasn't been as developed in another area. So if you find yourself in some of these scarcity loops, one of the things that I was reading about is that this might show that your default mode network is actually an overdrive.

Erin Gray:

And here's what I actually think, and while that might be true, I also think that that shows us. When we have those thought loops, I think that what that really shows us is that we've got some emotions that are stored in our body that we haven't released yet, because I know that we've heard that the mind controls the body. But what I've also read, and what I totally believe, is that you know, our gut biome, our heart, they both have neurons and those neurons send signals back to our brain. So if your gut is feeling stress, it will send a signal via the vagus nerve back to the brain, and then your brain will think of a thought you know that is stressful and then send it back to your body. So it's constantly this loop, right, and so what I think actually is and I'm no scientist, but this is why I always say, like, play with this yourself but when I think that we have those recurring thought loops, what I actually think is going on is we've got some stored emotions in the body and I know I've talked about the emotion code.

Erin Gray:

I highly recommend you buy the book. I highly recommend you read it and you see if it works for you. But I have used it to release so many emotions that I don't want to say felt effortless, because I actually had to do the after work of it, but, like in the moment of of just releasing and feeling lighter and freer, it has helped me with some of that. So I think, like with anything, you have to play with somatic practices to release and process emotions that feel good for you and that are helpful for you. I mentioned the emotion code. I think grounding, you know, going out and walking in the grass, breath work, different types of breath work, like I don't like to do breath work that's super fast, that's not helpful to me, that isn't relaxing to me in my body, it doesn't feel good. To some people it might. So you're going to have to play with these different somatic practices and do what feels good for you.

Erin Gray:

I talked about the EFT, tapping and the. So think at first what you have to realize, because I did not do this, I did not recognize this. You are not the emotion and in the beginning, because the emotions had been there for however many years, and because they felt so strong in the body they felt true to me. This is probably the only time that I'll say you need to separate, because I truly believe we're all one, we're all connected. But, like, this is one of those times that you do actually need to separate and see yourself as like, oh, these emotions that I'm experiencing, these feelings, these thoughts that I'm having, they're actually not me, and then just start to watch how your body is reacting, like my body would. It's heart rate would speed up, I would get sweaty underneath my underarms. I could feel these like physical sensations in my body happen when these thoughts would occur Right.

Erin Gray:

So just, first and foremost, just notice that you're having an experience right, like I always like to tell my clients, like I'm just a human. I always put my heart on my chest and tell my clients, like, put your heart on your chest, give yourself so much love. Like you're just a human right now experiencing this. It's not who you are. So notice that you are having this experience and then what I think we actually have to do is really do that deeper work of releasing the emotion. And once we start to release those emotions, then we get to focus on what we do have, what we do want, what we would love to have an experience and then really start to get your mind focused on that.

Erin Gray:

But I always tell clients in the beginning, you know, if we, if we want to try to start thinking of what we would love, but we really haven't, like, cleaned out the pantry, so to speak, of the emotions, of what we kind of have been, you know, ruminating underneath the surface, and I'm not an advocate to like, okay, you have to clean out everything, right, like it's. We are a human having an experience. We're going to continue to have these emotions that we're going to continue to clean out. But I do think that there is some, some value in taking some time first to really kind of these emotions that have been there for quite some time and releasing those and then focusing on, okay, what do I want, what would I love. So try that.

Erin Gray:

You know, notice if the next time that you are having an experience like you're spending too much money or you're having too much fun or you need to get home, you know sooner, or you know your kids are waiting on you, or sometimes my brain would be like you're not a good mom Cause you're out and not with your kid. Whatever that the brain says, right, that offers it up. I want you to pause in that moment and I want you to take a breath and I want you to notice where you are, that you're safe, that you're here, right, and then when you get to a place where you can do some of the stuff to release the emotion, so then focus on what you have. Just notice what those thought loops are, notice what those limiting beliefs are that keep coming up, those are an invitation for you to go deeper so that you can release them, so that you can then choose something that's more empowering.

Erin Gray:

So if you are listening to this and you're like, yes, yes, yes, this is me, I got you, you know, if you want to schedule a time to see if we are a good fit to, so that I can support you, I would love to. To offer that to you. All you have to do is just click the link in the show notes. Just remember, like I always say, like each of us are so precious and we are a gift from God, in whatever way you want to interpret that, like I'm not a religious person, but highly spiritual, like we are one. We are all one. We are all connected to God, like I want us all to to experience our divinity that is within us, and so notice that when those thoughts come up, they are not you. They are someone else that has infused their beliefs in you, and it's time to release them. So, until next episode, I'll see you.