182 | How Abandonment Patterns Show Up in Your Money Mindset and Business (Part 2)

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In this episode, we explore how childhood patterns around love, approval, unpredictability, and abandonment quietly shape your pricing, sales anxiety, client selection, and visibility as a business owner.

In this episode we discuss:

• How emotional safety mirrors financial safety
• Big T and little t trauma shaping money habits
• Pricing on value, not fear
• Filtering misaligned clients
• Hoarding cash vs. strategic investment
• Visibility, boundaries, and nervous system regulation
• Decisiveness rooted in intuition 

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Transcript

Framing Abandonment And Money

Erin Gray 0:00

Welcome back to Your Money, Your Rules podcast with me, your host, Erin Gray. So glad you're here. Thank you for joining me. Today's podcast is going to be a continuation from the previous episode, last um episode. If you want to go back, if you haven't listened to that, go back, listen to that one. I talk about abandonment patterns. And it was more so probably from just an understanding and also from a personal perspective. But today, what I'm going to talk about is how it actually shows up in your business, what it looks like. And then we're going to go through some of these scenarios so that you can recognize it and then obviously do the work to release so that you can show up in more clean energy, more empowered energy. So let's dive in. So abandonment style patterns, like I'm no therapist. I always tell you, like I go through my own experience, but I think they show up with money because your body and also your brain, because if you've done any type of research with trauma in the brain, but your brain and your body, they don't actually separate emotional safety or they don't understand emotional safety from financial safety. So if you've learned that safety can disappear at any moment, that you know it's going to like the way that your mind or your body treats money is going to be the same way that a child treats their caregiver, something that you depend on, something that you might fear losing, something that feels very unpredictable. And a lot of us, and I talked about this in the previous episode, a lot of us didn't necessarily have parents that unconditionally loved us, right? We had to earn love. We had to probably earn affection, earn approval, lots of earning energy. And, you know, this is no fault of our parents, right? They probably got that. I mean, somebody had to teach it to them, right? Which was probably their parents, and on and on and on it goes. But a lot of us didn't grow up in households that felt safe, that felt secure, that we were taught that, you know, that we are okay, that our feelings are okay and safe to have all of our emotions, and that also that our safety and our security comes within. And ultimately, like I truly believe like it is a connection to God, right? When you are so connected to God and you know that no matter what, He's got you, that is a very different feeling that you move from the world than if you feel like that you've all got to do it all on your own. So I want to talk about why it happens, and then I'm gonna give specific examples and like so then you can look and see like where is this showing up in your business. So a lot of times these patterns they come from if you grew up with financial instability, or even if you grew up with you did have money and then it was suddenly like there was some sudden loss. Maybe you were raised by parents or caregivers who were inconsistent or predictable with their care, with their love, with their support, with their words, with their energy. If you've had any type of past experience with like if you were in a job or any type of, you know, financial trauma. And financial trauma can be a whole gamut of things. And I don't know who coined the term like big T and little T trauma, but big T trauma is like some big event, right? Like I've talked about my event, and I don't like continuing to bring it up because it's just, you know, but you know, when I was 10, like that was a big emotional impact event for me. But then there's also like that little T trauma of like it's it's occurring on a daily basis or just a little bit at a time, over and over and over for several years of your life. There can be that kind of trauma too. So some of us might have, or a lot of us, have linked our self-worth to financial security or even some type of bank balance. Like I used to put my self-worth on what my net worth was, which actually didn't matter what my net worth was because my self-worth was in the shitter. So, you know, even as my net worth grew, I didn't feel good about myself. That's because here you go back to like it's got to be an inside job. So no matter how much my net worth grew, how much our investments and our assets grew, how much money we had in the bank and all the things, I didn't feel good about myself. I didn't have a good self-concept. When I say good self-concept, what I mean is like a an empowered, a loving, a compassionate self-concept of myself that no matter regardless of whatever happened outside of me, including bank balances and investments accounts and business and whatever else, I was still worthy and deserving of love and compassion and living an amazing life. So, how it shows up in your business, it could be, I'm gonna list several of these. You could show it could show up in all of these areas for you. It could show up in some of them, could be one of them. Just play with it, recognize where are you noticing yourself, where is that coming from, and then do the work to release some of this. So the first one is fear of raising your prices or charging what you're worth. One of the beautiful things that I have been around in my life is a lot of men, male energy, masculine energy, and also males. You know, financial planning was at the time a very male-dominated, as was construction. And one of the beautiful things that I absorbed just by being in that environment is charging what your experience and your expertise and the value that you provide. I think there is a difference between men and women when it comes to that. Like I remember employees, most of them obviously were men, they had no problems coming and asking for races, but I can't count if ever any of the women came and asked for races. And so that's just something to notice about ourselves. And I do want to say here too, that our childhood was not all bad, right? I think sometimes the the brain, the body wants to, and when I say bad, I'm just air quoting, right? Like what we what we remember, we remember those big emotional impacts. But there's a lot of things that our parents taught us that was actually helpful. So just keeping that in mind as well. So if you are fearing raising your prices or charging what the perceived value, and I don't want to say charge what you're worth because a lot of people say that. When I say charge what you're worth, I don't mean you because you are worthy, like you're priceless. There is no dollar amount for you. There is a perceived value of your experience, of your expertise. Like the reason why I can look at your tax return and I can point out certain things to you, and we can have a conversation with your CPA is because I got 20 years of looking at tax returns, right? I speed up that process for you. I educate you. And so there is a value to that, to understanding taxes, to helping you and empowering you and educating you, right? So when I say charging what you're worth, what I really mean is charging for the perceived value. And let's just be honest, it's all arbitrary, right? I mean, one of the things that I'm sitting with right now is like, okay, all of these things that I help clients with, it's like fractional CFO stuff and bookkeeping and like talking to the attorneys and talking to the CPA and talking to the bookkeeper and all of the emotional regulation stuff and the coaching and the mentorship and like therapy, like just all of these things that I do. And when I am trying to come up with a number right now, because I'm making some changes in my business, when I'm trying to come up with a number, it isn't coming from a place of I don't think I'm worthy of this, I don't think I'm deserving of this. It's like I've been really having to sit with and ask myself, okay, Aaron, the Aaron that runs this type of company that would hire an Aaron for her, like, what would I so gladly pay based on all of my knowledge, my experience, and my expertise? You know, I was asking my husband last night, I was like, ask me some questions. I'm like, because there is so much that I do for clients that I speed up time. I, you know, educate you on so many things. And so it's really, it's obviously made up, right? It is a number that, like, what I always start with like, what would I be so willing and glad to pay? Because it's not about the time, right? It's about the experience and the expertise. I remember it's been a couple of years, but I was helping another client with her and her husband. And she was just like, you just did it so quickly. And I'm like, yes, because I've looked at umpteen million tax returns. I have looked at so many books so many times, I can easily spot where the issues are. So take that for you of like your experience, your expertise, all of the wisdom and the knowledge that you have. Are you charging what you would gladly pay? And really, really ask yourself, you know, because if deep down you're worrying about, well, if I ask for too much, clients are gonna leave, or they may not hire me if I don't make myself, you know, affordable, or this price is too expensive. And I want to say here, you're always gonna be too high for someone, you're always gonna be too low for someone, and you're always gonna be just right for somebody. Okay. And that is all of their perceived, right? And you you may not want to, like I've priced myself out of certain clients. That's okay, right? Because what that shows me is they weren't ready to ascend and they weren't ready to take some of my recommendations. When I say seriously, what I mean is like actually take action on it, right? And when you elevate your pricing, you know, when you pay, you pay attention. So really, really ask yourself am I afraid to increase my prices or charge what my experience and my expertise and my wisdom and my years of experience and the value and the transformation that I'm going to help a client receive or a customer or whatever it might be, you know, am I afraid to do that because I might feel rejection? Right. Because that's really where it's coming from. The second thing is taking on clients you don't actually want. Right. People that have these patterns, we tend to this is where I talk about like moving away from energy. Like we don't want to air quotes lose any client, right? So we say yes to people we actually don't want to be customers. But like Correto's principle is like the 80-20 rule. It's like 80% of the consequences or effects, right, come from 20% of the causes. Like when I was in my family's construction business, it was like our top 20% like clients or customers generated 80% of our income, right? And so, like, even if you take Pareto's law, I don't remember what book I read this in, but like he even like went even further, like 8020 of the 8020 and 8020 of the 8020. Does that make sense? And so it's like he just went so micro and you're just like, wow, like you're probably top two, three, four clients are probably some of your best paying clients. And what could you do? And if you focus on those people and the income that they bring in, how would that impact your business, right? Versus thinking that you have to take on everyone, you know. So you take on underpaying clients. And it has been my experience when you have, when you are not pricing at where you are energetically, you're gonna have clients that maybe or act disrespectful. They're gonna feel like energy draining clients, they're going to question everything. And I have no problems with you questioning, but like nitpicking is the word that comes to mind, you know, or they're gonna want to discount for everything, right? They're on a different frequency than what you are. And that's okay. Like maybe, you know, someone that's newer in the business, maybe that's someone that needs to be, right? But if you've got years and years of experience in whatever, you know, realm you're in, then charging for that expertise. So I also want to say here that this also shows up with people that we work with in our business, like the attorneys, like the CPAs, the bookkeepers, any people that help you in your business, like I have said this so many times, we don't have to tolerate any type of condescending, talking down to, thinking that they don't have to explain. When I say gaslighting, I know that gets overused, but I had a client tell me the other day that her CPA just like she'll ask a question or she just bypasses her. She doesn't even answer the question. I'm like, not acceptable, right? Like, no, we're gonna have a conversation with her. So it's just like understanding, you know, why are you taking on clients or working with people you don't actually want to be working with? What are you tolerating? And we tolerate this because uh a client leaving, it feels like safety is also leaving. So instead of letting clients go that don't align with you anymore and that you are on a different frequency with, and then believing that another client that is on their way to you that actually does match your frequency, right? We hold on, we tolerate, we drain our energy and we fear that if we leave, no one else is coming versus a belief that could be much more empowering and that could serve you is you know what, clients are allowed to come and go. And every client that I am, you know, that is coming on or customer that I'm receiving is my like most ideal client. And not being willing, don't allow yourself to take someone on that you are not at a vibrational match to. And this is where you have to slow down. This is where you have to tap into your to intuition, because I will tell you how they are acting, either on a sales call or you know, an initial call or a proposal or an estimate. It's one thing to get clarifying questions, but when you're tuned in and you're tapped into energy, you can sense, right, if they are going to be one of those clients that may just not be worth the effort. And that's okay. You know, it's okay to say, listen, there might be a better person that might serve you better. It's okay. It's okay to say that. It's okay to let people go. It's okay to not bring someone on. Because here's what will happen. When you do bring them on, like I already said, the energy, the time involved, all of that is going to like your energy is so precious. You have to act and you have to move from that space. Okay, if you are working, the third one is if you are working to earn air quotes, you know, I've talked about so often, a lot of us had to earn respect, earn love, earn money, like from this very proving, forcing place. So if you grew up more so of like if survival was something that was a norm in your family, not creative, not thriving, you might have grown up, like I said, earning your peak. And and this came from a place of where our parents were trying to teach us value, trying to teach us money, but they kind of, I don't know, if conflated is the word I want to use, but like they mesh that with like you having you, you not being able to rest, you having to earn your place in the house. It's like, no, you get to live in the house because you're a child and you get to live in the house and you get to be fed and you get to be cared for and you get to be loved on. Now, generating money, understanding how money works because you want to instill value in your children and help them understand value exchange, it's very different than you have to earn your keep. So, because of this, maybe you have learned that you have to work nonstop. Like this is where a lot of workaholism can come from. Maybe you feel like that resting or you can't rest, or resting is lazy, or you have to earn your rest. You also might have to feel like you have to earn your play. You might be feeling like, okay, I have to keep going. I have to, it's almost just like you've got to keep riding the bike, or if you don't, everything's gonna fall apart. You also might just fear like slowing down. And so when you have been raised in this survival mentality of like go, go, go, go, go, hustle, hustle, hustle, keep going, we have to keep going. Then it looks like it could feel like, oh, I'm so ambitious. But what this is really showing you underneath is like the earning is what you have associated with stability and safety, which what we want to do is create or have like thriving creativity is our security, is our stability. Okay. Fourth one is hoarding money. I talked about this on the previous episode, or being afraid to invest. So this is gonna come from obviously from fear of like if I circulate, if I spend money, I won't get it back. Like I hear that all the time with women. You know, they're afraid to invest in themselves because they don't have the belief that everything that they invest in, it circulates back to them and it circulates back double and they make a return on their investment and they're good for it, right? Like that is the belief that you need to have in yourself. That is the self-trust that you need to have in yourself. If you have a belief like, what if my business fails? So we aren't putting trust and security within ourselves because we have been taught that security and safety is something that happens outside of us. But no, we are the ones that make our business thrive. We are the ones that create whatever we want in our life. It comes initially from our thinking, from our feeling. And then ultimately from that alignment, we take action from that place. So that might look like you avoiding to hire any help in your business. Maybe you aren't marketing the way that you actually want to be because you're afraid if I invest in my marketing, what if it doesn't pan out? Right. It's coming from this belief of it's not going to work. Maybe you are trying to keep every penny, like being a penny pincher, right? Because that feels like safety. Maybe you're holding on, you're not wanting to actually invest and put money back into your business, back into yourself, back into your mindset and your thinking and growing. Or it could also be where you're trying to pay a bill as quickly as it comes in because you're afraid that you won't have the money when it's time to be due, right? So if you've got a counts payable and they're on a net 30, maybe you pay them like the day or the next day that the bill comes in because you're like, I don't know what's going to happen 30 days from now. This is a very clear distinction. I want to be very clear here. This is very different than paying bills on time or early from an abundant and from a secure place, right? When you pay bills from an abundant and a secure place, it's like, oh, I love to pay my vendors or my people on time or early. It feels so good. I have so much money. Like it comes from a having place. But if you're trying to pay bills early because you're afraid you're not going to have money, you actually like this is what I've recommended with some clients. It's like, actually, we need to practice having money. We actually need to practice having and holding money for several days, weeks. Like we need to build up this um window of tolerance where we have bills and we look at our AP reports and there are there's money on there. And we also look at our bank balance and we have money in our account. Because if you're someone who's like, oh my goodness, I I don't know when it's gonna come, you're gonna try to get rid of it as quickly as you can. So just recognizing where am I? Am I holding on? Am I hoarding or am I trying to pay so quickly because I'm afraid I don't know when it will more will come on. So some clients, you're gonna have to check in with your body, you're gonna have to check in with who you are being. Some clients, they need actually need to, like this is me. I needed to circulate, I needed to spend money, right? I had accumulated and allocated plenty of money. I needed to circulate it, right? I needed to move that money. Some of us actually need to have it to hold it, like be in the practice of having money and just see it, right? Just be in that energy of someone that can. This is like what I call like you're increasing your capacity to have. So you might need to just practice having the money and you'll know who you are by how you feel in your body and what are you used to doing. Okay, number five is maybe you start to worry or you panic when sales, and I'm air quoting, slow down. Like someone asked me that the other day, and I was like, I would never use that word in my business. Slow is a thought, slow is a mindset. You know, there's the whole like law of nature, like nature isn't growing, growing, growing, growing, growing all the time all the time, right? There's ebbs and flows in nature that also happens in business. But when you look at, and I'm air quoting a slow month of what you're deeming as a slow month, if you're thinking, oh my gosh, the world is ending, I'm failing, I'm gonna lose everything, the business is going in the gutter, right? If you go to like doom and gloom, you have to think about the energy that you're in and what is actually, what is that gonna create, versus instead of you know seeing just it as a natural business cycle or thinking, oh, okay, well, I guess I was off next month. That's you know, it's that's what it's gonna be. My, you know, whatever I wanted to make, it's gonna be next month. You are instead choosing to think, and it is a choice and it is a practice. You are choosing to think, oh my gosh, the other shoe is dropping, the sky is falling, all of that, right? And then your body, you know, experiences or feels that as abandonment, as loss, as lack, as scarcity. And this is a practice. This is where you get to explore where am I? Like, what are my immediate thoughts? You want to know like, what are you thinking and feeling? It's like when Something doesn't go your way, what is your first thought? Shit's hitting the fan, it's not going to like, oh my goodness, you know, like panic and worry, then you probably have an underlying belief of things don't work out for me. But if your first thought is, huh, that's interesting. If you're one of curiosity, if you're like, hmm, interesting, okay, I just totally thought it was going to be this month, oh, well, then it'll be next month. And you don't even give any, and I'm not to say like, don't look at your numbers, but if you're if you're looking at them from this place of like, what's wrong? Why did this happen? Versus like, oh, that's interesting. Is there anything that we need to shift for next month? Very different energy. The sixth one is like fear of visibility. So if you know, if you were conditionally loved or you um had conditional, what I call conditional connection, right? A lot of us, I think this is something I would love to explore even further on podcasts of a lot of us had mothers that there was some conditional love, conditional connection. And so if we spoke up, if we really showed our family who we were and we spoke up for ourselves, we might have gotten squashed. And that taught us to stay small. It taught us to not talk back, to not stand up for ourselves. And so maybe because of that, subconsciously, we might be not showing up online, right? We might feel worried about being judged, or we might be so upset with negative, any type of negative comments, or when someone provides, as they say, constructive criticism, right? If someone's giving us, you know, feedback and we're we're taking it personally, we're taking it as attack because visibility being seen feels unsafe because here we go back to what if we it it associates like with rejection, right? Like when I used to speak up, I would get in trouble. Or when I spoke up with my mom, maybe she gave me the silent treatment for several days. When I spoke up with my mom, she ignored me, or she I had to walk on eggshells, right? So it's like coming back and really retrieving those parts of us that we had to abandon because we felt like it was unsafe to be who we truly are. And then the last one is you know, maybe we have difficulty making decisions. Like I know I've talked about on the podcast already, you know, I was like, okay, 2026, even bolder. I'm even saying even more of what I want to say. Like, I'm gonna be so clean in my energy. And then when I came back from Maui, I'm like, no, even deeper, you know, but like making decisions and sticking with them and being so clean and so clear in your energy. So if you were someone who stood up, this kind of goes back into the previous one. If you stood up for yourself, if you were like, no, I don't want to do this, and then you got reprimanded or you got ignored, or you were kind of forced to conform, then you might not be someone right now who's like, you know what? This is what I want, this is why I want it, and this is how it's, you know, we're gonna move forward. You might, you may not be as decisive with your decisions. This also comes back to your intuition if you were taught like I was to make a pros and cons list and to like, I mean, I didn't recognize it until recently of like a lot of times my parents look at everything like they almost are making contingency plans. And I'm like, why would you even go in with the energy of like it's not gonna work out? Because based on the law of assumption, what we assume is what's gonna be true, right? So we're actually proving that it won't work out because we have a belief that it won't work out. So then it actually won't work out versus no, it's fine, it's always gonna work out. I'm going, I'm having full faith, I'm moving forward, I'm doing the thing, I'm making and like making a strong decision, like moving from faith and making very decisive, clean. When I say clean energy, what I mean is not wibble wobbling, not like him and hain. It's like, no, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. And when you move from that place, the energy will be met, right? You're moving from that energy. So everything else has to meet you with that same energy. So go back, think about. I'm gonna list them as I um just to recap. The first one is, you know, fear of raising prices or charging what your perceived value is. It could be you taking on the second one, is taking on clients that you actually don't want. It could be overworking or under-earning or overworking to earn some type of stability, safety, things of that sort. Number four can be hoarding money or being afraid to invest in yourself and in your business. Number five is like feeling worry or panic or fear when sales don't look like how you thought that they would look. What meaning are you making that? Six can be just that fear of visibility, of being seen, of like I equate that one to also of like fear of success. Like we think we're afraid of failure. No, what I've really realized is we're afraid of success. Because I think for a lot of women, what that comes down to is we feel like that we're going to lose connection. Will we still be able to connect with our spouse, with our children? Like we have grown up in this either or mentality. So really being mindful of that. And then the last one, like I mentioned, was are we making very clear and decisive decisions? Okay. Woo, that felt like a lot today. Okay. If this is something that resonates with you, if you want support, if you want to see what it would look like to work together, how I can support you, I would love the opportunity to sit down to have a call with you, see what it is that you are wanting support in your business. Also, maybe it's also your personal life, anything to do with money, mindset, emotions, all of the things. You can book a call with me by just clicking the link in the show notes and scheduling a time that works for you. Okay. As always, I am rooting for each of you. I think we uh live in such an amazing time. And we, I think, as women, and I don't mean this from a feminist because I don't buy into that, but I really believe that we are such in an amazing time where we get to step into our power and we get to lead from such a loving, soft, supportive place. And when I say lead, I don't mean necessarily like out in front, right? I mean leading in our families, leading in our business, leading with our spouses. And we're doing this from a such a loving, supportive, powerful place, not a, you know, pump your chest up and show, show you, right? From a calm, connected, an intuitive place. So, okay, I will see you in the next episode.