13. Part 3: How Inherited Money Stories Shape Your Nervous System

If money triggers tightness in your chest, a constant urge to hustle, guilt when you spend, or a weird fog when you try to budget, that’s not a willpower issue, it’s a nervous system pattern. 

I’m getting honest about the inherited money stories many of us carry, especially women who grew up around instability, scarcity, or stress. We learned that money is dangerous, rest is risky, and safety only comes from pushing harder, even when our lives look “successful” on paper.

I talk through how this survival wiring shows up as self-sabotage: impulsive spending for instant relief, endless Amazon and Instagram purchases, workaholism, or the opposite pattern of aggressively saving and still never feeling secure. 

Then, I zoom out to the real work of sustainable wealth building: combining practical money strategy with identity work and somatic healing. 

Yes, “spend less than you make” matters, but if your body doesn’t believe receiving is safe, no spreadsheet will change your relationship with money for long.

To make it real, I guide a simple, powerful somatic exercise you can repeat daily: identify one limiting money belief, find where it lives in your body, breathe safety into the sensation, and reframe the belief into an affirmation that actually lands in your system. 

If you want to go deeper, I invite you to my live 90-minute experience, Rewiring Wealth, where we connect practical personal finance, nervous system regulation, and a new way of holding abundance with grace.

Join us for Rewiring Wealth coming up LIVE! Doors close July 26, 2026.

Connect with Sara on Instagram here.

Transcript

Welcome To Your Money Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Your Money Matters series on the podcast. I have been loving these solo episodes. This is the third one. Tune into the previous two if you haven't yet. Um, I'm sitting on my back deck again, so you might hear the birds, you might hear my dog, and I'm really excited to record this episode before my phone dies, and I head in for the night to get ready for bed. So today we're talking about something that often sits in the shadows of so many women's lives when it comes to your finances. And it's the stories that we've inherited about money. Not just the numbers in our bank accounts, but the beliefs, the fears, the nervous system patterns that patterns that were handed down to us long before we ever received a dollar. And a lot of the time people think of wealth as purely strategic, a matter of budgeting and investing and working hard, and I used to be that way, and I'm I have been in a journey and practice of transitioning out of that. And while those things do matter, they're only half the equation, or maybe even less than half the equation. The other half is internal, so working with the body and the body. Somatic, soma, body. And it's about what your body, not your mind, what your body believes about safety, worthiness, and abundance. I've always known that I've wanted to create a different life for myself and future for my children, one filled with love, presence, peace, joy, fun, childhood, innocence, and curiosity. And I had to do more than just pay off my debt, learn to save money, learn investing. I've had to really work on rewriting the story. And over the years, in the personal development space, coaching space, healing, so much of it is around rewriting the story, rewriting your beliefs, working with your mindset. And while, yes, I believe that's true, I believe it starts in the body. And that's why I'm so excited to invite you to an upcoming live experience called Rewiring Wealth. It's going to be a 90-minute session where we dive deep and you get to experience it for yourself. But first, I want to share why this work

Inherited Stories About Money

SPEAKER_01 3:48

is so important. It's urgent to do the work now, and it's so powerful. So going back to my beginning at this point, right, you quote unquote should have a shoulds. I hope you would have listened to the previous two episodes in this series. But if you didn't, it's important to know I didn't inherit wealth. I don't come from wealthy background, lineage. What I inherited was instability. And it's funny I say that and like not roll my eyes, but like um, my eyes like popped, like they popped out of their sockets. Like, wow, I inherited instability. That is it's a big statement.

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My birth parents struggled with their mental health, which led to severe addiction, and my mom who raised me did her best.

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Money was was a source of stress, and I learned that it was scarce and it was dangerous, and that if I wanted safety, I had to create it myself. And feeling so unsafe in my body the majority of my life for twenty five years at least.

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It created my journey and the wiring of my nervous system.

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Because I didn't feel safe, I learned to hustle, to work hard, to do well in school. That my productivity determined my worth. And you may have heard my dog Dottie whining in the bathroom. Oh my gosh, in the bathroom, in the background. And I think this is so important when we have these little signals in our reality of this is important. Pay attention, these little sounds and reminders. And my nervous system learned to hoard. I've saved over a hundred thousand dollars multiple times, um, which has been an excessive emergency fund, and that's okay. That's okay. I acknowledge that. My body was always working to keep me safe. I had learned that rest was a risk. If I stopped moving, stopped going, stopped hustling and working towards my achievements, that I might fall behind. And all survival, my body adapted to this state of survival, keeping me safe. Was doing exactly what it needed to do in the unpredictable world.

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And I keep using the word important.

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Here's the thing the same wiring in my nervous system that kept me safe as a child.

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It literally kept me safe. Oh it has kept me small as an adult. And I'm starting to feel emotional.

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Because when we carry inherited stories in our bodies, it doesn't have to be spoken, it can be felt. Children feel and sense so much. We often find ourselves unconsciously self-sabotaging. You might earn a great income, but spend it impulsively out of anxiety. I've worked with so many women who are addicted to instant gratification and buying things off Instagram ads constantly, and ordering from Amazon as soon as she feels emotional discomfort in her body, or you might be someone who aggressively saves like I did and feel guilty when you enjoy spending your money. You might be a workaholic and in hustle and grind mode all the time because you never feel that you have enough or are enough. They're responses from your body, from your nervous system, and until we address them at the level of the body, know about amount of budgeting, will change your relationship

Survival Patterns And Self-Sabotage

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with wealth. So, how do you break the cycle? How do you move from surviving to thriving? It's about integrating practical money strategy and the most important lesson, practice, advice out there when it comes to practical money strategy is to spend less than you make. But it's about integrating that with identity work and somatic healing. I had a friend recently tell me she's shopping for a new car, and I respect and admire this friend so much. She has Taurian energy. She represents like beauty and luxury, and the way that she dresses, and her jewelry and accessories, and the way she carries herself, and she just embodies this sense of beauty.

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And her cars have not been a representation of that.

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And when she told me she was shopping for a new car and she starts naming, right?

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Audi and Volvo and Toyota.

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I think there was another one, but I can't remember it off the top of my head right now. And I was like, ooh, ooh, I can see you in a gorgeous, luxurious car. And her response was, uh, I know, but I can't see myself in it. I don't feel she didn't say she doesn't feel worthy. Those are not the words that came out of her mouth.

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But she said, She feels like who is she to drive a car that nice?

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I was like, girl, this is identity work. So Madic Healing, like you embody beauty, you are luxurious in the way that you dress and accessorize and carry yourself. You are worthy, and you are the type of woman who gets to drive a luxurious car and have your dream car. And I know all of this because I have personally experienced and guided clients through the fact that you cannot think your way out of trauma, out of conditioning, the wiring of your nervous system.

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Can't just take deep breaths to pay off debt.

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You need to integrate all of it, the practical strategy, the identity work, the somatically like in my own journey of having paid over, paid off my debt of over a hundred thousand dollars, being debt-free, buying my first home at twenty-four, saving. None of it felt sustainable until I began healing the underlying wounds. Until I began embodying that receiving money is safe. That having money doesn't make me greedy or a bad person, it just amplifies who I am. Being wealthy allows me to serve others more effectively and donate resources in alignment with my values and where resources are needed. This is the heart of rewiring wealth, it's not just about making more money, which when I was a personal finance coach back in 2019, 2020, that's what I focused on. Make more money. Make your money matter for you, right? Which your money matters. That's the title of the series. Your money does matter, but it's not just about making more, it's about becoming the kind of woman who can hold money with grace. It's about recognizing that the 99% of us in the world combined have more power than the 1%. We don't need to wait for permission to prosper. We already have the innate wisdom within our nervous systems to allow wealth in all forms. Last night I watched the

Money As Liberation Not Oppression

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movie Avatar for the first time. Oh my gosh. I'm a sci-fi lover. I have not seen movies like Star Wars or Star Trek. Um, I have watched Lord of the Rings. I loved Harry Potter growing up. And Avatar blew me away. I cannot believe that it has taken, what has it been, 17 years since it's come out? A little over 16 years, for me to see this movie. Oh my gosh. But the reason I bring it up is the navi are connected to their world. They are in tune with their bodies and the abundant resources around them.

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And as humans, we have lost connection with our bodies and with Mother Earth. And when we reestablish that connection, tap in to our essence, to our innate wisdom. We open the faucet of abundance, of receptivity, of wealth. When we access that wisdom, we stop seeing money as a tool of oppression that we have been living under, and we start seeing it as a tool of liberation.

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Like I said in the last episode, when money flows through good people, people who are grounded, who are healed, who are conscious, it changes everything. It allows us to build communities, support the causes we care about, create a future for our children that's full of play and curiosity and joy and fun, not stress and burden. Before we wrap up, I want to offer you one practical exercise

A Guided Somatic Money Practice

SPEAKER_01 20:53

that you can try right now. It's simple and powerful. You are driving, please pause or stop the audio and come back to it. When you are not driving, we can even have a minute to sit comfortably and close your eyes. If you have that moment, do it now. Let's take three deep breaths together, in through your nose, out through your mouth, another deep inhale in through your nose. Out through your mouth. And one last one as you excuse my dogs from barking. A deep inhale in through your nose. And out through your mouth with your eyes close. Leaving the to-do list, the thoughts about your schedule.

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Put them down for a moment.

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Allow your mind to go blank, noticing any thoughts pass by like clouds, tuning in your natural breath. The rise and the fall of your chest.

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Bring to mind one belief about money that's limiting you. That's keeping you small. You might have several pop up.

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Just want you to focus on one. Maybe it's money doesn't grow on trees. Or money is hard to receive. Or rich people are selfish. Or I don't deserve to be wealthy. Bringing this belief to mind right now.

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Focusing on it. And once you have it, tune into your body.

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Scan your body from head to toe, bringing awareness to each area. And notice where you feel this belief in your body.

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Is it constriction in your throat? Tightness in your chest?

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Not in your stomach?

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Is it somewhere else? Does it have a color? A texture? A sensation. Just noticing it without judgment. Place your hand on that area. Continue to just notice it.

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And imagine that your breath, every inhale, is flowing directly to that sensation. And with each exhale, imagine that the tension, the sensation, is releasing. Each inhale, your breath, oxygen is going directly to that sensation, and each exhale, the sensation is being released.

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It's making its way up and out of your body. Now with each inhale, imagine breathing in safety or neutrality. An abundance.

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Or money flows to me easily and effortlessly. Reframe your limiting belief into a new affirmation that you can say either silently in your mind's eye or out loud and feel the power and truth of this new statement in your body.

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Repeat this statement one more time. Lifting your head, dropping your shoulders. Feeling the truth in your body. Take one final deep breath.

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Wiggle your fingers, wiggle your toes. Maybe you want to stretch or yawn. When you're ready, you can gently blink your eyes open. Noticing the shift in how you're feeling. This very simple practice helps rewire your nervous system to associate wealth and money with safety rather than fear and shame. Can come back to this daily, can fast forward to this part in the episode. And you'll begin to notice subtle shifts in your financial life. I have had personal finance clients see pretty big shifts fairly quickly. It's amazing how our internal reality reflects to our external reality. If you've enjoyed this practice, I want to invite you to join me for Rewiring

Rewiring Wealth Invite And Closing

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Wealth. My new live 90-minute experience designed for women who are ready to create new generational patterns of prosperity. We're going to dive deeper into the intersection of practical money strategy, identity, and somatic healing. We'll explore how to access the wisdom within your body and your nervous system to allow wealth in all forms. We'll connect with a community of women who are choosing healing over hustling and opening our hearts and our hands. This is your chance to release the stress and unnecessary burdens of the past, to embody the curiosity and joy of money, of resources, of making the most of this one life that we have. You can find the link to register in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there. Remember that you are not defined by your lineage, by your ancestors' struggles. And honestly, what they had been through to survive, and for you to be here today is a miracle. You are the author of your story, the artist of your life, and you have the power to create a life of peace, prosperity, and purpose. Thank you for listening, for joining me on the series. And until next time, I want you to know you are worthy of everything you desire.