Abundance & Financial Blockages, How to Rewire Your Money Mindset and Nervous System Patterns
A Letter To You, From Someone Who Has Walked This Too,
If you’ve been in this community for a while, you know I don’t believe in surface-level conversations. I’m going to speak to you the same way I would if we were sitting across from each other, no filters, no fluff, just truth. When it comes to money, abundance, and financial blockages, this isn’t just about numbers. This is about how you live your life. For a long time, I didn’t realize how much my relationship with money was quietly shaping everything.
I started working at 14. At the time, it looked like responsibility, independence, and drive. But underneath that, there was a nervous system that didn’t fully feel safe unless I was doing, earning, and producing. Money wasn’t neutral for me. It meant stability, it meant I was okay, it meant I had control. And that pattern followed me through teaching, through becoming a therapist, and through opening multiple businesses with little to no money at the start. From the outside, people might say that’s brave, but if I’m honest with you, a lot of it was also wired from survival. When your body learns early on that you have to create your own safety, you don’t just turn that off when life changes. You carry it.
You can be successful and still feel financially unsafe. You can be making money and still feel like it’s not enough. You can be doing everything right and still feel like something isn’t clicking. I see this every single day. In my therapy office, I sit with high-performing professionals, business owners, leaders, people who others look at and think they have it all together, and yet they are exhausted from overworking, but can’t slow down. They’re making money but are afraid to look at their accounts. They’re undercharging even though they know their value. They’re stuck in jobs they’ve outgrown because the unknown feels too risky. They avoid opportunities because they don’t feel ready enough. They receive something good and immediately wait for something bad to happen. Different stories, same root. Their nervous system does not feel safe with abundance.
Financial blockages don’t just look like not making money. They show up in subtle, everyday ways that slowly shape your entire life. In your career, it can look like staying somewhere that drains you because it feels stable, not asking for a raise, not starting a business, or not pivoting when you know you’ve outgrown where you are. In your relationships, it can look like overgiving to feel secure, staying longer than you should because financial independence feels overwhelming, shrinking yourself so you don’t outgrow someone, or finding yourself in dynamics where money becomes a power struggle. In your daily habits, it can look like avoiding your bank account, impulse spending followed by guilt, saving but never feeling like it’s enough, or swinging between restriction and overindulgence. In your identity, it can look like tying your worth to your productivity, feeling like you always have to do more, struggling to rest, or finding it harder to receive than to give. In your growth, it can look like getting close to the next level and then pulling back, self-sabotaging, questioning yourself, or convincing yourself that now isn’t the right time. This isn’t a coincidence. This is conditioning.
What I’ve come to understand, both through my own life and sitting with so many clients, is that these patterns are not limited to one type of person. They show up across every demographic, every background, every level of income, and every life experience. I’ve worked with clients who grew up in households where money was scarce, where stress around bills was constant, and those individuals often carry anxiety, hyper-independence, or a constant need to earn in order to feel safe. I’ve also worked with clients who grew up with financial stability or wealth, and still carry deep fear around losing it, pressure to maintain it, or a sense that their worth is tied to their success.
Across cultures, this can look like feeling responsible for supporting extended family, creating patterns of overgiving or financial burnout. In other environments, it can look like shrinking yourself or playing small because standing out or having more feels unsafe. In religious or spiritual contexts, I’ve seen how beliefs around money being tied to greed, sacrifice, or worthiness can create resistance to receiving. Even when someone no longer consciously agrees with those beliefs, the body can still hold onto them.
Then there are generational patterns. Families who experienced instability, loss, or financial hardship often pass down survival-based relationships with money without realizing it. The nervous system doesn’t forget. So even if your current reality is stable, your body can still respond as if it’s not. From a therapist’s perspective, this makes sense. The brain and nervous system are wired to protect, not to expand. So if money was ever associated with stress, conflict, pressure, or instability, your system will store that. And it will try to keep you in what feels familiar, even if that pattern is limiting your growth.
Most of this isn’t happening in your conscious mind. It lives in the quiet beliefs you don’t even question anymore. Thoughts like money doesn’t stay, if I have more I’ll lose something, I have to work hard for everything, it’s not safe to slow down, I’m not good with money, or I shouldn’t have more than others. These aren’t just thoughts; they are programs. And your body will always choose what feels familiar over what is actually aligned. So even if you say you want abundance, if your system is wired for survival, it will keep recreating what it knows.
There’s also a deeper layer to this. We don’t just inherit eye color or personality traits; we inherit patterns. Stress around money, scarcity thinking, instability, fear of loss, overworking, and underearning can all be passed down. So many of us are carrying financial patterns that didn’t start with us, and without realizing it, we repeat them. Not because we want to, but because they live in the body. At some point, you become the one who either continues the pattern or the one who decides to change it.
I want to be clear, this isn’t something I fixed once and never faced again. Even after leaving teaching, even after building businesses, even after stepping fully into my purpose, I’ve still had moments where fear came up, where old thoughts tried to come back in, where my body wanted to go into control, overwork, or contraction. Growth will always stretch the edges of what feels safe, but the difference now is awareness and having the tools to regulate, release, and rewire those patterns instead of letting them run the show.
When you shift your relationship with abundance, it doesn’t just impact your bank account. It changes how you make decisions, how you show up in relationships, how you trust yourself, how you receive, how you lead, and how you rest. It changes the way you live. This is why I always say you don’t have a money problem, you have a nervous system that hasn’t been taught that it’s safe to hold more.
One thing I want you to really sit with, and not just read past, is this… where is this pattern costing you your life right now? Not in a dramatic way, but in the quiet, everyday decisions that are shaping your future. The opportunities you’ve talked yourself out of. The risks you didn’t take. The conversations you avoided. The version of you that you keep saying “one day” to. Because financial and abundance blockages don’t just impact your bank account, they impact your timeline. They delay the life you’re meant to step into. And most people don’t realize that it’s not lack of ability that’s holding them back, it’s the internal resistance that feels like “this just isn’t the right time.”
I also want you to notice where you’ve normalized this. Where you’ve told yourself this is just how life is, this is just how money works, this is just who I am. Because the moment something becomes your normal, you stop questioning it. You stop challenging it. You build your life around it. And what I see so often is people adapting to their limitations instead of expanding beyond them. You make your world smaller to feel safer, but in doing that, you slowly disconnect from what you actually desire. And over time, that creates a quiet frustration, a feeling of knowing there’s more for you, but not fully knowing how to access it.
This is why spaces like this matter so much. Because it’s very hard to break patterns in the same environment that created them, with the same thoughts that have been running for years. At some point, you have to step into something different. You have to put yourself in a room, or an experience, or a container that interrupts the pattern long enough for your body to feel something new. That’s what this work does. It gives your nervous system a new reference point. It shows you that it is safe to release, safe to receive, and safe to step into more. And sometimes, that one experience is the thing that finally shifts what you haven’t been able to change on your own.
I’ve watched this shift happen in ways that create a true domino effect in someone’s life. A client who was constantly undercharging finally felt safe enough to raise her prices, and within weeks, not only did her income increase, but she started attracting more aligned clients who respected her time, which gave her the space to rest, which improved her relationships because she wasn’t operating from burnout anymore.
Another client who avoided looking at his finances began facing them without anxiety, and that simple act led to clearer decisions, less impulsive spending, more savings, and ultimately the confidence to leave a job that was draining him and step into something more aligned. I’ve seen someone who always overgave financially start setting boundaries, and that didn’t just change their bank account; it changed their entire relationship dynamic. They felt more respected, more grounded, and more in control of their life. And I’ve seen clients who finally allowed themselves to receive, whether that was support, opportunities, or money, and that one shift opened doors they had been subconsciously closing for years. It’s never just about the money, it’s about what changes when your nervous system finally feels safe enough to hold more, because once that shifts, everything else starts to follow.
“Paid to exist” doesn’t mean you sit back and money magically appears while you do nothing. It means your nervous system no longer believes that your worth is tied to constant output, overworking, or proving yourself. It’s the shift from “I have to earn my value” to “my value already exists, and my work is an extension of that, not the source of it.” How you move toward that is not by doing more, it’s by becoming safe enough to receive without overcompensating. It’s learning how to sit in stillness without panic, how to trust your decisions without needing constant validation, and how to allow money, opportunities, and support to come in without immediately bracing for loss. It’s doing the deeper work of shifting the belief that you have to prove your worth to earn your life. Because when your body finally understands that you are already enough, your actions change, your boundaries change, and what you allow into your life changes. And from there, abundance stops feeling like something you’re chasing, and starts becoming something that meets you where you are.
If you’ve been feeling stuck, stretched, overwhelmed, or like you’re repeating patterns you can’t quite explain, this is the work. “Healing Abundance and Financial Blockages” is happening this Sunday from 5:00 to 9:00 pm at Gallery DeFi. This is not about learning more strategies; it’s about going into the subconscious, into the body, into the nervous system, and shifting the patterns that have been holding you back. It’s about releasing what isn’t yours to carry anymore, rewiring what your body believes is safe, and creating space for something new to exist.
If you’ve been waiting for a moment to shift, this is one of those moments. Not because it will magically change everything overnight, but because it will start something different inside of you, and that’s where everything begins. This is also a bring-a-friend free experience, so bring someone in your life who you know resonates with this message too, someone who is ready to break these patterns alongside you. You don’t have to do this alone anymore.
With Love & Gratitude,
Dr. Rachel Sims & Mama Lisa
