More Money Didn’t Fix It
Because money wasn’t the problem.
Let me tell you about a woman I’ll call Willa.
Her story is a composite of many clients — drawn from the experiences of several women I’ve worked with through Get Right With Money. The details have been changed to protect privacy, but the emotional truth of her journey is something I see again and again: a woman who is earning more than she ever thought possible, and still feels like the bottom could fall out at any moment.
On paper, Willa was thriving. Her business had taken off, and she was finally being paid well for her brilliance. But underneath all of that success, she was terrified.
And the more money she made, the worse it seemed to get.
When the numbers go up, but so does the anxiety
Willa’s fear didn’t come from her current circumstances — at least not in a logical sense. She had savings. Her client roster was full. Her systems were working.
But every time she sat down to look at her finances, her body would tense. Her chest would tighten. Her mind would spin through worst-case scenarios. It didn’t matter what the numbers were — her nervous system stayed stuck on high alert.
She admitted to me early on, “I thought once I was making six figures, the anxiety would go away. But now I feel like there’s more at stake, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
It’s such a common experience — and one that’s rarely talked about.
Willa had grown up with conflicting messages about money: that it was necessary, but also dangerous. That money should be saved, but also spent quickly. That success was admirable — but only up to a point. So even as her external reality changed, those old stories still lived in her body.
No amount of money could override the fear, because the fear wasn’t about money. It was about what she had internalized in a painful childhood.
The myth: more money will make it better
Willa thought she should be beyond this by now. She told herself she should just be grateful, because other people had it worse and she had no right to feel anxious.
So she tried to will gratitude and calm.
She doubled down on structure. She downloaded more tools, hired a bookkeeper, and signed up for a money mindset course — all in the hopes that this would finally fix it. But nothing shifted.
Because the issue wasn’t a lack of knowledge or a mindset flaw: it was a nervous system that had learned, long ago, that money wasn’t safe. And no spreadsheet in the world can change that.
The work: healing her money wounding
Willa came into Get Right With Money cautiously.
She didn’t need someone to tell her how to budget. What she needed — though she couldn’t quite name it at first — was a way to feel safe enough to be in relationship with money at all.
We began where we always do: with presence. With noticing. With small, consistent ways to come back to her body and breath.
Instead of pushing herself to “stay on top” of her finances, Willa began to track how her body responded to money. Where the tightness showed up, when she wanted to shut down, what happened in her body when she thought about checking her accounts or raising her rates.
At some point, something clicked — not intellectually, but in her body. She realized she could keep trying to outrun the fear with control, or she could stop and meet it.
She chose to stop.
She breathed. She cried. She unraveled old narratives. Bit by bit, her capacity grew.
She started to see that the anxiety she felt wasn’t about incompetence. It was about protection — her system doing its best to shield her from perceived harm, even though the circumstances had changed.
And that’s when something began to open.
From control to connection
Through the program, Willa stopped trying to “fix” her relationship with money. Instead, she started tending to it.
She began checking her accounts weekly — not from a feeling of pressure or performance, but because it helped her stay connected. She made small shifts in how she planned her expenses, how she priced her work, and how she spoke to herself about her worth.
She let herself want more — not from fear or urgency, but from grounded, embodied desire.
And most importantly, she began to trust herself and money.
The fear didn’t vanish overnight. But it eased up. She could feel her nervous system recalibrating. She slept more soundly. She breathed more deeply. She stopped holding her breath when she opened her inbox or checked her bank balance.
This wasn’t about more control — it was about more connection to herself and her money.
A different kind of wealth
Willa didn’t walk away with a rigid financial plan or a sudden windfall.
What she left with was relationship — to herself, to her values, and to her money. She left with a sense of being resourced.
She understood, on a cellular level, that more money was never going to be the answer to fear, and that peace doesn’t come from numbers on a screen. She finally felt safe enough to stay present with what was real: her success and her capability.
Her success no longer felt fragile, and her body no longer braced for the worst.
She had done the work, and now she could hold what she had created — not just materially, but emotionally.
What about you?
If you’ve ever told yourself, “I shouldn’t feel this way — I’m doing fine,”
If you’ve reached a new level of income and still feel like the fear hasn’t let up,
If part of you is still waiting for it all to disappear because, on some level, you don’t believe you are worth it — you’re not alone.
You don’t need to push harder.
You don’t need to shame yourself into gratitude.
And you don’t need another tool or skill.
What you need is space to heal your relationship with yourself and money — gently, consistently, and in a way that honors your lived experience.
That’s what we do in Get Right With Money® — restore your capacity to be in relationship with money without fear running the show.
Money healing doesn’t happen in your head.
It happens when you stop abandoning yourself.
Don’t Try Another “Money Fix” or Strategy
What you need is healing. And it starts with your nervous system. The Get Right with Money® Quick Start Guide gives you the foundational framework for this work: how to move from control to connection with money, how to tend to the nervous system patterns that keep you braced for loss, and how to finally feel safe enough to stay present with your financial reality.
The Quick-Start Guide includes: 15 pages of practices and reflections, plus two guided yoga nidra sessions—designed to help your body learn that money can be safe.
