S2 E27:📢 How to Stop Reacting and Start Responding (Especially with Your Money)
EPISODE SUMMARY
When money stress sends you into complete panic mode, sometimes your logical brain knows everything is probably fine... it's a weird dual feeling that happens to all of us. Rachel explores the wild emotional rollercoaster of high-stakes money moments - like home renovations, real estate transactions, and banking delays - and introduces a powerful framework for moving from reactive panic to thoughtful response. Using Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, she guides you through understanding the different "parts" of yourself that show up during financial stress.
💬 "A part is feeling unsafe, but I'm not actually in danger when I look around. There's one aspect that is maybe triggering something from my past, but if I look around, I'm actually okay right now."
Key Takeaways:
Your financial stress response makes complete sense - money is always tied to safety
You have different internal "parts" (managers, firefighters) all trying to protect you in their own way
The goal isn't to silence these parts, but to lead from your essential self - the calm, compassionate center
You don't have to navigate financial stress alone - gather your support team
Sometimes the rush to get out of discomfort actually creates more problems
⏰ EPISODE BREAKDOWN
02:00 | Why House Money Feels Different: The unique emotional quality of real estate transactions and renovations
07:00 | Meet Your Internal Parts: Introduction to Internal Family Systems and your inner protective team
10:30 | The Manager Part: The organized, controlled part that wants to tamp down emotions
14:30 | The Firefighter Part: The reactive part that catastrophizes to prepare you for the worst
21:00 | Becoming Self-Led: How to respond instead of react from your essential self
📚 Resources Mentioned
1. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy model by Richard Schwartz
💬 Join the Conversation
Have you experienced this kind of financial panic spiral? What money situations send your nervous system into overdrive? Click on the big orange button on our site right from your phone or browser and let me know about a time when your money stress felt bigger than the actual situation. https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/podcast
🎧 Your next listen:
😲 Out of Nowhere? The Truth About ‘Surprise’ Expenses and How to Get Ahead
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Rachel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast. I'm your host Rachel Duncan. I'm a financial therapist and art therapist, and I founded the Money Healing Club. You've come to the softest place to land in personal finance where we talk about all the things we don't usually say when we talk about money. This podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only.
For help with your particular situation, please seek help from a licensed mental health, tax, legal, or finance professional.
[00:00:30]
Speaker: Hi Rachel. Um, I've got a question for you or really something for you to explore in the podcast if you can. Um, a definite, um, money feeling I get in times of stress is money is stressful. Um, where. Trying to do a house renovation at the moment and sending large amounts of money sometimes. And, um, yeah, with all our savings and sometimes the bank is, [00:01:00] uh, 'cause their larger payments is like temporarily stopping those payments and looking into it.
I know they're concerned about fraud and stuff, but anyway, it's really, really stressful. Money gets lost in inverted, in the ether for a short amount of time, and then my brain goes into absolute panic, um, thinking, catastrophizing, thinking through all the worst stuff. Ugh, just having a horrible time. My rational, logical brain tells me that I've done nothing wrong, that everything's fine.
And I know that's true, [00:01:30] but I definitely feel that stress, um, that stress in my body. Just generally everywhere and feel super uncomfortable until the matter sorted. So yes, if you can give me any advice about how to deal with such things, um, that would be amazing. Thanks so much. Bye.
Rachel: Okay, first of all, oh, I totally hear you. I have been there from buying a home, selling a home, [00:02:00] doing a remodeling. This particular experience with money when it comes to house stuff, it's very real. It's very stressful. I think it has its own sort of emotional quality and experience. One thing is the amounts of money we're dealing with, like it almost feels fictional.
I mean, it does feel fictional, but it's also not fictional because these figures are very real. So the stress is real and very normal. I think we're also often making these massive [00:02:30] decisions really quickly with a ton of pressure. As well as very little control over the process. So it's, I think dealing with house stuff is very different than the way we would say, Hey, I wanna make more coffee at home instead of going out.
Like that's something you have more control over, I would say. And the stakes just feel huge, like it's your home and you love it, and you don't wanna live in a construction zone anymore. But at the same time, you're not an expert in plumbing or [00:03:00] framing or origination fees and all the bank jargon. So yeah, it can feel like you're faking it.
That itself is stressful. So I've been there. It's a wild ride. It's like, okay, cool. Now I get to hang out in limbo, in my worst case scenarios in a situation I don't totally understand, but I'm already a hundred percent committed to and when it comes to real estate, what I have found is this very rational impulse to even go against your own financial interests [00:03:30] just to get it done. There's a lot of tension there. So in today's episode, I want to walk with you through a framework of understanding what's happening in these moments within your mind.
How your nervous system is trying to protect you and how to respond with more self-trust, a little less panic in a way that honors all of the things that's going on inside of you.
And I'm so glad you asked this question 'cause it brings up this certain type of money stress where one side of [00:04:00] you says it's probably fine, trust the system, but another side of you is completely spiraling out. That is so real.
First, I wanna kind of back up and say like, this isn't just you, the banking system, all of this financial systems, it's kind of how it works and it sucks for those of us who are on the customer side. So as you understand already when your bank holds a payment, that kind of thing, they are trying to protect you from fraud, but they are not [00:04:30] protecting your nervous system, right?
You're sitting there knowing you've done nothing wrong, but your money is locked up. It's in the ether. You're wondering, will this project ever happen? There's always, there's risk. Maybe the loan won't get approved. Your sense of safety, poof. And don't we all wish the bank was like, okay, this is what we're doing. We're gonna investigate this, we'll be in touch. In the meantime, go take a yoga class. Uh, let's all take a little side quest and envision a new type of banking system. But anyway, I [00:05:00] digress.
Something I'm always keeping in my mind with my own money story and when I'm working with clients and club members is when we talk about money, all roads lead to safety, security. So anything that is sort of affecting your access to money is actually affecting your access to safety. Even that feeling, okay, and so that's why it triggers a big response.
Especially when it's just out of your hands, it's really dysregulating. It's really disempowering. [00:05:30] It also is a fact of life of the system right now.
Point number two. Stress makes you want to do something fast, that rush to act, that is your body trying to break the tension to get to resolution, sort of no matter the cost. Maybe you are, you know, speed, reading the fine print, sending frantic emails, you know, maybe moving money around, just feeling like something is happening.
It could be rippling out into other parts of your life just to get a sense. [00:06:00] You have control over something and I think the system sort of thrives on that discomfort. It thrives on you, you know, not, hang on. Can you tell me what this paragraph really means?
I often make hasty decisions to get out of discomfort. So it's something that I'm actively working on all the time. Sometimes that rush to safety actually creates more stress 'cause you're just kicking the can down the road. So one thing to ask yourself is, am I feeling alone here? I'm wondering if there's someone else in your life, not part [00:06:30] of the bank who does know something about lending or renovations who can help reality check with you.
Could there be someone in your life who could, um, help you ask better questions to the banking system? Is there someone in your life who can help you craft questions to your lender? You don't have to do it alone. You are allowed to gather a team and ask for help. This is this little aspect of financial activism.
Okay, number three. Now we're gonna dive into your [00:07:00] parts. And how they are trying to help you. So first I wanna do a quick introduction to Internal Family Systems or IFS. So IFS is a therapeutic model that sort of sees your inner world like a map with all these different parts in it. It was developed by psychologist Richard Schwartz and I have found it incredibly helpful in money work and really all things personal development.
So imagine. You have a whole team of [00:07:30] parts inside of you, and each part has their own style of protection, and that style has its own logic to it. Some want to control the situation with no emotion. Some want to numb out and not feel anything. Some are sounding the alarm no matter what. Some are keeping you from feeling pain.
None of these parts are bad. But they are all three dimensional personalities. They're not, no part is just one thing. [00:08:00] Each one of them, they feel their job is to keep you safe in the best way they know how, but they all have very different ideas about what that means. So the goal isn't to banish your parts, it's actually to build a relationship with them.
And this is the process we call unburdening, where your parts don't take on more burden or responsibility than they should, so that they can actually work more cooperatively with you and with each other. So at [00:08:30] the center of all these parts, if we think of, if we think of all these parts as a map, the center of these parts is what we call the essential self.
It is sort of the eye of the storm in this map and what's amazing about this framework is while we all have very different parts, totally individual for each one of us, the ways we describe our essential self are remarkably universal. This is the calm, compassionate, [00:09:00] creative patient, clear-eyed part of you.
This is the part that leads with creativity, curiosity, and courage. Even as I say these very powerful words, I want you to feel that part in you. Maybe take a breath. Where's the part that feels like the pillar? Your best self in the middle.
Okay. [00:09:30] This essential self is the most important part of your mental health to get in touch to step into that essential self energy as much as possible. Because what can happen is the parts might think that they are running the show. Right. They will sometimes confuse us to think, oh, that is who I am. But really they are just a part.
So you'll see in this languaging we're gonna say, part of me feels like this, and the other part wants to do [00:10:00] that. We even use that in how we talk, like in everyday language. So just notice that this is the type of language we're really going to amplify. So we have the essential self. All of our other parts tend to be categorized in three different categories.
Managers. Firefighters and exiles. I'm gonna talk today about the managers and firefighters because they're the ones that are the loudest. They're sort of the first ones we work with.
So we all have manager parts, and I'm wondering for [00:10:30] this listener, this person who left the voicemail, you have a manager part who is working really hard to stay on top of everything. It might be the part that really respects the banking system might be a little differential to that. Uh, it wants to be good at this and it wants to be non-reactive.
Managers tend to wanna tamp down fear and other strong emotions to keep you kind of on track. This idea of if I organize it, everything will [00:11:00] be okay and safe. And that's not entirely wrong, is it depending on the situation. So I want you to do a quick body scan and just identify where is the manager part living in my body, the part that wants to manage this and does not wanna feel the strong emotions about it.
And often we can identify some part in or around your body where it's living. And as you identify it, what's that part up to? What does it look like? [00:11:30] What sensations come up? You can ask that part. How does it feel about the other part that is freaking out? You can ask this manager.
What is it like to be noticed right now? Just noticed. Just noticed and accepted. Could you let this part know? I see how hard you're working. Thanks for looking out for me. To take it a little further, if this feels comfortable, you can ask it. [00:12:00] What is this part trying to protect me from feeling? Let its answer just come to you.
There's no wrong answers. Could you let this manager part know that I'm safe enough now to feel some of these things? Let it know I can handle some strong emotions.
It might disagree. It can disagree. It might not agree that's that's okay, but it is listening. Let it know. We love it. For listening. You could ask this part. What would it be like if it didn't [00:12:30] have to watch out for everything? You can pause here if you need. Let the conversation settle.
Let it know how much you appreciate, how hard it's been working, and also let it know that you can handle quite a bit more emotion than it might think. Let it know that emotions are important source of knowing for you. They're [00:13:00] important information for you to make decisions in this world. And that it's not the manager's job to avoid or tamp down those emotions that you essential self can handle it.
But we need this part to read the fine print, to sit down with a spreadsheet to say, Hey, I just need an hour to get organized. That's so important. We need that part to just do that part. Ask it if [00:13:30] it would agree to this. Now I'm just giving you a little mini taste of what an IFS type dialogue would be like this, any of these questions are for you to take or not take everything with a grain of salt, of course.
And now as we close the conversation with the manager, part of you. Let it know that you've loved talking with it, you love seeing it, and you'd like to give it a chance to do the things it would really like to do if it didn't feel responsible for everything [00:14:00] and go let it do that. Now, when this part feels closed and complete and is off doing the thing it really wants to do, recenter yourself.
Remember that eye of the storm, we're gonna identify what we call an IFS, the firefighter part.
Firefighter parts are often the part that jumps in when things feel unsafe. Right? Think of a firefighter's coming and splashing water on the [00:14:30] situation. No matter, you know, how wet everything's gonna be later, the, our firefighter parts tend to catastrophize, but not, not in a way to scare you, but to prepare you.
Like firefighter parts are sort of like, if I imagine the worst, I won't be blindsided. Firefighters really use intense emotions as important information to get you out of a situation or have you react to a situation in the moment to [00:15:00] keep you safe. It's all about in the moment, basically any ramifications of someone else's problem.
We are dealing with stuff in the moment. This tends to be the more impulsive part of us
So you can ask very gently, where do I feel this part in my body, in or around my body, this firefighter part? What does it look like? What does it up to? What does it feel like? Give it a moment. Let it be noticed. It could be a [00:15:30] shape, a character, just a feeling. And as it comes into view, let this part know, I see how hard you're working.
Thank you for trying to protect me. Could you ask this part? What are you worried might happen if you take a break from your job? Take in its answer.
Let it know that you're here right [00:16:00] now and you're listening that we can just hang on a minute. Let's, let's try to understand all of what's happening here, that you'd like to practice responding instead of reacting.
We love being in touch with our emotions. There have been times where we have reacted in the moment and it has been a deal breaker, just a, just so helpful, but in this [00:16:30] moment, you actually have a lot more safety than this part might realize.
Let it take in this information. While you're at it, ask this part how old it thinks you are.
And now let it know how old you really are. You might even add, well, guess what? I'm a grownup now. Now parts are kind of funny when they get [00:17:00] updated about how old you are. Sometimes they don't believe it. Sometimes they're really excited, but it is often new information. A part usually believes that you are the age.
That you were when this part came into existence, so just update it. I often say to my clients, let it know you are a grownup. Sometimes parts react with a big sigh of relief. Like, oh, finally there is a grownup in the [00:17:30] room. I thought I had to be the grownup. Let it know no, no, no. I'm the grownup in the room.
Let it react to that. Let it take in an update with this new information. Take some breaths with huge amounts of gratitude for how overworked this part is, trying to protect you, trying to sound the alarms, trying to think ahead into every catastrophic scenario. It's an important job, [00:18:00] but it's one that now you wanna do with it, that you are going to respond now instead of immediately reacting because you are a grownup. You have a general sense of what keeps you safe and how this world works, and that actually these ups and downs are quite exhausting. It's not helping the whole system. Ask this part what it would like to do if it didn't feel responsible for [00:18:30] responding to everything bad that might happen.
Just imagine what, what would this part like to spend its time doing. It might like to do the kind of thing that a kid its age would like to do. That's often the case. However it answers, hear it, love it,
and take some breaths as this part goes and does the thing it would love to do if it didn't feel burdened with a job it was doing for you.[00:19:00]
You might wanna pause this recording and let these two experiences integrate for you. I would also encourage you to turn to art making or journaling about any of the visuals or sensory experiences that came up for you.
So to kind of pull back out to the outside world with this feeling of, hey, we all have lots of parts. I have so many parts that all have their own logic, right? It always makes [00:19:30] sense at the time. They all have very different ideas of how to keep me safe and they kind of came into my life in times where I needed that type of reaction.
I needed a manager to get the thing done, feel like I've got it handled, be a little more intellectual and not be feeling, or there's been other times where I needed to just react or catastrophize 'cause that was actually really what needed to happen at the time. All completely logical. I think, I think in, [00:20:00] in pop culture, you know, we talk about like Devil Angel, but it's really not that they are, all of our parts are correct in their logic and we do need those different forms of being right.
We, we need those different types of reactions depending on the situation we're in. So we acknowledge them. We let them know they are seen and respected and heard. We also let them know that we are now a grownup and that might be new information to them that. We say to the manager parts, [00:20:30] I appreciate you looking out for me and organizing things, and I need that sometimes I am also capable of feeling feelings. And then we say to the firefighter parts of us, thank you for helping us react in our feet. 'cause sometimes we really need that.
But I'm gonna practice more on responding than reacting to look out for my future self. And when we develop this, what results in the IFS [00:21:00] model is, become more self-led, where this eye of the storm that we've been speaking from becomes the leader for your internal system where these parts now turn towards you instead of fooling yourself.
That that is you. You are not actually a firefighter, you are not actually a manager. You are you. You are that eye of the storm and they work for you and takes some time and it takes getting to know each of these parts and they shift and they change. And [00:21:30] sometimes they're not cooperative. Sometimes they're fully cooperative.
It really just depends. But it's a really marvelous inside out framework that. Uh, can have great effects on how we react to financial situations, as well as if IFS is used in all forms of mental health treatment. By the way, if that's a framework that you like, you like this kind of, um, internal, almost like hypnotic line of inquiry lookout for an IFS informed or trained therapist.
One [00:22:00] little tool you can remind yourself in this moment. A part is feeling unsafe, but I'm not actually in danger when I look around. There's one aspect that is maybe triggering something from my past, but if I look around, I'm actually okay right now. Even just naming what's happening can start to bring the volume down for any part.
And have them look to you. That part of you that is [00:22:30] compassionate and curious patient and also like doesn't put up with bullshit.
Okay, so in summary, this stress response, you're feeling, I mean, it makes so much sense, right? Money is always tied to safety and I can really see how different parts of you would be reacting very strongly because it's such a different way of reacting to money and interacting with money and making decisions about it.
So I really get that. Your parts are doing their best. They just have very different logic about what the best thing is to do, and you don't have to shut them down. You can [00:23:00] just get curious. A little planning ahead can help future youth just feel more supported. You don't have to be alone. You can bring in some people who are not from the banking industry to be a sounding board. Am I crazy about this? Could my project be canceled? This is the stuff that the firefighter part of you is wondering and sounding the alarm about, which might be very good questions.
Okay, so let's respond to them instead of reacting to those questions. You are not crazy for spiraling. I don't think you think [00:23:30] you are, but I just wanna say this sounds really stressful and I've totally been there. Look, if you're a human being that's dealing with a high stakes money moment, you are doing your best in a system that forgets that you have a body and a backstory.
So let's bring in your community even bringing it to the club. If you would like to join our membership. This is the kind of thing that we support each other with, including a real estate woes. You are doing great. I would love to hear an [00:24:00] update about how the project went. Uh, I'm guessing by now it might be complete, and I'm just wondering how that rollercoaster might have resolved and as you think back, what you might say to that self of yours from just a few months ago who had all these parts sounding the alarm bells and, uh, competing and arguing with each other.
Where are you now as you look at this experience from a place of your essential self? Thank you so much for your [00:24:30] question.
Rachel: Thanks for listening to the Money Healing Club podcast. You can find resources, links, everything from this episode in the show notes below, or at moneyhealingclub.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, you probably really love my free email course on curbing impulse spending with compassion and mindfulness, you can check it out moneyhealingclub.com/challenge
Do you have a question or a topic about financial therapy or about just [00:25:00] living in this life with money? I'd love to get your voicemail to be featured on a future episode of the podcast. Check it out at moneyhealingclub.com/podcast. You'll see a big orange button there where you can record from any device you're on.
You can also be anonymous. We are in this together and I really appreciate it. See you next time.