06/08/2026
I stopped pushing through money tasks while my nervous system was dysregulated. That sounds simple. It wasn’t.
For years I thought the responsible thing was to just get on with it. Sit down, open the laptop, look at the numbers, deal with it.
Even when my body was telling me something completely different. Even when I was stressed, overwhelmed, running on empty. What I didn’t understand then was that doing money work from that state wasn’t productive.
It was reinforcing the association between money and threat. Every time I forced myself through a financial task while dysregulated, my nervous system filed it away as more evidence that money was something to brace for.
So I stopped. Not avoidance. Something different. I started waiting until I felt grounded before engaging with anything money related. A few minutes of breathwork first. A walk. Sometimes just a glass of water and five minutes of stillness. And the relationship changed completely. Not because the tasks got easier. Because my body stopped treating them like a threat.
If you have ever noticed that you feel worse after doing money admin, not better, this is probably why. The problem was never the task. It was the state you were doing it in. Your nervous system is the foundation of your financial wellbeing. Everything else gets built on top of that.