Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast

Episode 25: Financial Trauma, Trauma-Informed Business for Entrepreneurs, & Unblocking Money with Sorina Mondan, CCTP

Posted on by Lindsey Lockett

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sorina mondan wearing a black shirt and a red skirt and sitting on a grey couch

Sorina is a licensed clinical certified trauma professional. She brings somatic experiencing, mindfulness, and neuro-psychology together in a practical approach that helps her clients finally heal. Her self-paced course, Home in Your Body is at 1:1 guide to nervous system healing, where you learn the tools to activate your body’s healing power and find the map that takes you home to yourself. And Sorina is also revealing her newest course, Unblocking Money in this episode!

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Show Notes

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In this insightful, breakthrough episode, Sorina and I…

  • share Sorina’s story of growing up in Romanian culture with a prevalent scarcity mindset, how that affected her family, and how she recognized and began healing financial trauma
  • share why it’s vital to question our beliefs about money
  • share how our relationship with money often resembles our relationships with people
  • discuss trauma-informed business for entrepreneurs
  • share why typical business “goals” (like “how to have a $10K month” or “how to get 100k followers”) are not only unrealistic and not sustainable, they assume there is something wrong with us or our business when we don’t meet those goals
  • talk about the adaptations of the nervous system related to money and financial trauma
  • share how to work with the body to identify and release financial trauma
  • emphasize that  beliefs about money, being in your purpose, and feeling safe to receive money are actually more important than sales and marketing
  • talk about procrastination and perfectionism in entrepreneurs
  • share why we need to stop focusing on sales and growth and start excavating money trauma
  • share why it’s not enough to want money; we have to actually become familiar with it and with receiving it or we will push it away

Transcript

[INTRO MUSIC]

LINDSEY: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m so thankful that you are joining me here today. I’m also so thankful that there is only one week left in the month of February. We live in Northeastern, Minnesota, and we just got out of the longest cold snap that I’ve ever been through my life. And it was also the coldest cold snap. We had over a week. Week and a half. of temperatures that were below zero during the day. And then the wind was blowing and the wind chill was so cold. So even though the temperature was like negative 25 at night, It felt like it was negative 50 or negative 60 some days it was. Who we used so much firewood. Our Poor puppy I didn’t get to go for an actual walk that entire time, because if he was outside, his little paws just got way too cold and he couldn’t handle it. So we are all definitely feeling some cabin fever. We are also extremely thankful that maple syruping season for us is just around the corner and just a few weeks away. And that means it’s going to start thawing. We’re going to start feeling the warmth of the sun again. We’re going to start collecting sap every day, getting some exercise outside.

We can finally stretch our muscles and wake up after this cold, long hibernation. I’m also really excited to invite you to join me in financially supporting the podcast so that I can continue to keep the podcast ad free. As always, all episodes are ad-free and they are freely available to everyone on all of the apps that you love to listen to podcasts, or you can listen to straight from my website, LindseyLockett.com forward slash podcast. However, I am upping the ante a little bit. I’m inviting you to partner with me. If you have benefited from this work, if you have enjoyed this work, if you’ve learned something new, if you’ve shared this with someone, because you thought they could benefit from it, then I am inviting you to join me in supporting this podcast to help it stay ad-free. And to help me be able to create more and more of this free content for people who are going down the rabbit hole of holistically healing trauma.

So for $5 a month, you can pretend like you’re buying me a fancy schmancy cup of coffee. And that is my basic level of support. However, if you are ready to go to the next level in your trauma healing journey, and you want to learn more, then I’m inviting you to join my trauma healers circle. For $25 a month, you will get access to at least two, maybe more bonus podcasts episodes per month. These will not be available on iTunes or Spotify or Google podcasts. They’re only available to trauma healers circle members. And you will get a once a month live zoom Q and a call with me and other circle members, as well as some of the experts and guests who have been on the podcast before. As soon as you join for $25 a month, you have access to the entire archive of bonus episodes. And those lives zoom Q and a calls they’re recorded and they’re archived for you. So even if you can’t make them, they’re still there for you to watch and listen to whenever it’s convenient.

So you can go to LindseyLockett.com forward slash circle to learn more about partnering with me to support the holistic trauma healing podcast and continue making nervous system education and trauma healing resources available and accessible to everyone. Now I am so excited because I have one of my past guests back on the podcast today. I have Serina from episode 13, back on the show.

Episode 13 is the second most downloaded episode of all of the episodes of this podcast. So far. That episode was fantastic. If you haven’t heard episode 13, yet I’m going to link to it in the show notes. Please listen to that as well. Um, but Sorina’s back and I want to tell you about Sorina before I tell you what this episode is about. Sorina is a licensed clinical certified trauma professional. She brings somatic experiencing mindfulness and neuro-psychology together in a practical approach that helps her clients finally healed for self-paced course, home in your body is at one Oh one guide to nervous system healing, where you learn the tools to activate your body’s healing power and find the map that takes you home to yourself. And Sorina is also revealing her newest course, unblocking money in this episode! She hasn’t talked about it anywhere else on the internet before. This is the first place. So I’m super grateful for that. And that leads me into what this episode is about. We’re talking about financial trauma and healing and unblocking money in our lives.

So in this episode is Sorina and I are going to discuss trauma informed business coaching. That was a term I had never heard of until I came across Serena’s posts on Instagram. And I was like, what? I immediately DMD her. It was like, we have to talk about this on the podcast. We are sharing why typical business air quote goals, like how to have a 10 K month or how to get 100,000 followers are not only unrealistic; they also assume that there’s something wrong with us or our business when that doesn’t actually happen when it doesn’t work. We are sharing Sorina’s story of growing up in Romanian culture with a very prevalent scarcity mindset and how that affected her family and how she recognized her own financial trauma. We emphasize beliefs about money being in purpose, feeling safe to receive money and how those feelings actually are way more important than making sales. We talk about the adaptations of the nervous system and how similar financial trauma is to relational trauma. We discuss how our relationships with our partners mirror our relationships with money.

We share how our relationship to money and financial trauma, like many other things goes way back to childhood. And we also share how to work with the body to identify and release financial trauma. Finally we share why it’s so important to question our beliefs about money. We talk about business procrastination and perfectionism. We share why we need to stop focusing on sales and growth and start excavating our money trauma instead. And we share why it’s not enough to want money, but we have to become familiar with it otherwise we push it away. Sounds really similar to relationships and love sometimes. Huh? So I hope you guys enjoy it. And this is a fantastic episode. You’re going to get so much out of this if you are an entrepreneur or self-employed person in any way, this is the most important podcast that you might ever listen to. And if you’re thinking about becoming self-employed, listen to this podcast because it’s going to help you avoid a lot of the struggle and pain and frustration and going around and around and around in circles until you finally figure out that you actually have blocks around money and you have blocks around success. So please enjoy this episode with Sorina from mindful tricks

Hey, Sorina. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m so excited you’re here.

SORINA: Hi, I’m so excited to be here again.

LINDSEY: Okay. So here’s a little fun fact for you. I am an analytics nerd and past analytics are pretty terrible, but I can see how many downloads every episode of the podcast has individually. And your first episode with me, episode 13 is the second highest downloaded episode of all the episodes on the podcast so far,

SORINA: oh, wow. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I’m so excited and I’m so excited for what we’re going to bring here now as well. I think it’s going to be so good.

LINDSEY: Yeah. Okay. I want to tell people why we’re talking about trauma informed business coaching. So you posted on Instagram three days ago, I’m looking at it right now. And you said why business coaching should be trauma informed procrastination can be a trauma response, procrastination, and resistance to take the steps and step into your purpose can be trauma responses, financial trauma. You won’t feel safe to earn money. If you experienced financial trauma. And many of us did new equals unfamiliar equals self-sabotage. Learning how to not only create, but keep an abundant reality is trauma work not doing this step may make us unconsciously sabotage our own progress. You posted that. And I like it was the best thing I read on the internet that day. I commented. Here’s my comment, dude. This podcast, when, to my stories and I put a poll up and ask people, would you be interested in me doing it? 81% of people said yes. Okay. What is trauma informed business coaching, first of all, let’s just talk about that.

SORINA: Yeah, definitely. So I think I tied a lot of concepts together and that came from my own experience. I started mindful tricks. I didn’t intend to make it into a business account or to make a business out of it. But it happened that way. And that path unfolded to me. And what I try to, like in the beginning, I tried to grow my own account, grow my own business, and I’ve done that. They have a lot of background in marketing. I have five years in marketing. I’ve worked for corporations like Oracle Ogleby and so on. And I did what I knew best, but at some point being on the internet and seeing gold is get your 10 K a month or 100 K came on. I felt wow, is this something like, should I get engulfed in this in these numbers, should I just find out the easiest way available? Am I doing something wrong?

So I started doubting myself in a way, and I’ve decided to find myself a business coach. And so the search continue, then I felt like every call I had was like a conversation where I knew more, both trauma in marketing, again, financial trauma, then the coaches that I talked to and that there were not wrong, but they were simply not trauma informed. And so I felt a bit frustrated. I was like, man, can I just get someone who can help me with this? Give me guidance and also be trauma informed because mindset works sounds a lot. Like you should just shift your mindset and just wanted more or wanted less. Or it just seems a lot like it has to the weak willpower and it didn’t feel like that for me. And as I said, I’m going to tie a few concepts together. I’m going to say a few things about me and my financial trauma situation. I come from Romania. I was born and raised in Romania, which is a previous communist country and the scarcity mindset. Then this idea that it’s hard and we always have to struggle and food is hard to, or money is hard to earn. And food is hard to have. And so on is like something that I’ve been raised with beliefs that were so ingrained in my mindset and in how I was wired. And my parents actually got divorced because of money. There was this conversation, like we should have more money and they eventually got divorced because of it.

And so of course, as I tried to step into my purpose, my fear of burning money, show that because it was unsafe and I felt that trauma so deep when my first client paid me, I felt like I was so unworthy of it. Can I charge them? I shouldn’t. And it felt like a trauma response. And so back then I was like men. So I actually held romantic relationship trauma, attachment trauma. Can I actually heal financial trauma? So it actually helps my business grow. And if so, how can I do this? And that’s when this concept of financial trauma started and trauma informed marketing strategies and trauma informed business coaching started.

Because I realized it’s not only when people come to me and they’re like, yeah, but I’m not making sales. We don’t look at sales necessarily. We look at their belief with earning money from being in their purpose and how safe they feel to, to receive. And as you can see, If it makes sense, because I covered a lot of topics, it’s all interconnected. And so that’s why I feel like it’s more than strategy, more than simply changing our mindset. It’s deeper work required that eventually allows us to work beautifully with mindset, with strategy and so on.

LINDSEY: Okay. So I’m having like all of these light bulbs going off right now, one of the light bulbs that went off for me, as you were saying, that was, I was reminded about our first episode together, episode 13, where we talked about how we can’t mantra or say how to get out of a trauma response. Like when the system is activated, you’re in fight or flight or freeze. You can’t just sit there and close your eyes and be like, I am safe. I am happy. Exactly. You have to actually call your nervous system down first. Otherwise you’re just saying words and you’re basically lying to yourself because you don’t, if you don’t actually feel happy. So light bulb just went off for me was if I can’t mantra my way out of a trauma response. That say it’s a trigger from my childhood trauma. What in the world makes me think that if I just changed my mindset about money, But I would be here to get out of money trauma. That’s basically trying to mantra your way out of their trauma.

SORINA: Yeah. And there’s actually another thing that I noticed here, which was because I was trying to look into manifestation and manifesting money. And there were a lot of teachings that were saying just feel the way you would like to feel when you had, when you receive money. And this is exactly as you would say, feel how you want to receive. When you receive love when you’ve experienced, like attachment trauma, it doesn’t feel good. It’s unfamiliar, so it’s not going to feel good. It’s very hard because you may be trying like, okay, I’m feeling safe to receive money and you can tell this and you can force yourself to feel it, but it doesn’t feel right. And so that’s why I think shadow work as we like to call it, or trauma work is so important in this manifestation process or in all of these areas, financial trauma and strategy, and yeah trauma informed marketing as well. So we can understand that it’s more than trying to feel our way into abundance or think our way into abundance. It’s more of a mindset shift where we understand. Okay. So there may be deeper layers here that I need to actually feel all that pain to look at all that trauma. And then after I transform that I can move into feeling safe with money and into thinking all the mindset changes.

LINDSEY: Yeah. So I’m reading another one of your Instagram posts, your most recent one that says both love and money are connected to survival. If the core wound is the same, it’s very common for the same adaptation to show up in both areas, financial and relational. So I think most of us listening, probably know how trauma or adaptations have shown up when they’ve experienced trauma around relationships. Whether or not your parents are relationships with a romantic partner or something like that.

I think it might be a little bit harder because we don’t talk about this very much to see the adaptations show up with financial trauma. So can we talk about how somebody would even know if they have financial trauma? What types of adaptations are showing up?

SORINA: Yeah. Oh at first I think it’s so important to know that the way we have a relationship with our partner. And we have a relationship with our emotions, with our thoughts. We also have a relationship with mine, and even there is a lot of shame, a lot of unworthiness, a lot of survival energy into that relationship where you feel like money is never enough. And this is the nice way we can use thoughts to trace down the unhealed trauma. So for example, if you think that. Money is never enough, or I never, I don’t feel worthy to have money. That’s definitely an unworthiness, right? So we need to look deeper at the trauma that may have created that, that belief and that wound, if we always feel like we don’t have enough money, or I have clients who feel like money is going to be taken away from them. And it’s interesting relating to relationships, they have this belief with the relationships as well. I had a client who was like, who is fearing that their partners is going to lead them. And who was also feeling fearing like money is going to be taken away from them. So we saw this pattern and we were like, okay. So I see, we see a pattern here. Let’s look at what may have created that. And so it’s more more about just trying to see our belief system around money so we can understand lots of death or one may be is it scarcity, is it maybe actually financial trauma because you had to experience poverty as in my case, because it was really hard at times. So yeah it’s about that.

LINDSEY: Okay. So I want to share, I haven’t talked about my childhood in terms of financial trauma on the podcast before. So like first I want to say that I believe that there’s a very distinct difference between poverty trauma and the trauma that I experienced as a child, I never went hungry. I never went without clothes or shoes. I didn’t always get what I wanted for sure, but my needs for food, clothing, and shelter we’re met. So I’m not claiming to have poverty trauma because I did not grow up in poverty. But the way that I did grow up was we weren’t in poverty, but there was never enough. So I remember very distinctly on Saturdays. My mom would pay bills. And when I was seven, eight, nine years old, I enjoyed pretending to play office on Saturday mornings. My mom would spread the bills across the dining table and she would have the checkbook and the envelopes and the stamps out.

And she would tell me, here, write the check for this, for the electric bill or for the gas bill or whatever. Write the check. I would write the check. I would address the envelope. I would put the stamp on it. And then all my mom had to do was sign the check. I remember that there were many times when my mom would say, don’t write the check for the whole amount of the bill, because we don’t want to pay the whole bill. So if the electric bill was $150, she might say only write the check for 50. And so then I was like we don’t have enough. Like obviously we don’t have money to pay the bills in their entirety. The other thing I remember is my parents putting groceries on credit cards. So like definitely times where if my parents had not had credit cards, we would not have had groceries because they had to charge them and then pay them off that way.

As an adult that has definitely I think my husband and I are wave financially better off than my parents were at our ages, but I still feel like actual fear whenever we have a large expense. Come up for example, here’s a perfect example. Last night I was dealing with like deer bones. I was making bone broth with deer bones and I had a bunch of deer bones in my pot, and I was like balancing the pot on the center, divider of the sink to fill it up with money. Or money and the pot slipped off and it was heavy water in it and it fell into my sink and it cracked my sink. And and it’s not like I can’t replace the sink, but my very first thought was I don’t want to have to spend the money to replace this thing. Yeah, that was my very first thoughts. And that happens so much with me. If something unexpected happens, if I have a big expense that I have to pay I feel this reaction where I’m, it’s there’s not going to be enough. There’s not going to be enough. And I think that is a scarcity mindset, and in a way I’m not afraid of money being taken away from me. I don’t think, but I’m afraid that there’s not enough. And I see now after reading your posts, I see that now that’s a translating big time into my business as an entrepreneur, like I’m a self-employed person. I have to bust my ass to make my income, to make a profit off of my business. And as of right now, I’m very early into this podcast. And so far I’m not making any money off of this podcast, which it’s fine, but like I do deep down, I believe that I deserve to be paid for my time. I just, I believe that I deserve that. Like the knowledge that I have is worth it, the time that I spend interviewing people and editing podcasts. I know that, but it’s like my nervous system hasn’t gotten the message yet. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

SORINA: Yeah, definitely. So the things that I would go to here are, first of all poverty is also what we’ve experienced and not necessarily what we’ve lived. So let’s say that maybe your parents were arguing next to you. And they were like, where I’m going to divorce you if you’re like not taking this job or. For example, I didn’t grow up in poverty. I had my basic necessities, but my dad used to donate blood and they give you like meal tickets in Romania to buy food. And he had to do that. So we have things for Christmas and maybe that’s it’s still enough, but it was heartbreaking for me to see my dad pale after he like donated blood and then seeking, going after other things to make money. And it felt like it really, I remember I was so young and we always tend to remember these things. If I ask you your earliest memory you were able to say it because it’s deeply imprinted in our minds.

And it was a trauma. You didn’t, we didn’t want to experience that. Yeah. I try to like, make my father feel good. I felt sorry for him. Of course. And it’s very nuanced here. Because it’s not necessarily that we didn’t have food or shoes, but maybe yeah. We’ve experienced that fear that he didn’t have enough or that money was going to run out or that it’s never enough. And it’s that as a child, you’re trying to do things. You’re trying to control things in a way. So you feel go back. That’s what we would work in coaching. If you would go back to that little girl who is sorting bills. You would notice how constricted she was, because she was so scared that something is going to happen. Maybe it’s not, it wasn’t going to happen then, but it was that fear that maybe you’ve even heard from your caregivers, that if this situation is not getting better, this may happen. Or maybe we won’t have money for future meals. And there’s that fear that gets stored in our tissues again.

And this is the trauma that we talk about. And so with mindset, with like new emotions, what we would try would be to override this like survival response that has been trapped in our tissues. And what they usually do as to look, to take a closer look at how do you actually feel in your body when you notice that fear? When that sink actually is not only about the narrative, even if the narrative is an indication, but how do you actually feel? You feel like, Oh my God, I don’t have money now. And then in coaching, we actually work too with the body to rewire that response. So it doesn’t go straight into this constructive response, but I’m actually creating a self-paced course now. And I’m trying to put this in a self-paced manner and some things that I worked with clients and in them doing at home is to simply notice that the body and soften it and no longer constrict that even more to perpetuate that trauma response. So just allowing ourselves to notice the discomfort to no longer get trapped in the narratives and to simply ease into it and relax our bodies in a way, or just as I like to call it just soften our bodies. So we no longer keep it constricted. And because we usually what we do, we are get, we get, again, trapped in that survival response. We get into the narratives and we think to change my state, I have to change the reality, but to change your state, you just have to allow yourself to pay attention to that discomfort. So that trauma response, and just to self-soothe basically, because this is what we are trying to do.

LINDSEY: Yeah. Wow. So another thing that’s coming to mind, as you’re saying that is I remember my mom started cleaning houses when I was young because we didn’t have enough money. And that was like something that she could do during the day while my brothers and I were at school that still allowed her to be available. If she needed to come get us from school or, if we were homesick or something, it was okay. But I also, was a competitive Baton twirler and that is a very expensive sport. My mom’s house cleaning money went to pay for my costumes, my batons, my shoes entry fees, things like that. Yeah. I just remember always feeling this guilt as she was having to go clean other people’s toilets and take out other people’s trash to pay for me to do this thing that I wasn’t allowed to ask for anything else on top of that. If I wanted like a certain brand of shirt, I felt guilty asking for that because it was like, I’m not allowed to ask for over and above what I already have, and it’s selfish if I do this. Is that not translating for you?

SORINA: Yeah, definitely. I’m trying to not go into coaching mode right now because it just sounded like there’s some shame connected with money for you and it’s shame with receiving. And so it takes me back to the pattern that we discussed and it’s just something that we may like. Look at, and in order to gain awareness over like where that comes from, and this is what I like with finding actual trauma, as we discuss about it, then as we reconnect with those stories, we make sense of our financial reality that we are experiencing today. Why do we connect money with safety? For example, for me, for a long time saving money, even like $1,000 just meant that I’m safe and not having that made me feel so deeply unsafe and so dysregulated. And In regards to money to go a little bit back at the what people listening would think is just like about awareness, like just gain awareness over how that reality is showing up to. They don’t go straight into what happened. But to understand what happened to this look today how are the patterns around money? How is your relationship with money while there are the beliefs that you have with money? Because I felt like, and this is something that I noticed and I wanted to share here.

I felt like so many times there are so many areas that we consider for. Self-development like I don’t know relationships. I want to master my emotions. But we forget that our relationship with money is the same as our relationship with our partners. And it’s just something that we get to notice and the shift. And when I started looking at my patterns with money, it was like a new world was revealed to me and it no longer made sense why I was doing so many things where I was believing so many things that a lot of effort equals money. I have to work a lot to prove that I’m worthy. And then when I had made, I always felt it’s going to be taken away from me. I’m going to have suspended on bills or rent on that. It’s it was always this this cycle. And so it was so interesting to look because many people may not even be aware of their true patterns with money.

Like how are you actually feeling around money? And what did you take as true? Because you may think it’s reality, but it may be something worth questioning does it even have to be hard? I actually felt so guilty when I was paying for groceries. I felt like I wasn’t even allowed that if I was buying something extra or more expensive, I felt like, Oh my God, I spend all my money in groceries. And I shouldn’t do that at the end. I’m like, man, when I look back, I’m like what? It was groceries. It’s so natural to want to have food there. But yeah that’s what happens when we don’t question these beliefs and that’s why it all changes when we gain awareness over our current habits around money or how we feel around them.

LINDSEY: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for giving me the space to even talk about these things.It’s so weird how I didn’t plan on sharing. Oh, it’s so applicable because. So what you’re doing, what we’re talking about is the way that you either through one-on-one coaching or the program that you’re going to create, that’s a self paced course is for entrepreneurs who really want to heal their relationship with money?

SORINA: Yeah, I’m actually going to create that habit and plan two courses this year one is unblocking money, which is for everyone who wants to like work on their relationship with money. And the other one is going to be for entrepreneurs who are going to who want to also know strategy and trauma informed marketing and all of that. So I tried to put it into these two containers because I noticed you would think that these principles apply me to one category, but I worked with people who work in sales with someone who has a physical business and I try to see if it applies. And it’s applied to too many situations and I was happy and I got more confident than I was like let’s share it with the world.

LINDSEY: That’s amazing. You’re such a go getter. I love how you just have this concept. You see it in your own life. And you’re like I can fix this and now I’m going to go fix it too.

SORINA: Yeah. I, that’s what I teach actually, when I work with other coaches, I feel like that passion is what we need to follow, because that creates a lot of amazing things. And people like, I have this way off leading with my intuition and with what feels good. And so a lot of people are like, wow, I didn’t even knew that I needed that.I didn’t even know that. Yeah. I was having a problem with like my finances or I was having financial trauma. And so I’m so happy to bring this conversation up and to allow people to see their own beliefs and their own natural.

LINDSEY: Yeah. So do you have when you’re talking about trauma informed marketing, the what’s coming up for me when I hear that is. It’s very difficult as an entrepreneur for me to market myself. I almost feel like asking somebody to pay for something I’ve created feels but is what I’ve created worth it. If I made something that’s air quotes, good enough that have I made something that is, that people see the value in and they want to pay for it. And I think that just not to get super woo here, but just those doubts like creates more of that energy around my finances and it further cements the, that I already have. Yeah, go ahead and say whatever it is.

SORINA: What came up for me was about manifestation. And the fact that, which is manifestation is just a fancy word for consciously creating your life and understanding how your unconscious beliefs may create your reality, which is if you think you’re unworthy of money, you’ll make money, but then you’re still going to fill unworthy of it. So it’s just like what’s happening in your reality may be a reflection of your belief. Not that the bad things that are happening are your fault, but it’s just like looking at your beliefs and seeing what’s being reflected in your reality. And Like there are people who think only bad things happen to me always. And that our brains have this way of actually taking. Information from the reality and finding evidence is that the beliefs that we have are true. And so basically we are always looking around and we are turning or waves through.

And so if we think that our work is not worthy of it, we may look at the evidence. Like I saw this in clients be like, people are buying in. Yeah. But they didn’t buy enough. Or when I want the door, how I want the door, I didn’t have the light 10 K launch that I wanted. And this is the thing. I don’t think it’s woo woo. I think many people see it this way, especially in manifestation, but when we look at it with yeah, trauma informed lenses and we understand that it’s not even about it is about energy, but the way I would describe energy is being attention that you have beyond your actions.

And so if you show up on stories and you’re going to tell people, like I just bought this offer, as opposed to speaking very slowly and not trusting yourself, people are not going to be like, that sounds like the most amazing offer they’re going to be like She needs to believe it first. And then I will, or something like that, because it’s just like getting to believe in our own word before everyone does everyone else. And I’ve heard this, like in the beginning, you have to applaud yourself and it’s about that like ability to look at your work, to know why you started it. And I feel like when you have a strong mission, like you have, it’s very hard to forget that a lot of people are being held by because you started it to help others. You’ve started by asking huge questions here. And so a lot of people are reflecting that to you. They’re seeing how held they are by your content. And it’s a little bit about gaining evidence that your offers are going to to be where they have compensation, of course. And also above looking at what trauma responses, what survival responses may come up is you’re trying to write that post.

Because there may be procrastination yeah, I, this is something that I always see with clients who try to earn money from their passions or just yeah monetize their business. They’re like, yeah, I’m going to do that. After I make my website, then my website is going to be online after six months. And I’m like, yeah. Okay. Let’s look at that because it may sound like you’re avoiding something here and we can. Yeah, we can look at how that feels for you and what do you actually fear and changing that response. So you feel  safe enough to show up in that way now,

Since the very first episode, the holistic trauma healing podcast has been ad free and freely available for just $5 a month. You can financially support the show so that nervous system education and trauma healing resources remain accessible and available to everyone. Go to Lindsey locket.com forward slash circle to support the show.

LINDSEY: Oh my gosh, it makes so much sense. I’m so guilty of that. And in fact, when I started the podcast I had recorded six episodes before I even had a website where people could go, even though in the episodes, I would say show notes are found lindseylockett.com Forward slash podcast for the first six episodes that actually didn’t even exist. But I was aware enough to know that if I did what I’ve always done in the past, that I would procrastinate putting that out there because I didn’t have this thing in place.

SORINA: Yeah. Wow. I love that. That you realize that it really was, it was a big thing.

LINDSEY: And in fact, the first five episodes are just me talking. What, why I was finally, like I’ve got to get this website up is cause then I started interviewing people and I was like, I’m doing them a disservice. If I don’t provide a place for people to go and click for links or whatever else. But so it gave me the push that I needed, to get it down. But I was really proud of myself for not like having this perfect, beautifully designed website in place before I started the podcast, which is totally my former self MO. That’s totally, in fact, I would make you even prouder of me. We started, my husband is my tech guy. Thankfully, he’s very talented and I get all my tech work for free. Yeah, so he he just started Lindsey lockett.com and he just grabbed a free whatever theme. That would, that was printed by WordPress. That would work for the podcast. And so for the first 18 episodes, it was very ugly. The website, like it was very, it was so not nice and it’s still not me, but we’re slowly designing it to be something that reflects me and what I want people to see whenever they get there. But this is so different from what I was like before, where I wouldn’t even take the step until I had laid what I convinced myself was a foundation. Like I have to have the website in place. First. I have to have the email in place. Facebook page. Yeah. This time I was like, No, that doesn’t serve a purpose for me anymore. Like I am going to show up imperfectly and I’m just going to be authentic and give it the best that I have. And sometimes the best that I have is I make a typo on an Instagram post. You were actually the one who taught me not to change it when I make a typo.

SORINA: Yeah, exactly. I love everything that you said, and I feel like it’s going to help so many people because especially in my generation, I feel like a lot of people are used to this instant gratification. I only started something if I know that it’s going to be perfect. If I know that it’s giving is going to give me instant results. And so it’s so important to share these stories behind the scenes. So people know that it wasn’t perfect and that we showed up anyway. And sometimes I show one of my stories and I don’t give a I may not be clear on my message, but I’m going to find it on the way. And I was making fun that in the beginning of my business, I was like my Michael Scott from the office. Like somehow I manage. He know I just felt like I was like, okay, please do this. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s going to turn out somehow. And I love to teach people that you can show up in that way.

Like you can. Being imperfect and take one step and just know your next step. You don’t have to know the whole business structure right now. Just follow that the joy and find your why, especially this is the most important, even more important than the website, because you need to have a strong reason why showing up is important. And actually in my business, I decided to make mindful tricks because I always felt like I had to hide who I was. I was a bit too wild, too playful. People like were like, you’re too playful for your age. I always felt like I had to hide some parts of myself. And I was like, my full tricks is going to be the only place where I’m going to be fully myself, where I’m going to keep going to share my message and where I don’t care what it takes to share them, not going to even ask for approval. I’m going to share it and doing that each day without waiting for that feedback or two for sales or whatever that was to prove that I’m doing a good job. Things happen. And people were attracted by my authenticity. And just my willingness to show up, even like when I had no likes or what they were in deck was because we’ve all started somewhere.

No one was born with an audience or with a website or whatever that is. And so imperfection is the place to start with when we are trying to do this. And. Yeah, this is just another belief that I have to have the website. I have to have the I don’t know, Instagram feed looking a certain way. I didn’t care about, and this is like what I would call my unapologetic marketing. I don’t care about titles. I don’t care about how the feed looks like. If one time I post with writing and I post photos or what they were. If these are details and your audience is going to to find you and to like you, for your message, not for the titles, or I always say your ideal client is not going to refuse to work with you because you have a title. It’s, they’re not going to care about them. And this week we went up into marketing, but yeah in my opinion

LINDSEY: I don’t work with clients. I am a certified health coach, but obviously I’m not health coaching if I’m hosting. And I’m not a licensed therapist. I don’t have letters behind my name. But I do want to share my why. And I want to share listening and I want to share it for you because establishing my lie is. What made me go like with my food blog, that’s what actually still pays my bills is my food blog. Even though I don’t really work on it cause it has ads. But with my food blog, I was just like, basically I like making food and I want to take pretty pictures of my food. And I want to have a bunch of people who follow me and make my recipes. And then I want to generate enough traffic to my website that I can then make money. Then whenever it became about I want to help, like I get questions all the time about how to feed a family healthy foods. That they can afford. And when families are busy, like how would you do that? And then in 2018, I completely rebranded my website and I made my Y all about I’m going to teach you how to make uncomplicated healthy food, like busy families, like picky kids. That’s what I’m going to do. And so all the nourishing things was born out of that.

And it’s great. It’s been really successful for me. The reason why I started the podcast was because I’ve been through this journey of trauma and healing, my own trauma. And I realized that it’s like a lifelong journey. Like I’m never going to be done, but I also am not like camped out in the leg. I have to be healing trauma all the time. I’m not, it’s as things come up like this conversation with you, it’s obviously I have some financial trauma and I need to work on it. So that’s where my mindset is going to be directed next. But I started the podcast because I had to do so much digging and research on my own in the early days of trauma recovery for me, because I literally came out of suicide attempt, so it was like life or death for me and nobody was coming to save me. And so it took me a couple of years before I finally started the podcast. I didn’t know I was going to start a podcast when I started it. But my why for that was because. I see how capitalism has turned healing, trauma air quotes into an industry.

And it’s all about the glitzy that, the therapists on Instagram. And it’s all about like the fancy books. I’m not saying books aren’t helpful. Like of course they are, but nervous system education and trauma education should be available and accessible to everyone. And that is my why for one podcast exists is because I don’t believe that you have to have letters behind your name to have this conversation or go up and have a voice. Like obviously I’m not providing therapy to people and I would never attempt to do that, but I think that it’s harmful whenever it’s like, Because people have asked me, what are your credentials? That’s the, yeah, the castle contrary, just waiting for a reason to jump. Yeah. And I’m just like my credentials are that I have trauma.

Everyone has everyone should be able to talk about it. And everyone deserves access to resources for healing. And if my podcast can be like a jumping off place for somebody to be like, Oh, I was trying to mantra my way out of a trauma response all this time. Actually what I need to do cause it’s not working for me then that is giving everybody a voice and a place at the table. And so getting really clear on my life for the podcast has been huge for me, but I have to admit that I have struggled with taking the next step. I just launched a membership called the trauma healer circle and I’ve, it’s been very difficult for me to take that step. And it’s almost because I don’t have confidence in myself with that yet. It’s almost like the people on the other side of the screen or on the other side of the, listening to this and their car or whatever. It’s if I am not conscious of the energy that I’m putting out there. They may not be conscious of it either, but there’s still, like our ideal customer or our avatar or whatever. I think that they can subliminally sense when we have these beliefs about ourselves, because it comes across in the way that we present it to them.

SORINA: Yeah. In the way we present it. Definitely. Definitely. I feel like it’s more tangible than maybe many people make it seem like it’s the energy behind the words, but sometimes that the energy makes you say things like, as I said, you’re not the very competent voice that you have this thing. And one thing that came up for me is you said that is that we also have you had the kindest intention to make trauma healing available for everyone, especially for those who are listening, need content for free. And the thing is that you want to do this, it requires time effort. You need to pay your bills, you need to have your own things. And so it’s so important because out of kindness and I see this with a lot of kind people, they feel. Almost a strain to make sales or to share something because there’s this, like I’ve started this because I want to help people. And now I realized that I want to continue this, but in order to fully have to like fully put my attention here, I have to give up my other projects.

And so I need to make money out of this. And so that’s why when we first transitioned from not asking for money and actually creating something that’s free. We go into this idea that it’s wrong or that’s where we are bad in a way. And I feel like given the society sees helpers, and this is what I’ve wrote. Read that about sales these days in my posts that we see people who are sending us bad. It’s they’re only after the money. But it’s also about us reframing and other people reframing how they see us selling, because that may be their own financial trauma that is being projected or their own fear of money, even because money is still a taboo topic.

And we are scared when someone is asking for money. We like, wait, why are you doing that? And the thing is that everything has a price. If you’re on YouTube, you’re going to look at ads. If you’re on podcasts and you, like you said, you didn’t monetize your podcast right. So far because you wanted people to have free access. And so it’s about actually looking that we need to leave and many things that are free also have something that we need to pay for. Like even Instagram you don’t pay for content, but you pay for the internet or whatever that is. And so there’s only something that we need to understand. It’s not only always very, it’s an exchange.

And of course, I also like the balance that I found here was having like my paid services allow me to feel comfortable enough and financially stable so I can have a lot of time to write free posts. I provide a lot of value in my posts. And so to be able to give back in my, on my, you might post, which has no other intention than helping others. I need to actually charge what I’m worth in my programs, in my courses. And so this is how I see it. You’re still going to create podcasts that are going to be free. And so free content is for those who want to, who don’t have the money to financially invest. And if someone has the ability to invest in your community group they can do and it’s more like an invitation. I created this cool thing. You have these options for your page and you can choose no one forces you to do anything. And only when we see sales as this needy energy, we may be like, yucky. I don’t want to do that while you can just create your thing. No it’s worthy and then show up and present it to people and be very Unapologetic about it. This is my thing I believe in it. It may not be like what you want, but it’s like what I felt driven to create right now. And just believing in that allows us to take the next step and to shift some of that shame around, off creating paid offers to say it like that.

LINDSEY: Yeah. So in the self study course that you’re creating, what are some of the things that you’re going to be including in that?

SORINA: Yeah, I actually created a step-by-step process in which you can shift your relationship with money and even The one in killing financial trauma, Unblocking Money. That’s how it’s called. And I am going to include many important, right the steps that I felt like were missing in my own experience. And it’s starts with uncovering your main beliefs. So you can understand your root cause like your main blocks or the unhealed trauma. As I said, the unworthiness wound scarcity, financial trauma actually poverty. How does that show up? And it also allows you to, I’m going to include the step in which you can not only learn how to make money, but how to keep money, which is a different reality. And this has been my biggest breakthrough. As I started earning more, I realized that this is one of the most important topics because no one teaches you that it’s not enough to want it.

Once you have it in your reality, you have to be familiar with having it. Otherwise you’re going to push it away. And that’s the thing with people who win the lottery and spend their money in a year. It’s because it’s so unfamiliar that we need to get through. It’s like I that’s too much responsibility. And so I’m going to to include all these chapters and I’m going to also include a few meditations that people can do at home. So they can shift the survival responses that they go to when they notice that financial stress coming up, I used to have this, it had some with the reviews, I included it in previous courses. And it’s just about pre-wiring those survival responses in my floor of where that’s how trauma may show up in our bodies because that is the store trauma in being able to release that. So we can then shift our mindset.

LINDSEY: Nice. Wow. I’m excited. Is like breakthrough stuff. And I just want to thank you for coming on and having, like you said, money is still a taboo subject. Like I feel like people are like more willing now to talk about their sex lives than they are talking about. They’re fighting, and there’s so much like shame and comparison and guilt and like weird stuff. Associated on your bed. And it’s no, actually, like I’m not trying to be a billionaire. I just want to pay my, take my family on vacations.

SORINA: Yeah exactly. And one thing I wanted to note here, because I feel like it’s so important to mention this. There are a lot of people who say, okay, you, so do you mean that people who are really in poverty should change their mindset or can they heal their money trauma? And what I say. And this is going to help a lot of people not need to attack or come in up that because a lot of people get triggered this top. That’s why I always say disclaimers, but what I say is that, okay, we do not all have the privilege to work through money trauma because we may actually experience true poverty. And so we don’t talk about that. But what I say is, if you have internet, have food on the table, if you have a roof over your head, you have the privilege through to work through your trauma. And so that allows you to be able to support and help those who don’t. Since I started making more money in my business, I started helping my mom and my brother pay for his therapy and so on because it’s me being a source. I can work. I have this awareness of over my time trauma and I can give back and donate to cause causes that maybe I believe in and let other people who don’t have the same privilege as I have. So yeah, I do think it’s a privilege to have this ability to work through financial trauma.

LINDSEY: Yeah. Honestly, it’s a privilege to have the ability to work through any trauma. And again, that’s what I started this podcast is because a lot of information you have to buy and people who can’t afford therapy. People whose insurance doesn’t pay for therapy, people who can’t afford books, like wha what are those people supposed to do? Just be stuck and keep repeating the patterns of trauma in their lives. And then it becomes ancestral trauma, generational trauma that affects their finances. Like it affects everything. So it’s okay for us to pay therapists and authors and all of that for their work, just like it’s okay for me to be paid, to have my podcasts. But my levels of membership is it’s $5 a month. And it’s basically thank you for providing this podcast. You’re free. The other one is, it’s like $25 a month and that’s. It’s like for people who want to go even a step further and they want more podcast episodes and they want, to have a Q and a session with you, or they want to have a Q and a session with one of my other guests or with me.

And like you’re going to pay a hell of a lot more than $25 a month for A book or a therapy, therapy or whatever. And I’m not saying that those aren’t good tools to have like they’re great tools to have, but I understand that those tools are not always accessible for everyone. And so sometime. We have to do the best we can with what we have and making a $25 a month investment to get more information about trauma and nervous system education is that may be exactly what you need to keep going forward until you get to the point where you can afford therapy or afford to buy a course or so.

SORINA: Yeah. And I just had something that I wanted to share because I started helping people heal financial trauma, because a lot of people were telling me I want therapy, but I don’t have money for it. And so I promised I’m going to share more on this topic because it’s going to help people say you have. You wanted to have a therapist, get out the, for that. And now you have this ability to work through your money trauma , then that would allow you to give best in your membership. As you are now giving this to, to your listeners for free. And then they can understand, and them hearing their money, trauma benefits us all because they are going to be able to invest in you. Since I started or anymore and feeling safe with earning more and keeping it and spending money. I actually invest in a lot of causes that I believe in or in a lot of people that I see, they put their salt. And I feel like when you heal money trauma, $5 to support something that helped you is basically nothing.

And this is why this information is going to change lives, even because it’s going to help people feel different about money and that’s why you’re also going to notice that you’re going to feel more yeah. Clean when it comes to people investing, because if they feel like $5 is too much, that’s definitely some financial trauma , if you still fear spending $5 on supporting someone who helps you, then you may need to look at that as well. And so I feel like this word benefits a lot of people and especially also couples, I saw a lot of couples divorcing because of money. And so financial trauma is so needed, and this is why I’m so grateful that you decided to talk about today.

LINDSEY: Yeah, that actually, I do want to ask you that question. There’s so much nuance here, right? There’s such a great, the amount of money that I make every year might be a goldmine to somebody or it might be like they couldn’t even live because it’s not enough. And I’m not going to ask you the question how do we know when we have enough? Cause that would be an impossible question to answer. But for me personally I talked about the question of what if I don’t have enough, what about having enough and that If I have money in savings, let’s say I have a thousand dollars in savings for a little while that thousand dollars in savings feels good. It’s okay, great. Had self enough to get to the point where I put a thousand dollars in the bank and now if I drop a pot in my sink and it cracks my sink and I don’t have the money in my regular income, I have this little fun set aside, that I can tap into. But for me, it’s almost like when it thought, when I got to the thousand dollars being enough, then it was like, no, actually $2,000, then that’ll be enough. And then it’s almost like even if the amount of money that I make or the amount of money that I saved increases. There’s still something in me that’s it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough and I’m not trying to amass just tons and tons of money because I’m selfish, it’s more of no. And if people saw where I live, like I live in a pretty humble, like w we’re not wealthy, that’s for sure. But, and I’m not trying to be wealthy. I want to be comfortable. Like everyone wants to be comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with comfortable.

SORINA: Yeah, definitely. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have enough money because, or more than enough, there’s nothing wrong with money when there’s no story around what money means or what does that say about you? And especially when the intention in which you make money is clear. I don’t show up asking people for money or I don’t show up with the intention of making money. I show up from my past and then money is the result of me dedicating so much time to help people. And that’s why I’m saying the why is so important, but when it comes to your story of not being enough, Again it’s the coaching question, the billion dollar question that we ask and it’s about, what does this sound like? Or what does this remind us all? Because we discussed today about it. And so it’s a very familiar thing to notice that our childhood stories may show up to date and this, especially with the, not enough. And so what I noticed with people with my clients, my client told me last week, so I had the biggest month ever.

And I still feel like it’s not enough. Why is that? And so we work on the car city mindset because if we don’t heal that unhealed trauma, if we don’t heal that root cause no matter how much money we have. It’s not going to feel like it’s enough. We think that more money means that I’m going to feel safe, but actually what’s going to feel safe is your nervous system feeling like it’s safe to have money. And so this is why the keys always in healing and it’s like wanting a partner to be happy from there. But then the partner is here and you don’t feel happy because you have trauma. It’s the same principle. It’s about shifting our core ones around money, and then it’s going to feel enough. And I don’t think it’s about as I said, I noticed all of the like six figures, six figures people making telling me that is not enough. This story can always come up. And enough is when it feels like it’s enough. Like for me, I don’t necessarily check my bank account and that’s not to call myself vain or something. It’s not that I have millions of dollars or whatever, but I know that I’m safe enough.

Like I have enough. I don’t have to worry of running out of. And I also don’t have to put a lot of pressure on myself. It just feels like a relaxation, like a breeding of just sweating and feeling okay, I don’t have to worry. And this is how non trauma looks like. It’s when you’re relaxed, when you’re, when you feel like it doesn’t mean anything and that money, he is this neutral resource that it sound limited. It, even if you run out of it, you have the capability to have the the strategy, the tools to always meet more or to survive because it always comes down to survival. And this is what I would look at. If I used to feel the same, I would get messages that people paid me and I would feel like. I don’t enjoy it because it’s going to anyway, I’m going to spend it on bills and so on. And so that’s why it gets like, the mind is going to go into the yeah.

LINDSEY: Wow. Yeah. As you were saying that very last thing about how you get money from people and then you were already like, thinking about how to spend it. If I get if somebody pays me $200, I get that $200 in, I immediately think now I can pay for this.

SORINA: Yeah, exactly. It goes there and there, then it feels because you’re so used to lack. And not necessarily you, but when we do this, we are so used to lack that we go back to our familiar and that’s why it’s so important to create this new familiar. Once we transform that trauma, we are able to create a new, familiar emotion around money. So we no longer are rejected. And so this awareness is great, but that’s exactly how I used to be like, yeah. So even if I get like $10,000, I’ll just pay my credit cards and that would be, and when now when I get money, I just, I’m so thankful because I know that for the money that I received, someone is going to get the healing that they want, they need. And it’s so infused in service that it no longer feels like lack. And it’s always. It always feels unlimited and abandoned. It’s it’s more like this just tells me that it’s more, that’s going to come and more. And trust me if you’re going to if you see me a year ago or one and a half year ago, you wouldn’t recognize me how I talk about money now and how I used to think about it. Like my partner would always be like, please don’t get angry again that you paid for groceries. I would get so anxious their own bang. $80 or whatever that was. And now I’m like, as I said, I don’t check my bank account because I don’t think it means anything.

I just know that I have enough. And if at some point I’m going to want it to be strategic or put my money in something or invest in something that’s going to be it. But as I. Wanted to not make it mean anything. It was easier for me. And especially if people think that looking at the credit cards or the bank statements make you feel in that make you go into that scar city. Don’t look at them, have an idea where you are try to not spend more than you receive. So definitely have some strategy. This work is not about spend on courses on the internet from your credit card, then not care how you’re going to get it back. It’s about feeling safe with money and being strategic. Yeah. At times, like I realized that I wasn’t able to save money that I still had that and I was trying to pay it off always. And it always felt like I was in like, in lack in what I did was to try to save some money so I can have more NC there. And then I started to pay off of my credit cards and it felt like a more bond.

So it just worked with myself and it’s always about, there’s no one size fits all here. What I always tell people is see what works for you, but try to work with your ways, not against your ways don’t work against yourself. Don’t add shame. This is not about adding shame. This is about bringing some awareness. So you can take a look at your patterns and see how you can take your power back in this relationship with money as well. Take your power back and your relationship with money.

LINDSEY: Yeah, absolutely. All right. So Sorina, what is your course called?

SORINA: It’s called Unblocking money.

LINDSEY: Unlocking money. I love it. And It’s available now, right? Like it’s just, yeah. It’s available.

SORINA: It’s waiting for the right people to find it, as I always say, because I think we’re always being led to the right resources for us.

LINDSEY: Yeah, absolutely. I will have the link for your new course Unblocking money in the show notes, as well as all the other ways that people can find you online and work with you for choosing to let this podcast be a place toq help launch your course. I can’t wait.

SORINA: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity to talk more about this.I’m really passionate about it. If anyone didn’t realize that yet, but yeah, I think I know you’re passionate about it and see your face here on the screen and listening. Like she’s just been lit up the whole.I’m so happy to help good people have money so they can do good things with it.

LINDSEY: He, I told you that was fantastic. Oh my gosh. I feel like we have unearthed the next thing in trauma healing, particularly for entrepreneurs and coaches. Who want to help people with money? So you can be an entrepreneur. You can be selling or doing anything. And Sorina’s course Unblocking money will benefit from you. And if you are a coach or a mental health, professional, or therapist, and you were wanting to help people with money, trauma and financial troubles and unblocking money in their lives, then you will be able to benefit from unblocking money too. So I’m so, so, so excited. I am already signed up for unblocking money. I cannot wait to dive into this course because this is something that I have, as you heard in the episode, struggled with for my whole life. And I’m so hopeful. Because I know that it’s not a life sentence. There is healing for those just as there is healing for all things never, ever, ever lose hope. You can find links for how to work with Sorina and how to get her new course, Unblocking money in the show notes on the episode. Show notes are found LindseyLockett.com Forward slash podcast. And this is episode 25 and as always, you can follow me on Instagram at I am Lindsey Lockett.

And finally, this is one last reminder of how you can financially support the holistic trauma healing podcast to help me continue making these episodes free and ad free so they are available and accessible to everyone who needs to learn about trauma healing and nervous system education. So I invite you to partner with me at the lowest level, which is $5 a month or the highest. level, which is $25 a month and gets you all kinds of extra perks. Learn more lindseylockett.com forward slash circle.

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