Episode 263: How Your Nervous System Shapes Your Money Habits with Stephanie Crochet
Have you ever had a phone call with your mother, and the next thing you know, you're in the pantry eating a ding dong? Yeah. How about those moments where you know you're about to look at your checking accounts, but instead, you get up and decide to go for a run?
What just happened? In those moments, what's actually happening is your nervous system has taken over to keep you safe and secure when you feel scared or uneasy.
Stephanie Crochet is a nervous system regulation coach, and I've been working with her personally. I have her working with the women inside the Abundance Academy, and the results are already pretty astounding.
When you regulate your nervous system, you really start to understand what you need to be at your best. Stephanie has over a decade of experience as a yoga teacher and a retreat leader, she's dedicated to pioneering holistic and preventative tools that empower women to live vibrant and thriving lives. With a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes everything from emotional well-being to financial potential, Stephanie blends practical tools, somatic practices, and compassionate guidance.
We're talking about how we react. Just that simple conversation alone is going to probably shift your entire day.
Becoming a nervous system regulation coach
Stephanie says she loves creating a safe space for women to be authentically themselves. Her passion began in teaching yoga; it’s where she found herself.
“So much of our habits and our beliefs and our patterns as women is shaped for us by society, cultures, environments we grew up in. And yoga gave me the permission to be myself,” she says. “I have a seven year old daughter. It's really important that I'm an example of a woman who is aligned in her body, aligned with what she values, knows how to make herself feel safe from the inside so that she can step into the world, be safe to be who she is.”
A regulated person is someone who is in harmony with themselves; they feel in balance. It doesn’t mean they’re avoiding bad or sad feelings or triggers, but they can be balanced in that state. For example, Stephanie says you could be an exhausted person but still be present. You wouldn’t try to numb, fight, or resist the exhaustion.
“When we don't know how to regulate, we are trying to seek comfort outside of ourselves,” says Stephanie. “Being able to hold space for both, which your nervous system has capacity for.”
Because our nervous system is shaped based on past life experiences and beliefs, everyone will react and respond differently when they are triggered.
“How we react a lot of the times is done on autopilot. So we might not even be aware of our reaction, and we might not even be aware of the response we're going to give to that reaction,” says Stephanie. “That actually is a dysregulated nervous system.”
Dysregulation is like an autopilot way of living, because you’re no longer in control of the action.
How nervous system shapes money habits
When women start dealing with money, making money, and managing money, we can get triggered. And our nervous system can shape our money habits.
Someone who grew up in facing scarcity might be an over achiever who can’t relax. They might hit a financial goal and won’t celebrate it because they feel it’s not enough. And someone who grew up in abundance might avoid a relationship with money because it was always there. They might not know how to handle it.
The four responses we fall into: fight, freeze, flight, and fawn. Someone who freezes gets triggered, and they can’t make decisions with money. The person in fawn is the people pleaser – they don’t know what their work is worth and don’t want to raise their prices.
“This is your nervous system handling that for you based on your past life experiences. Again it wants to help you feel safe and it only knows how to keep you safe based on what it knows. So this is what I mean about your nervous system shaping your money habits,” says Stephanie.
Finding safety in the body
“You wouldn't go after the thing that you're trying to expand, whether it's money, whether it's your career, whether it's a relationship,” says Stephanie. “You wouldn't do it if you didn't believe that you belonged on this Earth.”
Stephanie says it all starts with you. Asking what your relationship is with your body – not just physically but how you connect with yourself inside. How are you taking care of your body? How are you nourishing it? How are you nurturing it?
“We can't go after the big goals and do all the things and help all the people we want to help. If we're not first pouring into our own cup, that's also like safety right there,” she says.
The nervous system’s role is to feel. So, if you want to reshape your money habits, ask what is a practice that will fill you up, bring you joy and safety. Your nervous system needs a felt experience, a felt practice for it to integrate.
Look at the practices that are going to help you reshape your thoughts in your mind and create new neural pathways that then become just who you are. Understanding what you need in that moment before we take an action will look different for everyone.
“You have to start with an action. You have to start with a felt experience. And for everyone That particular practice is going to be different because we're all responding differently to how we're surviving right now in life,” says Stephanie.
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