Underneath the safety story sat something even more tender. When Joe asks what the woman truly had to “work hard” for as a child — since it was never really money — the answer is attention. She learned that being seen had to be earned. So Joe invites her to let in the praise and attention waiting for her right then, without working for it, and the response is immediate: a small flash of pain. The pain of being seen.
This is the engine that turns money into a problem. Whatever is most important — money, love, recognition — gets converted into something she must earn, precisely because receiving it freely means being seen, and being seen hurts.
“Because being seen is painful, whatever the most important thing in your life is something that you make something that you have to earn and therefore push it away.”
So the financial constriction was never financial. It was a way of keeping at arm’s length the experience of being fully received. The cure isn’t to chase money harder; it’s to let oneself be seen, which she discovers she already allows with the people she loves most.
Related Concepts
- A money block is usually a safety block in disguise
- We push away the approval we seek
- Money is a screen for projection
- Money is a teacher reflecting your projections back to you
- Work you enjoy stops being hard work
- Money blocks usually mask a deeper relationship with safety
- Money resistance often mirrors childhood wounds around love and worth