Children develop emotional patterns during their theta brainwave years (0-7), when they’re essentially programming their subconscious. These patterns initially attach to parents — who determine what the child can and can’t do, whether they’re loved, whether they’re safe. When the child grows up and leaves the parents, those patterns need somewhere new to land.

Money is the perfect target because it now plays the role parents once did: it determines what you can and can’t do, it’s omnipresent, and you can project absolutely anything onto it. You can find evidence that money is good, bad, or neutral. It can represent love, power, safety, freedom, or oppression — whatever your childhood emotional template needs it to be.

“Mom and Dad used to be the thing that said what I could and couldn’t do. And now money is the thing that says what I can and can’t do. So it’s just natural for the emotional process to lay itself on top of money.”

This is why people’s money issues are rarely about money. The person who can’t ask for a raise is replaying the child who couldn’t ask for love. The person who hoards money is replaying the child who never felt safe.

“Money is a projection. What if that were true? When I take all the projections of money away, it becomes something I can’t name.”

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