All-or-nothing
Guest post by long-time member, Thea Wayne
My bank account either has $5000 in it or $0.
Sometimes it truly feels like there's no in-between. This has been the last decade for me. It's either payday and I magically find a home for every penny within a day or two, or it's at zero, and somehow I make that work for the rest of the month.
What's concerning is how comfortable I am with this. How comfortable I am spending thousands in a day, and how comfortable I am cruising empty for days or weeks at a time.
Even 6+ months into admitting I had a problem with money and spending, and 6+ money into my healing journey I am still actively working to shift this pattern.
Something we talk about a lot in the Club is cycles and specifically cycles around restriction and binging. When we think of this we may think of food.
But it's the same with money. When we are used to an extreme restriction (a budget that is too restrictive, or weeks of no money to spend except on food and necessities) when that chunk of change hits our bank account… We feel relief and safety, and then we feel the urge to get the dopamine that would be released if we “treat ourselves” (binge) after so many weeks of extreme restriction.
In fact, I experienced this just this morning. My pay schedule with my main freelance client got moved to 1x per month from 2x per month which has been hard for me to budget for even though I'm making the same amount of money. It's honestly been such a stretch…
I've had $0 in my bank account for a couple of weeks and so today when a client signed up for a TikTok intensive I'm teaching in Austin and $900 hit my bank account not only did I feel like I could breathe again, but I also begin finding myself on Amazon, Aerie… All of those items I'd been daydreaming about getting the past two weeks and I want to press purchase so bad…
So something I like to say is it's not about how our patterns and behaviors look with money when we are broke… It's what our patterns and behaviors look like on payday. 👀
If this resonates I just want you to know you aren't alone. I also want you to know that shifting your relationship with money isn't linear, it's a slowly trending upward graph with lots of plateaus and ups and downs. 💖
Hugs, Thea