77 | The Water Code: Feel It Fully or Repeat It Financially

Find out your money attachment style: https://cosmicb.link/quiz

You want to feel safe, but you won't look it in the eye. You want to heal money, but you keep walking by. You've done all the work – the mindset, the spells, the journaling – but when it's time to get in the stream, you freeze or flail or retreat to the dream.

Here's the truth: healing isn't passive, it's relational. And your money wounds don't heal in isolation – they heal when you actually engage with the numbers, when you stay present with trembling hands, when you prove to your nervous system that it's safe to feel it all.

In this episode...

❤️‍🩹 Why money wounds don't heal in isolation and what changes when you actually engage with your numbers

🛠️ How secure money relating is built and why mindset work alone will never get you there

🌊 The role of nervous system safety in creating sustainable financial flow

💫 What shifts when your emotions are integrated into how you manage money instead of avoided

💦 How structure supports water – building river banks and irrigation lines that flow toward what matters

This isn't about crying your way to clarity or thinking your way out of pain-born patterns. It's about building the channels to intentionally move your feelings through while creating containers that let your money nourish exactly what matters to you.

Because water without containment floods and disperses, but with the right structure, it transforms into the irrigation system that waters every garden bed of your life.

🎙️ Brought to you by Lauren Poppins Raye

Find out your Cosmic Money Style: https://cosmicb.link/quiz
Align with your Cosmic Currency Codes: https://cosmicb.link/currency
Leave a Cosmic Coin Drop review: https://cosmicb.link/review

Connect with Lauren on Instagram: @laurenpoppinsraye

Transcript

0:58

You want to feel safe, but you won't look it in the eye. You want to heal money, but you keep walking by. You've done all the work, the mindset, the spells. You've sat with the shame and journaled your hells. But still, when it's time to get in the stream, you freeze or you flail or retreat to the dream. You've called it a block, you've blamed it on fate, but a wound only softens when you relate. Because healing's not thinking it's action that lands. It's showing up gently with trembling hands. It's tending your numbers when you'd rather numb. It's proving you're safe with the thing you run from. If you're ready to relate in a new kind of way, let's turn toward the current and choose to stay. Last episode, the first in this element series, we lit the fire. Talking all about the aligned strategy that moves and motivates you, but fire without water dries up fast and is much more destructive than it can and needs to be. Because until you're safe to feel and bring water into the equation, you'll just keep stalling where and when it matters most. This is the power of water, the element of healing, the part of your money story where old emotions still live underwater and are a part of where you're coming from. While you can't cry your way to clarity, you also can't think your way out of patterns that were born from pain, from past influences, from deeply entrenched parts of you that have to be honored and brought into the fold if you're going to be able to authentically and wholeheartedly make your way forward into the future you envision for yourself with money. Water needs form to flow, which is why we don't just process feelings, we build the channels to intentionally move them through. In this episode, we'll talk about the nervous system of your money and how intentional systems, like river banks and irrigation lines, let your money flow exactly where it's meant to go and how you're designing things to be able to channel and point it, direct it to fund what matters to you. Because ultimately this is the win that healing is trying to get us to, but healing isn't passive, it's relational. If you're willing to stay with it, this element will change everything. In this episode, we are going to flow through why money wounds don't heal in isolation, and what changes when you engage, how secure money relating is built and why mindset work alone will not get you there, the role of nervous system safety in creating sustainable flow, what shifts when your emotions are no longer avoided, but integrated into how you manage your money, and how structure supports water, building river banks and irrigation lines that flow toward what matters. First to state and unpack what may be obvious, but I can say for myself, was not something that I lived by in my lone wolf tax preparer days and has since created so much opening in my life. Which is why money wounds and any other wounds do not and cannot heal in isolation, and what changes when you engage with yourself, with it, with everything around it. Healing your money story does not happen in your head. It doesn't happen in the echo chamber of your mind, it happens in relationship. While I am of course talking about your relationship with yourself, your relationship with other people close to you that have a role to play in your money game, I am first and foremost, in this episode, talking about your actual relationship with money. Because the thing is you have to interact with it to change how it feels for you. This is why no money mantras, no journaling prompts, no healing modality on its own can substitute your actual presence and skill building and behavior shifting around how you show up for it and tend it. On the flip side, when you avoid the numbers, you avoid the intimacy that is available to you there, and is the opening through which you are able to create the relationship that you want with it, so that it can actually serve, show up, and support you back. And you miss the chance to truly repair the rupture, which is the healing work I'm sure you've spent many moons circling around that access point of intimacy to engage. So whatever that's looked like for you, whatever healing work you've spent so much time and energy trying to change your money story, that hasn't worked. It's because, again, you have to actually be in relationship to it. Just like any other, just like your relationship to the divine, or the beloved, or however you frame the other, and partnership. If it's all in your head, if it's all in your heart and the echo chamber of your own experience, but isn't actually bouncing off of anybody else, you are not going to actually shift things. It's going to seem like it, it might feel cathartic, but the phenomenon illustrates the truth that we go faster alone but further together. That's why this work of changing your relationship with money, of actually healing what exists in the past for you, as you move toward a future where you show up to tend it better, is not just about feeling better, it's actually about relating better in real time and the results that that brings you. Let's talk about how secure money relating is actually built. If you are familiar with the attachment styles in relationship, they also work very well to understand where you're at with your relationship with money. And in so doing, let's double down on why mindset work alone will not get you there. So if you're not already aware of the attachment patterns and styles in relationship, there is anxious and avoidant attachment, which often attract and pair together to exaggerate and bring out the patterns of each other. There's also disorganized, which is like a flip flopping between the two. And all of this territory is in contrast to secure relating and secure attachment. The thing about attachment patterns is that they don't shift through awareness alone. So if you are aware of them and you still find yourself stuck in the patterns of them, this is why. So hopefully you have a frame of reference for what these are. I'm going to ground them into our understanding of specifically your relationship with money. Anxious attachment is when you chase money for reassurance, when you're often checking your financials compulsively, but without any real rhythm or strategy, and when you are in a space of reactivity from that anxious place. Avoidant is maybe more so obvious, ignoring it, neglecting it, maintaining distance because you just don't want to look at it or face it. But of course if you're familiar with this pattern in yourself or with someone close to you, this does not make the problems go away, right? Avoidance brings its own heaviness and has its own burden to bear. Especially with money, and this brings us to why most people are not, this isn't like a black and white thing, you're one or the other, you typically have a tendency to lean one way or the other, maybe especially in certain relationships. But often there's a tension that builds with an avoidant orientation to money till eventually you do look at it and face it and experience a lot of anxiety for the state that you've left it in through your neglect. On the other side, the holy grail, that if you are a conscious relating person and aware of these spectrums, we are always moving toward secure attachment. Secure relating, which only happens when you stay. When you stick around, when you find that upright sweet spot orientation whereby you are neither leaning in anxiously nor leaning out avoidantly. You stay, you're present, you just, you're there. With your fears, with your truth, and with whatever the task at hand is in any given moment to responsibly show up intended. And for a quick personal share, I don't make this connection between the attachment patterns, the intimacy styles of relating with money simply because it makes sense in my mind. This is something that I personally experienced, which most of us have some story to tell around this, but I can tell you this story now from a place of having found secure attachment in my relationship and in my marriage. But this was after years and many moons of other versions that came before me where I repeated the same anxious, avoidant cycles in relationship. I was often the anxious one, though sometimes swung the other side. Ultimately, I always chose intensity over intimacy, and those relationships did not last. Probably for the best though, because in them my nervous system could never settle. It stayed in near constant activation. This was until finally meeting the man that would become my husband. The, at the time, seemingly relatively air quotes,"boring choice", that really deep down, a part of me knew, like maybe a part of you knows and hears the truth in what I'm saying right now with money, that was the correct choice. Because what I realized through actually experiencing it is boring is what safety feels like when you're used to chaos, it is the other side. The relationship I'm in now has given me a safe place to land and a space to feel what ultimately I had been running from and never really felt safe to sit and be with with anybody else. Of course our relationships are just mirrors. But for a long time, I chose reflections that didn't allow me to have a very healthy relationship with my own emotional body until my current one. And that's exactly what I'm pointing to in what's possible with money, and what we're building toward in this episode. Understanding that a relationship with it, that you can actually stay in, that you choose to stay present to is one that becomes one that supports your emotional body and doesn't require you to pretend or perform and breaks you out of that cycle of anxiety and avoidance that often comes to a head every year during tax season. If you know, you know. By the way, if any part of that story sounds familiar, if you can relate, this is the moment to pause and name what you're in. Because you can't build a secure relationship with money, which is what you actually want, if you don't know how you currently relate to it. The only way to get to where you want to be is to identify where you are right now. That's why I created The Cosmic Money Style Quiz. Takes less than five minutes. You'll find out what your money attachment style is to help you identify your current pattern, whether it's anxious, avoidant, disorganized, or emerging secure. If you're one of the lucky ones that's done the work already, you'll get personalized insight language for your patterns. After you take the quiz, you'll get all sorts of helpful resources, personalized insights, a voice note to support you with where you are right now, language to better understand and identify the pattern that you're in, and next steps to make your way towards secure relating, secure attachment, financial security with money, not in theory, but in practice, by showing you the way to actually walk the path there. If you haven't already taken my free quiz to find out your money attachment style, you can go to cosmicb.link/quiz and take it right now. Or if you're busy, go ahead and pull it up so you have it on screen in your browser to circle back to when you have a moment. That's cosmicb.link/quiz. In case this way of understanding money is new, falling on your ears now as I'm speaking of it, let's look at why the role of nervous system safety, which is what exists when you have secure attachment, secure relating is so important and necessary to create sustainable flow when it comes to your money management. When your system is overwhelmed, whether through anxious or avoidant attachment, it will always prioritize escape over engagement, whether that's actual avoidance or focusing on the things that don't actually matter that are just spinning your wheels if you're on the anxious side. Just like a nervous system that's consistently activated in, borderline or maybe not so borderline, toxic relationships and intimate relating, the key is never more willpower or force. In those past relationships, I couldn't will myself to get us to a place of safety. The key is getting the right support, having the right mirrors and reflections to actually support you to get there. It seems like poetry to look back on how it all unfolded because, of course no, those past relationships were not a space that I could be consistent in, that felt sustainable for me. So I didn't continue showing up or leaning in. Those relationships ended in big part because my nervous system could not feel safe within them. I hope you're seeing the parallel here and having some light bulbs go off, some ahas around wherever you are with your relationship with money from the anxious and avoidant end of the spectrum to being insecure relationship with it, and that you're really starting to see the blissfully boring invitation to you on the other side. Once you're there, you can actually chill out around money and a whole new world opens. Of course, whole other creative arcs and problems to solve, but it doesn't have to be about money anymore. Instead, it can feel more like a game, that feels like it was designed for you specifically, that you love to show up to play and to raise your high score inside of. Nervous system safety is kind of everything, right up there with how important alignment is. This is why healing can't be rushed. It has to move at the pace of trust that is supported by a regulated nervous system. Here's what shifts when you aren't avoiding your emotions anymore, when you're able to relax and create space for them within yourself and inside the environment of your closest reflections, and instead are able to integrate them into your flow and in this case, into how you manage your money. Because emotions around money are not the problem, they're totally normal and they're part of the process. In fact, one way that I love to create space for and frame them, inside the work that I support clients with, is that they're the setup for the climax of your money transformation. That's why we kick things off with the Finance Fable Fairytale that takes your past, present, and future with money, rich with those emotional undertones, and turns them into story that your unconscious accepts and your nervous system feels safe to welcome. When you bring them into your story and into your practice, instead of trying to suppress them or make them go away, your relationship changes. It gets richer, it becomes more unique and curated to you specifically. In that space of the feelings that make you you, this also includes your desires, which are such an important piece of the work of right relationship with money, because if you're not in touch with them and including them and integrating them into your pursuit of money, the whole game loses its meaning because you're not here to build toward arbitrary metrics or match someone else's version of success that you've heard brag in your industry. Water shows us that real aligned growth starts by tuning into what you feel, what you desire, what lights you up, what nourishes you, what you really want, deep down. Part of the power available to you, should you choose to integrate desire into the equation, is the potency of your visualizations to call in the timelines that bring you what you want. In case this isn't a practical practice for you already, know that visualization is not just woo, though it does feel like pure magic, it's actually how your nervous system rehearses safety and aligns with the resonance of the normalcy of what you want. It is what collapses the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. When you imagine the life that you want through your feeling body, not just the things, not just the amounts that would afford them, though that part is very important too, but the feeling of being supported and living that lifestyle that you envision for yourself, you create a true energetic blueprint for your money to follow and fund. That's how the game of money becomes an intimate one, not based on performance or bragging rights or some endless chase of a dollar amount, but on the devotion and execution to your own vision. Of course no element exists in a vacuum, they all work together, so let's ground into how structure supports water, through the metaphors of building river banks and irrigation lines that help you to direct the flow of your currency toward what matters. The metaphor really is revealing, water without containment, without some kind of container to hold it, floods, disperses. But with the right structure, with the right containment, it nourishes. Have a glass of water that you can drink, or a hose that can water your garden, that's why you don't need to get it together and trap yourself into systems and structure, that feels like a trap at best and at worst, the ultimate turnoff. What you need is to build containers, intentional systems that work with your flow, that support it. Think of your income, your revenue as a river. Without banks, it floods. With channels it flows exactly where you want it to go, and it gains momentum. Now, this is the metaphor I've used for a long time, it's the simplest. But more recently, I've been feeling really drawn to the refined metaphor of an irrigation system. Because where, yes, we can think of our relationship to our currency flow and our capacity as a river with the banks that support it. But true mastery along this path is to intentionally direct that where you want it to go. It's the streams, it's the tributaries, it is the irrigation system that you build, pipe by pipe, to water every garden bed that matters to you. Every investment, every expense, every savings fund that makes you feel like you're truly crushing it with your money game and setting, not just you up for success, but also your future self, your family legacy stuff, the people that will come after you, what you're gonna leave behind. This is where it gets strategic and intentional. This is the potential of water when we see it through the metaphor of irrigation channels. This is how we stop framing structure as restriction. If you are a magical freedom valuing person, and instead, start seeing it as a ritual of care and a claiming of your creator role. You are not just tracking your money like a chore because it's part of compliance as a business owner, you are tending it with care to tell it where to go to your life, to your rest, to your future, to all the things that matter. I say this on repeat because if the money you're making is not funding what matters, what are you even doing? Do you even have a real business? Sometimes I bet it doesn't feel like you do. If you take nothing else from this episode, I hope it's that your feelings matter, even in your business, even when it comes to your money flow, maybe especially when it comes to having an intimate relationship with your money flow. So remember, your emotions don't make you bad with money, and your avoidance does not mean you're broken. It's quite normal to be at the step before the climax that brings you to financial security. It just means your system is still waiting for proof that it's safe to stay. So my suggestion, give it that proof. Stay. Be gentle, but be consistent. Be tender, but stay present. Most importantly, be and stay in relationship with it, even when it's messy and even when you don't want to. If you don't know where to start, start with naming what's here right now, where you are at this very moment. Take The Cosmic Money Style Quiz to find out. Let it show you your current pattern, and from there you get to practice your way into something new, something true, something that feels more like you. You can take The Cosmic Money Style Quiz to find out your attachment style in your relationship with it at cosmicb.link/quiz. I'll see you in the next one when we ground into the earth element.