Why do I shut down around anything to do with money?

Many of my clients share this as a major stressor, telling me something like, “Whenever money is mentioned, I just shut down completely! I am obviously bad with money.” Shutting down around money isn’t evidence that you’re “bad” with money. It isn’t a character flaw, not even a DNA strand! You aren’t born with this encoded into your system. It’s a response. It’s often physical before it’s anything else — going blank, tight shoulders, a wave of fatigue, a kind of numbness that shows up the second the topic comes up. That’s a nervous system response, and it usually points to something underneath — fear, anxiety, or a long history of being told you’re bad with money in the first place. One place this shows up is avoidance.

I think of Kasey, a client profile I will use today, a woman who is so afraid of her bills that she’d throw them in the corner unopened, or delete the payment reminder because she “just couldn’t.” It’s easy to say from the outside, “just open it.” But dang — that word “just” is loaded with shame. It implies willpower is the problem. It never is. This is about emotion, not discipline.

Here are two tools you can use to combat this “shut down” sensation.

1. Try this phrase the moment you notice it happening: “Oh, there’s that shut down again.” This helps you see it as a response, not evidence of how “bad” you are.

2. Apply curiosity and compassion by asking yourself, “What might this shut down sensation want to tell me?” Sometimes the answer is simply to take a smaller bite of the task in front of you. Shutting down can cost you dollars, sleep, relationships, and how you see yourself. These are things we can heal, together, slowly, without judgment. I’ve seen it happen. I want to help it happen for you.