Finding Brave Epis 327: Healing Your Money Blocks and Fears, with Catherine Morgan

Hello everyone. This is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created the show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of finding brave, and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful, and meaningful life, business, and career. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. Kathy Caprino here. I'm so happy you are here with us, and I'm so excited for our amazing guest today, Katherine Morgan. I have a feeling that what you get from this, it will be very eye-opening and very resonant. We're gonna use that word a lot today and speak to you in ways that a lot of conversations don't because they often don't go deep enough about what we will be discussing, which is healing your money blocks and fears. You know, Katherine, oh, there's so much to say and I'm so excited. Katherine's a dear friend and such a supporter and has been a teacher to me and so helpful and listening ears and so insightful. And I'm thrilled at what you're gonna get today. But I do wanna say, Katherine, you have such a wonderful way of helping us confront, maybe that's too hard a word, but confront things that we know have not been working for us, and we've tried a lot of things but we haven't gotten to the heart of it. And your work gets to the heart of it, I think. So let me tell you all about Catherine, but thank you for taking the time. There you are in the UK. I know it's late. You've got your dog and your child, your family to attend to. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I think this is the, the third time I think I've been on your show.

That's right.

I just thank you so much for giving me this platform to share this important work with your listeners.

Oh, you are so welcome. Thank you for coming back. That might be a record, 3 times. I think it might be. Yes. All right, everybody, let me tell you about Catherine. Oh, glasses aren't working. Here it is. Catherine Morgan specializes in financial well-being and money psychology, working with coaches, professionals, and service-based entrepreneurs, particularly women who experience patterns like financial avoidance self-sabotage, feast or famine cycles, undercharging, and putting others' financial needs before their own. Through The Money Panel, Katherine offers trauma-informed nervous system-focused approaches that address money as a safety and trauma issue rather than purely a mindsite problem— mind— mindset problem. Wow. I was thinking of something as I was reading that, that boy, is that accurate? That it's not just a mindset problem. Her work helps clients heal their relationship with money through somatic practices and psychological frameworks, including the 3 Money Zones: Receiving, Holding, Giving, Money Story Types Assessment, and the STRONG Model. And you're gonna learn all about that. There are links in the show notes below. Katherine, let us absolutely dig in. You know, I think we've talked about this before, but would you mind giving a little bit of background about why this is so important to you, why it speaks to you, why you noticed that there was such a need for this kind of work that wasn't there in the world a while ago before you and others introduced it? Will you give us that background?

Yeah, thank you so, so much. And like, just hearing you introduce the whole conversation today, I think that when I think about my relationship with money over the years, I think money is the deepest, most reflective, most interesting, most challenging conversation that we can have with ourselves because money is such a representation of how we feel about ourselves, how we treat ourselves. You know, those 3 zones you talked about in the introduction, the how we feel to receive, how we feel to hold, and how we feel to give is all really deeply connected into love, self-love, self-worth, and our deep connection with the most important relationship we have, which is with ourselves. And from my own experiences over my own life, I entered into money conversations at a very young age and was very privileged to be involved in money conversations through my work. I was a financial advisor from the age of 18. I think I was the youngest female financial advisor in the UK at the time, and I was very privileged to have, um, a lot of exposure to money. And I navigated that whole experience through all of my 20s and all of my 30s, and was living myself in recurring cycles of debts and all the shame that I carried around being a financial advisor and having debts. You can imagine the guilt and the shame that I was experiencing knowing all of the information about how to budget and how to invest and how to manage wealth, and yet I wasn't doing any of it myself. And what I really discovered is that you can know all of the education, all of the knowledge, and yet there are still times when we self-sabotage, or when we don't feel deserving to receive money, or where we don't feel deserving to hold it. So we just get rid of it as quickly as possible. And, and that was my experience. And from my own lived experiences, I felt very deeply about helping others to get out of those sabotaging relationships and patterns with themselves. And of course, this opened up a whole world of psychology and somatic work and financial therapeutic work and financial abuse and all of the things that are connected to a woman's life cycle. So yes, I feel like I'm very privileged to have some personal lived experiences of those things, but I also am very privileged to be in a place now where I feel like I need to use my voice to share this with more people so that they don't sit in a place of shame and guilt around money. Gosh. Um, and that's why I'm excited to move into a, a future where we can have these open and deep conversations with one another.

Turning your mess into a message is what I call it, a little bit, right? And aren't we so grateful that you did? And, you know, almost every guest asks— I'm— I ask this question. You started early as a financial advisor, and you were around money. Was that decision, do you mind me asking, um, emerging from your childhood experiences and what you saw about money, maybe even subconsciously or unconsciously? Do you mind me asking?

No, not at all. Yeah, I mean, when I started to do the, the deep kind of exploratory work around money, I never even really considered how my early experiences of money had influenced my behaviors as an adult. And it's a really good starting place to think about some of your earliest memories around money. And I remember There was a couple of really vivid experiences that I had, and 2 or 3 that particularly spring to mind. One was when my— growing up in my family, I— my mum and dad were divorced when I was a very young age, and so I would live with my mum and I would go and visit my dad's. My dad was an entrepreneur and my mum just got by, right? And even just, even just in the dynamics of that, I learned so much unconsciously that it was okay for women to just get by and for men to be the ones making the wealth.

And it was okay, or it was the way it should be, actually.

Yeah, well, what we know about unconscious work is that the brain hooks onto these narratives and these experiences and these stories as if they were true, and that's not always the case. It's certainly not true that women just get by in society. There are many examples where women are out-earning men, especially nowadays, where women are making and earning more collectively than any other time in history, where women as a gender are able to, you know, to have the tools and resources to be able to do that. But what the brain does is it hooks onto pieces of certainty and evidence like a little catalog, like a librarian. And for me, that was one of my hooks, was that it's okay for men to be the main breadwinners and to control money as well. Like, my dad would pay my mum maintenance, and that maintenance was just enough for her to buy clothes for us. And there was also an element of coercive control with that, and some, you know, emotional abuse around money that you know, there was always arguments around, well, if you don't do this, I'm going to stop paying maintenance. You know, it was used very much as a coercive method of control. And so unconsciously, when you're growing up in an environment like that, or where perhaps money has been scarce, or you've grown up in poverty, you know, then all of your, your unconscious, your unconscious mind, your whole body actually is experiencing these environmental factors which can cause and create a nervous system response. And this nervous system response is known as trauma. But most people, when they hear the word trauma, think, oh, you know, all the big T stuff, you know.

Right.

But actually, the smallest experience is still a trauma to your nervous system. So an example of that might be where I remember when I was about 7 years old and I went on a family day outing. We went to this place in the UK called Warwick Castle.

Oh yeah.

It's beautiful, like, British castle. And me and my twin brother were, like, climbing this hill to get to the top of this mound where the castle was. And I remember as we came back down the hill, at the bottom of the hill was a drain, and my brother was carrying one of these money, like, cylinder pots around his neck on this, like, string so that he didn't lose his money. And I remember when we got to the bottom of the hill, he accidentally dropped this very thin cylinder money pot thing down the drain.

Oh no.

And I remember my mum being like, oh, you've lost all this money, how could you be so careless? And of course, that's the natural thing you would say to your child, right? How could you, you know, how could you be so careless? Just a very flippant, very very pass away comment, no harm meant at all by my mum. But interestingly, when I think about my brother's relationship with money, um, his, his patterns as an adult are very different to mine. So he really struggles to spend money. In fact, I think he had to go to a therapist when he bought his first motorbike because he just couldn't let go of money.

Of course, right? And of course, because there's so much shame and I don't want to be that person who— oh yeah.

And what's interesting is that of course his relationship with money was not just down to one experience, but a collectiveness of many experiences. And so when I think back to what are some of the money lessons that I learned, um, you know, I also learned from my dad that money is endless and that there are many ways to get creative around money. He had multiple businesses. He would literally run a business for 5 to 10 years and then he would close it down, sell it, and go to the next idea, build a new business in a completely different industry. It was successful, he'd sell it, and then he'd, he'd move on. And he would be property renovating as well at the same time, you know. So I learned so many things about how endless money is, how abundant money is, and how many opportunities there are in life. So I think when you look back at your early experiences around money, it's always important to do it from a place of compassion and from a place of, like, love and gratitude, you know, even if that experience may logically seem like it's destructive in some way or sabotaging in some way, there's always a little magic or a little lesson that we can take from that experience.

What a beautiful segue. And I just wanted to offer another example of that that I just unearthed, thanks to you, truly recently. Because what I think what we're illustrating here, Katherine, is that when we think of trauma, we think it's something that we— like war, or we see someone murdered in front of us, where anyone would have a challenge with that. That's not necessarily the kinds of things we're talking about. We're talking about even subtle messages that we internalized in a way that they may not have ever been intended, and that maybe someone else wouldn't have even registered, but our system did. So quickly, my quick example, and there's a thousand of them, and you and I talked about this. My sweet dad— no, my parents, you know, the first-generation Americans, they never talked about money. I didn't know what— Dad had a great job at GE. He's in heaven. Mom's in heaven. And he loved his job and he had 7 patents and he just loved it. And he loved to work, but we never— there was no understanding of money from my perspective. So, and he was so generous, paid for my college education. I went to Boston University, one of the most expensive colleges back then when I went. And he paid for it all. And I came home, you know, regularly. And he said, I must have said, you know, I've run out of money or something. And he said, what? What we, what would be helpful. As I remember it, he wasn't criticizing, he wasn't chastising. It was what would be helpful. What's needed is that you itemize what you spent, what you've spent. I remember thinking that, oh, he, it's cheap, is what I remember thinking, which is so not true. He was frugal. There, there's a difference. And he, he, I think he was trying to teach me This is important for you. Oh my gosh. But so what was I, 18? I remember that as a vivid moment that I don't want to be grasping with my money. I don't want to be worrying about it. I don't. And I felt controlled. And he didn't mean that. It wasn't intentional. But I believe that that very conversation— and I'd love you to talk about this sometimes we have one conversation and with another human being, they would just let that go and not internalize and not interpret. But the whole pattern became that things are cheap. I mean, uh, he's cheap.

He wasn't cheap.

They were frugal. They, you know, they had to watch their funds. We lived in a lovely house. But when I look back now, I see all of these— a web of difficult money, thoughts, beliefs, and relationships. That I'm going to be controlled, I'm not going to be able to do what I want to do. And as we talked about, I had that even in the corporate life, um, that I actually would say these words: I'll make a lot of money, but I'll feel like a prostitute doing it. I remember my son going, prostitute, Mom? That's a little rough. It's a little rough, isn't it? The point was I felt I couldn't be myself. Wow. Yeah, thank you. Feel that when you're earning money, you are going to have a difficult time with it, right, Katherine?

Yeah, thank you so much for— like, I know your listeners are going to love to just hear your own vulnerability around this conversation. And what I would love to invite back, if I may, Kathy, um, is The two things you shared there around, um, like I felt it was about control, control, and that I couldn't be myself. And when we take those two, so what I've done here just to like talk the, the listeners through this is what I'm doing is I'm listening to your language to really understand how does that language or those language cues directly link to our money stories and our money beliefs and We can take those two language cues, so the one around control and the one around not being able to be yourself, and you can dive a little deeper with this, um, and you can dive into when was an earlier time to 18 years old when you either felt controlled or that you couldn't be yourself.

Well, there it is, the ding ding ding. See how amazing she is, people? Um, and this, before I even utter this, Catherine, when I talk about parents or when I work with clients about their childhood, I want you to know this— it makes me cry, everything makes me cry on this podcast— it's not about blaming. It's not about blaming, because that keeps you stuck and that keeps you un-, uh, without agency. You know, it's his fault, it's her fault. I'm about to share about my mom, but what I'm trying to do and what I do with my clients is let's gain awareness, let's have eyes wide open about those factors that shaped you. But if you stay in blame and you keep blaming dad, who, you know, died 10 years ago at 93, you're stuck. And, you know, my sister helped me through that. I'll listen to the story as much as you— another story that you want to tell it, but I'm sad that you keep needing to tell it.

Ouch.

But I was instantly healed from that story. But to answer your question, I adore my mom, and she was the biggest supporter. Greek. Dad was Sicilian. And people know this if they've read my books, I could not speak up to my mother and challenge her. It went badly. I mean, I was never hit, but she couldn't process it. So she would go into her room for the day or withhold. I felt it was withholding love. She didn't mean it that way. She just couldn't handle it. So if you're a young person and you cannot even very res— even when you're doing it respectfully, can't say, I'm not sure that I agree with that, or let me, let me share how I view it. And I'm sure I wasn't always that, you know, calm and mature. I was young. But if I challenge her and say, I don't know that I agree, it went badly. Well, you marry that up with, you know, I felt I couldn't be myself.

Wow. Yeah. And again, thank you so much for sharing that reflection. Thank you. And I think a lot of people listening to this will really resonate with a lot of this because you can almost strip away money completely from what we're really talking about here, which is really about a deep sense of love and belonging and identity.

Yeah.

You know, our sense of self in the world. And so much of our early experiences around money have formed, uh, before the age of 6. Um, and in fact, all of our belief, our whole belief system has been formed before the age of 6. There's evidence as well to show through epigenetics that it goes back through 3 lineages, 3 generations before us, and we carry that in our DNA. So not only are we navigating our own filters and our own belief systems, but also those of other people before us. And there's a really interesting— for those of you that love to like geek out on science, I was actually talking to my youngest son about this yesterday, and we were talking about the reticular activating system, or the RAS system. Do you— have you heard about this, Kathy?

I have heard about it, but I'd love to hear your pers— your— how you use it and, and understand it and perceive it.

Yeah, it, it's essentially, if you think about our lived experiences, things that we are exposed to, whether that's through senses, whether that's through, um, influences, whether that's social media or certain people in our lives, certain friendship groups, all those kind of influences, that is information that comes into our RAS system, the reticular activating system. So it comes into the body, it actually comes into the body, not just into the brain, it comes into the body. And then if you imagine the RAS system is like a filter system, so it comes into our field, our energetic field, into our body, and then within our bodies, within our nervous systems, within our brain, we filter that information and those filters are influenced by many, many things— parents, religion, social media, um, educational systems, um, experiences, lived experiences. And then our body and our brain filters that information, and that creates essentially our belief system. And the brain doesn't know how to differentiate between whether something is true or whether it's untrue. So it just takes that information into our field. It filters out things that it doesn't want to receive for whatever reason, and it remembers things that it wants to remember. And so in your example that you shared, Kathy, when you were 18, then that filter system has already been created. So there would've been other experiences where your brain has also come to this conclusion that it is not safe to be myself, or it's not safe to be controlled by others. So that can create patterns with money. For example, where I've worked with clients around similar, uh, beliefs is where, you know, I have to be fiercely independent, I have to look after myself because no one else is going to do it, or because I don't want anybody else to take control over money. Um, it can also show up where we actually would rather just delegate the responsibility to other people because it just feels too heavy for us to do that for ourselves, you know, can go in completely the opposite direction. Um, and I think that the interesting question here really is knowing this, knowing that this is how your body is reacting, is that actually we can sit in a really beautiful place of acceptance and non-judgment that I am in this body, I am in this mind, my body has protected me, my brain has protected me, it's really served me. And it is also not from time to time where it has made these, these things to be truth when actually they're not. So you can start to question, is it really true that we can't give control to other people? You know, when has it been safe to be able to have a beautiful conversation with a trusted friend and be able to give away some of our own self-control to somebody else and be held and to be loved and to be, you know, held in that beautiful place. And what evidence is there that actually I can be myself? I can be myself when I show up on this podcast and talk about being vulnerable and courageous and brave and all the things that you talk about in your book. You know, there are times when it is safe for us to be ourselves, but there are also times where it hasn't been. And it's just sitting alongside that, sitting alongside that knowledge and going, do you know what? Like, this is who I am and this is my relationship with money and I am accepting whatever that relationship is, is what it is.

Kathy, this is so huge. I'm gonna offer one other thing and then I do want you to talk more about your frameworks and how you help people. But look, I'm getting so helped. I'm hoping you are, people. One of these issues where there's a clash that I want to go in a direction but I don't feel safe is, is spirituality, not religious religiosity, spirituality. And I've had a lot of experiences from being a therapist and actually seeing videos of my client's life, life that I had no information about. I just could feel it and sense it. And when you're not well-boundaried and these things come on you and you're not quite prepared, it can be very scary. And who are you going to tell? Um, so early on I had these kinds of experiences, and I still do. I just don't necessarily, you know, share them with the client immediately, what I'm seeing and feeling. But the point is, I remember there, there have been times where I've talked about spirituality in a way that can freak people out, and there's been negative repercussion, bad I've been hurt. So there's another part when I'm coming out here on my own darn podcast. I mean, if I can't say it on my own show, where am I gonna say it? That there is a part of me, you know, I did a retreat in Ireland with Lorna Byrne, who's an Irish mystic and unbelievable. And I was proud of that. And I didn't feel afraid that, you know, in the leadership sphere I would be criticized. But I bring it up because, and I'm gonna throw this out for you to think about, people, you don't have to embrace this if this doesn't feel right. But the way it works for me is that I believe I signed up for these challenges. I believe because I've seen other lives that I've had, and are they happening at the same time or past? Who knows? But I really believe that these are not random challenges and that my soul signed up for them. And I know a lot of people hate that idea because we can be in so much agony and pain in our human lives and who would sign up for it? And I understand I'm not trying to add pain, but I've gone through and am going through things that nobody really would want to. We want it to be a walk in the park, but when it isn't, when it's deep breakdown, I believe it can lead to breakthrough. I think that's the whole point, but it won't lead to breakthrough if we don't feel things differently, see things differently, approach things differently. And that's, I mean, really, we, we're not going to get to that breakthrough without shifting. And I think you are so amazing at helping people. And you're not just shifting our relationship with money, are you? It's, it's, you know, it's everything. It's who we feel we are and our meaning in the world and who we wish to be and who we wish to help.

Yeah, I mean, it goes so much deeper. Like, I just Love this conversation so much because what you've just shared there is exactly about the importance of just feeling. I think, you know, I don't know about you, Kathy, but certainly for me, when I think back to experiences in my life, there's so many instances where we're taught to not feel or to unfeel, like quickly get past the fear, or like, how long are you going to be sad about that?

Yeah, yeah, as long as I need to be sad about it.

Exactly. And I grow, you know, bringing up two boys, this is a conversation I've had with my husband so many times about. I feel like my job as a mom is to help my boys to feel safe to show emotion. And that's not always easy when you have a neurodivergent family either, where they are very sensitive to emotions and emotional responses, which is why the nervous system work is so important. But I think that When I think about spirituality and manifestation and law of attraction and some of the less logical, linear, uh, conversations around bringing money into your energetic field, I think what has put me off in the past is you, you either have somebody who's very in that manifestation vibe and it's all about manifestation, law of attraction, energy work, or you've got somebody in very high masculine who has no time for any of that feminine side. And I think we're moving into this world where it's about balancing out the two so that we can be in a place of understanding from a grounded perspective. How do we build money systems, bringing in some of the masculine, but also how do we sit in a place of feeling, And how do we sit in a place of actually understanding that wealth takes time? It, it isn't fast. It's not make 7 figures in, uh, in 7 days. You know, certainly there have been times in our society where it has been possible to make money fast. Um, and you and I, just before we hit record on this podcast, we're talking about how business is changing and evolving and the way that we make money is changing and evolving. And I think that there is a real richness in sitting in feeling, which supports our nervous system to go, do you know what, it's okay to take a pause, to take a breath, for it not to be a rush, for wealth to take time to be created and to evolve. And we're still going to be here in 30, 40, 50, 100 years' time. There's no rush. And it's only in those moments where we compare ourselves to other people or we start thinking about, oh, I'm 50, 'Now, like, I'm— I've only got, you know, 10 years till I retire.' We use these limiting language like 'only' or 'just,' or, you know, and, and it just brings our whole energetic field into a place of 'quick, you must hurry, you're running out of time,' and it puts us in this scarcity mindset, and it puts our whole nervous system into a state of fight, flight, freeze. So I think what I'm really sensing right now is that it is important to feel, it is important to be vulnerable, it is important to understand that we are shifting into a completely new way of being with money that is no longer something that is created overnight. It's certainly not something that is created in a masculine way, and it's also not something to create by yourself, right? We're moving away from independent financial freedom to collective financial freedom. This is the vision I'm holding for the planet. Like, how do we support each other to create wealth?

Oh, I love it. And I have to say, you know what comes to mind when you speak about this? Look at the creator culture, um, on Instagram, people making a million, you know. And I don't want to put anybody down, everybody's doing their best, and, and bravo to you when you have the ability to have 2 million followers doing what you're doing. And some of it— I'm on Instagram too, and I enjoy— I have a very rich feed of musicians and artists and farmers and, oh my gosh, coaches. Um, but I think when people see around them that someone has just gone on, just gone on Instagram and, you know, done these, whether it's silly videos or whatever, and is making millions, it is— it looks quick, it looks independent. Yeah, it looks like all those things that I don't think it helps us to think that that's how wealth will be.

Yeah, you're right, there's a lot of perceived evidence. I mean, there are, for sure, there are some creators in the creator economy who are making millions. I was having a conversation with someone the other day who literally set up an Instagram account less than 6 months ago, is already turning over 7 figures, and they are literally— there's an AI agent sits behind the Instagram account that is generating on autopilot content that's hitting an algorithm and is creating affiliate revenue, right? Great, a great economy for that, that entrepreneur. But what I do also see is that 80— I think they say 80% now of content is AI-generated. So we have to think about, well, if that is the case, we can see now that people are wanting to get away from social media. Now people are wanting rich human experiences, things that AI cannot create. So when I look at your work, Kathy, and I look at the deep and the depth of your work, the— that cannot be replaced by AI. And I think that courses and content won't be the vehicles or the methods of creating generational wealth, uh, in the very near future. And I think that creatives, people who are using their skills and their expertise and their humanity to maybe create an AI version of yourself that can support people, um, or that can run human-centered experiences that people will attend because they— their nervous system is shot to pieces from being online all the time, you know. I think that's where the value of our economy will move towards. And I think if you hold that vision of that for yourself, knowing that we will have to pivot, there will be some changes that we have to make in business which can be deeply uncomfortable, but the world is changing and we have to be able to sit in a place of uncertainty and trust that It will come. It will change. It will come. And the human connectors, the people like you who deeply care about people, are the ones that will survive this AI revolution.

Oh, beautiful. You too. I feel right back at you. You know, along those lines, and then don't let me forget to ask you, think about if, if you could only give people 3 frameworks or 3 ways to immediately feel some kind of revelation or shift? Or what do we give them in 10 minutes? I know that's easy and I didn't prep you, but I did want to say this. I, I love AI, and I created my own clone, uh, and I am now in talks with, or starting those talks with, taking my career path assessment, which is 13 pages of questions I wish someone had asked me, uh, you know, 40 years ago. And If I'd answered them, I don't think I'd made some of this— make some of the mistakes I'd made. But the point is, very quickly, in case you're all interested, uh, anyone who comes to me in a course or, uh, as a client, I review their responses and it takes me, you know, a full hour. And then I give the client my brain dump, 8 minutes of what I see— your wants, your challenges, your childhood, your traumas, what's really going on. And that 8-minute brain dump and that That hour of assessment is what lets people move forward. You know, some people have said, I got more in that one call than 6 months of therapy and coaching. And I don't mean to say this as a bragger, but I have a long lens of corporate, then therapy, then coaching, training, speaking, writing.

Yeah, I don't think—

I don't think anybody on the planet sees it the way I do. So I really want to train an incredible AI tool to think and see it like me. So it'll be affordable, it'll be quick for you, and you'll be able— people— and you'll be able to say, this is what Kathy's view would be. But that doesn't replace now what? Now I need the work and the support to move from that to this. And AI ain't gonna do it, people. I know because I'm on AI a lot. I've trained it a lot.

I think there's an opportunity here, for example, like you could take some of the content from your courses and your book, and rather than teaching in a course environment, you would actually put all of that content and all of that knowledge and wisdom and intuition into an AI agent or a, a GPT so that rather than teaching people a course, you are actually teaching them how to use AI to support themselves in taking your body of work and all of your knowledge and wisdom and helping to support them through the AI lens. Um, so yeah, you could have a Kathy Caprino— well, I actually do.

There it is, it's a Kathy Caprino.

There we go. So there, it's down below in the show notes.

This version has been trained by 150,000 words that I've written. Another version was 1.5 million words. Wow, that one was expensive. So enough about me. Here we go. Thank you for that. Now, can you, you have so many frameworks and we're gonna talk about an upcoming free call that you're giving, a free event, a free training. You give so much content. Sign up for Kathy Caprino and all the links you see below. And you have a lot of frameworks, some for coaches, some for financial professionals, some for everyday people. If you could give, you know, if it's one framework that has a number of, you know, pillars, the thing that you find you're saying over and over and over and over again? And I know you've written a best-selling book, so what do people need to know from you now when they're hearing, yeah, I do see myself in the trauma of, or the, the ideas that I have that are holding me back that I know are not helping me thrive financially?

Yeah, I, I think the one that I find myself referencing the most at the moment is a reference to your money parts. And money parts, if you like, comes from the concept of Internal Family Systems, or otherwise known as the IFS. And the IFS have a model of looking at how our lived experiences are with ourself, and we have these different parts of us that show up in order to protect and to serve us in our lives. And when I first trained in understanding money parts, or understanding the IFS parts model, I started to think about, well, how can this apply with money specifically? And when I thought about the different behaviors and relationship we have with money, I came up with these sort of 5 money parts and The Five Money Parts can be condensed, I guess, into three main parts. One is the, uh, the Protector part. So the Protector part is the part of us that wants to protect us from shame, that wants to protect us from danger with money. Um, and then we have the Desiring part. This is the part of us that does see the vision. It holds expansion for us. It holds risks and opportunities. You know, it's got this kind of very different energy to the protector part because it's, it's seeing possibility.

What's the name of that one?

The— I call it the desiring part.

The desire.

Yeah, the desiring part. Um, so you've got the protector part and you've got the desiring part, and then you've got the, the kind of the neutral part in the middle of those two. So a little exercise that I often find myself sharing with with, uh, with clients. And we actually talk about this in our Body of Wealth, which is a little 3-hour experience which we can reference in the show notes for all of you. Um, and this is where you can really start to listen and get curious to these different parts. So let me give you an example of when these parts can be in conflict with one another. So the Desiring part of you around money might say things like, I want to 'grow my business to 6 figures,' or, 'I want financial freedom and abundance,' or, 'I want to earn more than I did last year,' or, 'I want to scale and build something big.' And the protective part might say something like, 'Well, but if you earn more, will your relationship be threatened?' Or, 'Yeah, but growing means you're gonna have to hire staff, and that's really stressful and can take away your freedom.' Or it might say something like, 'Well, But what if it doesn't work? What if it fails? Right? So you've got these two parts. And what the conflict looks like is when these two parts are not in alignment. And so you get procrastination that comes up. You'll get distraction. So you'll get easily distracted by bright shiny objects, or you'll stay really busy with low admin priority tasks. Or you might check things off a to-do list without actually really moving forward towards the goal you're working towards. You might hit a plateau in your income ceiling, for example, and it just creates this, you know, you can really feel this internal frustration and conflict and you feel frustrated because you know that you want these things, but then you feel confused because you're sabotaging yourself. And then this leads into like, I'm so disappointed in myself. And, you know, this can lead to burnout. It can lead to a lot of stress. So that, that's kind of a, a bit of an overview, I guess, of those parts. Now, what I love to do, and this is the real opportunity, is once you recognize that these two parts are in conflict, then the first thing you can do is to acknowledge both parts. And the way I like to acknowledge both parts is by grabbing a journal or three pieces of paper And on one piece of paper, you can literally have a conversation with all of those parts. Have a conversation with the Desiring Part that holds that vision. Have a conversation with the Protective Part. And then you can have a conversation with a more neutral observer that is almost sitting there as the in-between part that is holding space to be able to look to one side and see and listen and hear this desiring part and then also with the protector part. And it can get curious about the protection, you know. It can ask the protective part what specifically feels unsafe about having this financial goal, you know. And it can turn to the visionary part, the desire part, and ask it, what, what vision do you hold, you know, and how do you feel about the protective part, you know, hearing the protective part say these things, how does that make you feel as the visionary? And vice versa. So you're essentially like creating alignment where both parts can work together rather than working in conflict. And I think that little exercise is a beautiful one to do. Like, if you're a business owner, you can imagine that you're going into a boardroom you're opening the doors and you're sitting at a boardroom table and you've got the protector part there, you've got your visionary part there who might be the CEO, and then you've maybe got another team member at that board meeting who's the peacemaker, the one who's seeing both sides of the conversation. And I love to, like, take clients into the boardroom parts conversation to just see what shows up.

I think— Tell me if I'm crazy. If you're thinking like a boardroom, is the CEO the visionary and the CFO is more the protector? Like, you know, I You're not doing that this year. No.

It could be.

Yeah.

I mean, if you've got a part of you that does feel like the CFO that's like, "Have you even looked at your numbers?" Oh my gosh, I love it.

And I think that each other can— because they have to come in alignment, otherwise it's always going to be friction and it's always going to be you have it and then you lose it or you whatever. Secondly, there's blind spots that we can't see. But this exercise allows us to be in a frame where we're seeing where the blind spots are.

Oh yeah, I mean, it's— there's so many ways that you can create this version for yourself. Like, you can do it with journaling, you can do it just by sitting at your dining room table and like really get into the characters. You know, like sometimes I'll get clients, if I'm working online, I'll get them to go and change their outfits or change the positioning in the room. If, you know, if I'm on Zoom with them, for example, stand to the right-hand side of the room if you're in your visionary and stand to the other side of the room if you're in your protective part. And we can actually like somatically, like stand in that role as if we are fully embodying that version of ourselves, that part of ourselves. And it is so incredibly powerful to be able to witness for yourself. I mean, I, I love— I feel so privileged to be able to witness this work when I'm working with clients. And I think you can do this with yourself at home, and it's— it will really open up the dialogue to those different parts of you that have been carrying different beliefs, different beliefs that might support you and different beliefs that might be you know, trying to sabotage. But just holding space for all those parts together is just a wonderful experience.

I love your particular use of it. You know, I just last week, um, I was a marriage and family therapist and it was all about systems, you know, communication theory, systems, homeostasis, morphogenesis. But anyway, there— I don't know where I learned it, I'm not sure it was in that master's degree, but it's similar. We're at a board table and there's all those voices: the scared little girl, the warrior, the— and in this case, the warrior was a little too dominant. So I said, why don't you imagine it? What's your warrior look like? And they could see it clearly. And what I suggested to them is each one of those parts is so important to the whole, but sometimes one is too dominant and thinks they're needing to protect too much. So I said, what if you invited that warrior and said something like, I know you're here to protect me, I know I needed protection, but right now I need you to step back off the board table, boardroom, and just sit and observe for a little bit. It's not that I'm not hearing you. It's not that you don't matter. It's that I need, you know, in this case, the visionary or the child to be able to come out and you're not letting it. Do you think you could if I— we promise that we'll all hear you. And she said that that was incredibly helpful the next week when I met with her.

Yeah, because it's literally like your inner child has been heard for the very first time.

It's so powerful. I hope everyone listening is here is feeling something and can't wait to check you out, Catherine. I could talk for hours. We're not going to. You'll have to come back a fourth time. Where do they soak up all of it? What should they participate in? What do you have coming? I know I'm a part of a little something, a little bonus piece of what you have coming, which I'm so grateful for, so honored and grateful. But we're going to have, um, links below. But can you describe what's coming that folks will be definitely interested in?

Yeah, well, if you're listening to this before mid-May, then we are running— or I am running a great, uh, great release. I was about to say great residence then. Great release. Um, it's basically two sessions that we're doing live online, and the first session is really going deeper into these conversations that we've been having today. It's about understanding the old paradigms, the old money systems that we need to release so that we can, as we go into session 2, move into this new paradigm around money. And we're going to be geeking out with AI and all sorts of things at that event. So please do come and join us if you're listening before mid-May. And if it's beyond that, then The Body of Wealth, our little 3-hour online experience, is a great way to dive deeper into creating a somatic money map around your money parts. So, in the, in the way that we've just been describing today is to get curious to what those money parts might look like for you. We have a little assessment that you take at the start, which maps out 5 money parts. You may discover more than 5 money parts, but those are the 5 money parts that predominantly we create as a framework to begin with. And then you can take those money parts and dive into some deeper pieces for yourself. So yes, come and join us in that little 3-hour experience. We actually have a— we've created your listeners a little coupon code as well, Kathy. Normally it's like $37 for this program, but if you grab the discount code in the link in Kathy's notes, then you get free access to that little 3-hour experience. So That will be a great starting point for you.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Katherine. And you know, we, we just got hands-on help here, you know. So first of all, it's a taster for Katherine's amazing materials and teaching. And you can feel, you know, there's something so special about your energy, Katherine. Like, it's so calming for me anyway, and it's so peaceful, and it allows me to let the guard down and do this work. And I'm sure all of you will know what I mean. We've hired people to help us, and if their energy isn't a match to what we're trying to do, it can be very difficult, or isn't a match to us being able to feel safe enough to do this work. Kathy Caprino is that in spades. So, um, any last words for folks? Anything we can leave them with?

Well, I think that's— well, first of all, thank you for sharing everything that you shared today. I know your listeners, I know sometimes we spend so long like interviewing other people and actually to hear more about your own lived experiences is just such a wonderful gift. So thank you for sharing. And I think that's a great place to leave people with is to get curious to diving honestly into your own relationship with your money, you know, with yourself and with money. And I think that money is the deepest, darkest conversation that we have. Um, and it's the most important one because it, it very much is the way that we treat money is a way that we treat ourselves. And if we can treat ourselves with more love and compassion, then the world would be a better place in general, I think. I'm sorry.

Thank you for the beautiful work you're doing in the world. We're so grateful. Thank you for being here. I know you'll come back again.

We'd love to. Thank you.

All right, my friends, I cannot wait to hear what you've gotten from this. It would mean the world to us both. You'll know, you'll see it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, X, I mean, excuse me, and LinkedIn, my happy place. So if you see it, please share it with someone you feel would benefit and tell us your honest feedback. We learn so much from hearing from you. You. And I truly hope this sets you on a wonderful finding brave path for the next 2 weeks. Till we see you next time, thank you for being here, and thank you again, Katherine. See you next time, my friends.

And if you would like to dive deeper into embodying a whole new money identity, come and join us in Wealth Residence. This is an 8-week live multidimensional pathway that goes deeper than any money mindset program you have ever discovered. And Kathy is going to be delivering for us a beautiful workshop just for you listeners called The Power to Receive: Shifting the Patterns That Limit Your Visibility, Your Confidence, and Your Expansion. And Kathy is going to be delivering this workshop in our Wealth Presidents container just in this particular time, which is going to be in May. Of 2026, sharing her beautiful framework of Brave Sight, Brave Speak, Brave Ask, Brave Service, and Brave Growth.

Thank you so much. I cannot wait to join. And everyone, truly, if you felt moved by this conversation, check out Wealth Resonance and all the materials and programs Kathy have. I, I am so, so sure that it will move you forward in ways that that you may not have been able to prior to being exposed to Katherine's work. So we will see you there. Thanks so much for joining us today, and please don't forget to check out findingbrave.org for more programs, resources, and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.