Speaker B traces chronic money anxiety to childhood abandonment, explaining how early emotional wounds create lasting patterns that make the nervous system perceive financial threats even when income is objectively sufficient. The brain's pattern-matching nature keeps these beliefs locked in place.
Why do you think it's so difficult for our internal experience to match our external experience?
I get out of school and so what, what did I want to do? I wanted to make a shit ton of money. Like, how can I make money is all I— I mean, I swear, like, that's all I cared about. Why do I have imposter syndrome and like this lack of, this like lack of full confidence in myself that I felt discarded by one of the two people who's supposed to love you more than anything in the world? Your parents. And for that reason, I needed to find ways to make myself feel that I was better than other people. That's where the judgment came.
Chris Gerbais is an entrepreneur and financial services professional with over a decade of experience building and advising businesses. He spent years running his own practice and working within larger firms. Driven to create a more modern, client-first approach to financial advice, Chris partnered with his friend and mentor Mark to co-found Five Oceans. Outside Outside of work, he enjoys surfing, golfing, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Part of the massive anxiety and fear that I have about money is because I connected money being the reason that I didn't get to have a dad.
These fears aren't rational. Right. Easy to say until your nervous system gets triggered and goes into high alarm. Well, because our brains are pattern matching machines, right? So you have these patterns imprinted upon you in childhood. And now our brains scan for threats. Over time, how does that start to re-pattern? How does that start to shift your relationship with self?
There was this exercise that we did, that I did with Alexis, and it was, why are we the way we are with money today? Take me a little deeper into that. Where do you think that starts to form?
