WTF Stress

Money can obviously be a catalyst for stress.

To support you with any money stress, here’s my therapeutic take on it. It’s an overview, including some ways to manage it and return to feeling grounded and centered. I’m hoping it’ll support you to have a really good year. ✨🎶💖

One of my teachers calls being grounded and centered ‘being in a high-resourced state’.  A therapy word for this state is ‘regulated’. 

Being regulated feels good and is pleasurable. It’s relaxed, happy, playful, creative, grounded, centered and resilient. From this place it’s easier to remain present, grounded in reality, solve problems, be creative, laugh more easily, and a whole lot of other things. Everything just flows better. 

Being regulated isn’t about being ‘zen-ed out’, suppressing what’s going on, or not feeling what’s happening. Quite the opposite. To me, it’s about feeling it all, at the same time as remaining on the ground (or being able to quickly return there).

Feelings might include money stuff. It’s easier to negotiate a pay rise, figure out how to pay the bills, or have a successful family conversation about an inheritance, when you’re well regulated. 

In this series of posts, we’ll also go into the differences between stress and trauma. Plus, there’s a thing called eustress– the kind of stress that’s positive and beneficial. We’ll also look at the concept of a baseline and why it’s great to keep it low; the idea of using your tools before you need them (striking while the iron is cold), and a whole lot of tools and approaches for regulating and returning to a ‘high resourced state’, including a deep dive into some therapy-based tools.

Happy 2026!