Happy Thanksgiving ~ A Reflection on How to Feel Limits By Healing Scarcity

So many revelations coming about the nature of the money and scarcity wounds. It feels fitting to share on this Thanksgiving Day when we celebrate gratitude for abundance, harvest, and plenty.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday morning, I dropped my daughter off at school and on the way home, stopped at the grocery. I purchased some necessities and paid $200 with my debit card. It was an absolutely mundane transaction—“normal.”

As I was driving home, something not-normal happened: suddenly my wandering thoughts were dragged back to that moment at the register. I watched myself insert the card into the machine and saw the activity of my mind. What I saw was that unconsciously, as I paid, I began to do accounting in my head. As I pushed the buttons on the little keypad, I was calculating the cost of the groceries against the balance in my bank account against the amount I’d be earning that day at work; a kind of hand-to-mouth habit.

Maybe you do this, too? Maybe this sounds pretty normal. Well, maybe it is in some cases, but what I was being shown was how this is a coping mechanism; a way I soothe financial anxiety. It’s a habit, a tick, an involuntary process that serves to numb the mild fear I feel with every transaction. The funny thing is: the calculations weren’t even accurate; they were approximate and skewed towards a reassuring outcome, not based in real data.

As my mind opened to reveal itself, I got very interested in this previously-unconscious habit. I suddenly remembered how I used to calculate calories in my teen and early adult years. In an effort to control my body and feel safe in the world, I obsessively counted calories in and calories out. I saw how the effect was similar—it gave me a false feeling of security in the face of something overwhelming, scary, and seemingly beyond my control. Fear—survival-level fear—was at the root of both behaviors.

As I drove I worked with the feelings arising in my body—feelings of tightness and discomfort, stuckness in the body, mainly on the left side of my torso and around my heart. I worked with previously-numb fear in my lower belly and base. Eventually, I pulled over and allowed my system to release what was coming up. It was beautiful to finally feel! And I was marveling at how I could see this process I have relied on for so long, too long. I also knew it was coming up as a result of all the work I have done over the last few years and especially the last few weeks on the topic of money, scarcity, and ancestral poverty. I felt what was happening in my body as “the wound of scarcity” and it was ready to move, to release, to integrate.

When the process had stabilized, I got back on the road. I promised myself I would bring full presence and attention to my transactions in order to witness this habit and see if I could eliminate it or use it to work with the underlying anxiety. I felt complete in my process for now and drove on.

Then, I realized I needed gas and pulled into a gas station. I went through the usual motions and was thinking about scarcity as I was pumping the gasoline into the tank and watching the numbers rise. Suddenly, a question occurred to me: “This gas is not unlimited. This gas is actually a scarce resource. That’s true…there are limits here, beyond which we enter territory that is unhealthy for the planet (we’ve already surpassed them). Is there a healthy relationship to scarcity?”

The question rang through me like a pinball machine. YES! THERE IS. I realized how I had been brainwashed by the self-help camp and so-called money wound experts into thinking I must get rid of my “scarcity mindset” and embrace an “abundance mindset.” I had been trying to embrace abundance for years, but couldn’t fully. I felt shame and had come to believe—as they were telling me—that the problem was in me, my mindset, the way I relate to money. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

As I got in the car I was struck by a realization: WHEN WE ARE RUNNING CHRONIC SCARCITY ANXIETY IN OUR BODIES, WE CANNOT FEEL ACTUAL AND REAL LIMITS. I do not feel the actual limit of my spending power and so I accumulate debt or buy more than I can afford. Feeling the actual limits would be too confronting. I would have to face a great deal of fear, grief, and RAGE.

It’s the same with the planet. Because I have chronic scarcity trauma in my system, I cannot really face planetary limits. I cannot think about the possibility of a water shortage, energy shortage, or food shortage. It’s too confronting. It triggers my fear and I mostly choose unconsciously to look away and pretend its not happening so I can go on with my life and not deal with it. It’s not a pretty thing to admit, but it is true.

Our whole society seems to be in this delusion! Look at the superstores dotting the landscape, the advertising industry, the Kardashians, or the net worth of the tech elite, and that stupid version of “abundance” we celebrate in pop culture. Look at single-use plastics and our wasteful practices and over-consumption of almost everything. It’s all an avoidance of the REAL LIMITS that are inherent in Nature.

Of course, I could have told you this before. I would have agreed with anyone who said we are not recognizing planetary limits and our lifestyle reflects this and it’s dangerous. BUT, what was new was the connection I was able to make to the chronic anxiety in my own body. THAT’S WHY! We can’t stand to look. It’s not obstinance or obliviousness…well, those are symptoms…but, it’s really just the confrontation with our own trespasses and fear it would provoke. It would put us in touch unavoidably with the reality of the situation and that would interrupt everything. That would stop us in our tracks.

So, why bother? Because we must. Because there is not future without us healing our relationship to money and scarcity.

My teacher, Thomas Hübl, was working with me once on some ancestral fear. We were in a deep process and surfacing the symptoms of this trauma in my system. I could feel the ancestors telling me how hard it was for them (I wrote a poem about it). Feeling the fear as it presented itself into my conscious awareness was very intense. When the process was winding down, Thomas said something I will never forget because it was so true. He said something like: “When we are suffering from chronic anxiety and fear, we cannot feel when there is actual fear. We perceive everything as a threat all the time (on some level) and so we cannot distinguish when something is a real threat, a real danger. This leaves us feeling untrusting of others and our environment. We cannot read or trust our own natural instincts.”

My experience after that healing was remarkable. What Thomas had said was absolutely true in my experience from that day on and still true now. I can feel how my instincts work and I trust them. It’s how my ancestors must have moved through their environments—with a great deal more confidence in their perception and knowing—in touch with the fact that the body is built to alert us to real danger and to allow us to relax completely in the absence of it.

I was seeing that it is the same with scarcity. When we are suffering from chronic scarcity anxiety, we cannot feel actual limits. This means we are out of touch with the natural flow of things into and out of our lives. We might grasp or hoard. We might accumulate debt or spend irresponsibly. We might use more than we need. That feels out-of-control…dangerous…and in fact, it is.

We are also out of touch with Earth’s capacity and Her generosity. We cannot feel it and we no longer know what’s real; what we can take graciously and in real gratitude. We cannot feel where She gives freely, and where we are taking irresponsibly and hurtfully. We cannot know Her limits.

Healing this scarcity wound suddenly felt to me like a key to being in right relationship with my environment and my lifestyle! I could feel, similar to healing the chronic fear, that I could begin to move through the world as my indigenous ancestors did—in right relationship to their environment. Knowing what they have and do not have. Knowing what to take and what to leave. Knowing the cycles of life, fertility and caring for Her resources. Of course, my daily situation is still within the culture of scarcity we have now so it is far from the same. But, it certainly gave me a place to start turning towards the reality of my situation rather than continue to pretend and numb myself.

Healing can happen pretty quickly when we’re ready for it. Already I understand that the opposite of scarcity is not abundance in the unlimited sense, but a deep sense of being cared for and knowing how to care for that which cares for us. Maybe reciprocity? Generosity? Nourishment. And as soon as we feel deeply nourished, what is inherent in us? GRATITUDE and GENEROSITY.

I’m beginning to see (I will post insights from the recent Art of Embodied Conversation with David Sauvage on Money) that this money demon, this whole money charade, permeates everything and has profoundly distorted the way we relate to the earth, her resources, and each other. We have to begin to dismantle and disentangle ourselves from this force. It’s feeding on our trauma and it’s keeping us from being able to find our way to the better future our hearts know is possible.

Most of us have some level of scarcity wounding in our systems; be it from this lifetime, ancestral trauma, our own developmental trauma, or simply as a result of swimming in the waters of this completely corrupt monetary system that BREEDS scarcity, debt, hoarding, and greed. I am committed to seeing this, being with it, and doing what I can to heal.

Happy Thanksgiving. May your abundance feel like real nourishment on all levels today and may we find the courage to look at how scarcity lives within us—even those of us with so much.