Episode four eighty two, How our nervous system impacts our spending decisions with Michelle Grocer.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life man. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about the nervous system. So if you're a science geek or an anatomy and physiology geek, you're gonna love it. If you're not, you're still going to love it. I was very surprised by how I knew I was gonna love it. I was very surprised by how much it was going to impact me.
There were a few moments where both of us were on the virgin teers.
So and you're gonna want to stick around in.
A short moment where I've passed that.
Verge, Yeah this is a good one. Yeah, I don't you're about to listen to it, So we don't need to like beef it up all that much. But just to say, I think even the way that Michelle talks and presents these concepts and is in and of itself.
Very calming and regulating, and then.
She's giving us a ton of tips on how to do that this the way that it can impact our spending well, and we're just thrilled to be here. But first, this episode is brought to you by good kitchen tools.
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The stuff that gets the job done on a regular basis and doesn't quit, Like that trusted hand me down wooden spoon, the thrifted cast iron skillet, the unbreakable mixing bowls. We're recognizing the tried and true, not too flashy, everyday resources, kind of like the friend letter. B two is not too fancy. It's here on a regular basis, it doesn't quit. It's getting the job done with helpful money tips, ways to buy quality over quantity, and encouraging prompts. It goes
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it's free. We're just here to help absolutely so. Michelle is a she's a former attorney and she's a nervous system expert and she's the host of the Calm Mom podcast, which so if you're a mom and you feel overwhelmeder stressed, like, definitely head over there and listen to a few of
our episodes subscribe. But she uses somatic and neuroscience based modalities to coach women through discovering what's beneath their triggers and emotions so they can start their own healing, find peace and be present in and you know, their lives. So this episode is not just for moms, but her podcast is great for that, and it was really this is going to be like all of our episodes with a with a lens of how it impacts our money, but truly it's going to impact you in a lot
of different other places in your life. And so if you're tuning into this, you might have some you know, some head things going on with you too. We get that, you know we're here. We've already done.
Episodes for a few of those things because we feel it so profoundly. So we've got episode three ninety which is managing money with ADHD or any neurodivergence, and episode three forty three managing money with anxiety. So if you search for those in your podcast player plus Frugal Friends, you will find them, or you can search on our
website Frugal friendspodcast dot com the episode number. So let's get into this talk about how this very tangible yet intangible thing, which is your nervous system, has a profound impact on how you make financial decisions and spend money. Let's do it, Michelle, Welcome to Frugal Freads podcast. We're so excited to have you here. I nerd out together. I'm very excited.
Thanks so much for having me. It's gonna be great.
This is such a unique topic for us, not that we don't talk about all things about our personhood and the way that that touches money, but this is certainly a topic we've not covered yet, and so when that happens, we love to bring experts on, like yourself. So this is just exciting for us too.
Yeah, so let's let's just start off with a bline. Talk to us about our nervous system. How does it impact how we spend money?
Okay, so, our nervous system is like our body's command center, right, It's just like constantly running under the surface, gathering information everywhere we go, everything we do, and it has one job and its primary focus function always is our safety. So it's always out there like grabbing information, storing it away in our body and to ensure that we're safe.
And we know from the neuroscience that our nervous system is actually making decisions about, you know, the things that we think, the risks we're willing to take, the things that we say our behaviors, more than ninety five percent
of those being unconscious. Right, we're not even aware that our nervous system is running the show when we're doing these things, and obviously that impacts our spending decisions and how we think about finances and our patterns when it comes to finances and things that we've probably picked up when we were really young, right, how our parents talked about money or spent money, or just how that felt kind of in our home, and our associations with what
it means to have wealth or not have wealth or all of these different things. Our nervous system is ultimately running the show. So when we can really start to identify, man, what are some patterns that are kind of hardwired into me when it comes to spending money, How does that relate ultimately to probably fears right? And then safety, which
is our nervous system's job. And then how can I actually bring my nervous system to a place that it's not stuck in this kind of stress response which often shows up I think with money in a scarcity mindset. We talk about that a lot and hear that, but
that's rooted in our nervous system. So we can be in a place where we can access the parts of our brain that allow us to make our best decisions and act right from like a logical, analytical place instead of impulse or just like running these old patterns that
were like, man, why do I keep doing that? So when I think, one we can grow the awareness of how our nervous system impacts are spending, and then two actually have tools to like bring ourselves to a place of what we would call regulation in our nervous system. When we're operating fully conscious of what's going on, then we can make really good choices with our finances and frankly, with a lot of other.
Things in our life too.
Can you give an example of a spending decision that would be a result of a dysregulated nervous system, whether short term or long term.
Yeah, so I am right now. The business that I have right is I'm a nervous system and somatics coach. And there are so many clients that will come to me and they're like, yeah, but I've bought like fourteen other courses before, right, and I've never seen down and like actually do them and listen to them and carry them out into completion and do the actions that the coaches tell me to do in those programs. Those are
spending decisions based on a disregulated nervous system. So at that point of purchase, there was something going on for them that was probably the scarcity mindset of like someone else has the solution that I don't have. I'm going to go out, I'm going to spend my money on this. This is going to solve my problems. And then you end up with all of these programs or whatever it is, right, all these planners, all these books, all these whatever stuff we spend our money on that we think is going
to solve it. But really, under the surface, right, there's something going on there that's not allowing us to make decisions rationally and logically.
M Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's interesting to me.
I think there's a lot of ways that we hear people come at and explain some of these different spending decisions, from you know, impulsive spending two behavioral economics to cognitive biases, to mindset shifts to now dysregulated nervous systems, and maybe it's a whole combination. But from your perspective, how might somebody distinguish between Okay, I might be operating out of dysregulation versus I need a mindset shift, or I need to look at my habits, or I need to understand
cognitive biases. Like, how would you filter through these different things?
Yeah, especially because you just already mentioned scarcity mindset and I think like so many people in our community struggle with that, including us, and we're just told, oh, you need a different mindset, you just need to work on your mindset.
Yeah, So I think that's such a good question. Here's what I think.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I think that it's actually our nervous system that's positioning us for each of
those different things. So if it is a mindset issue, for example, there's a reason why we've been operating with that mindset, Right, there's something in our body that has felt unsafe that's caused us to enter what we call stress response, fight, flight freeze, or fond Those can probably show up in different spending habits and how we manage our money, and those can result in a mindset that
doesn't serve us very well. So with the work that I do, a lot of it is in the body because what we know about the nervous system is actually like when you focus just on mindset stuff, So whether it's like scarcity mindset or any other mindsets that we have around money, only twenty percent of the nerves in our body actually run from our brain down to our body.
So top down, what that means is that the other eighty percent of the messaging going on in our body, the large majority of it is from our body up to our brain. So we can like know, like how many of you guys have had a budget, Like, we know the things that we should be doing right, the actions we should be taking, but it's so flipping frustrating because we still don't do the things that we know we're supposed to do. That's because it's like a four to one tug of war our brain, our mindset can
understand these things. If our bodies not on board, good luck. So we have to regulate our body through somatic practices and that's what I teach. And then when we get like the mindset and the body sending the same messages, that's when we can really see, you know, the growth that we want to see or the actions following through on the actions that we want to take.
Yeah, that's so interesting because we talk about that aspect of budgeting all the time, right, Like a budget is a great plan for your money, but if you don't have the skills to follow through with it, then it's just going to be this beautiful plan that never gets accomplished. And so so much of that is action, right. But we think a lot about how do we train our minds to choose these actions, but we don't talk a lot about how do we train our bodies to carry out these mind actions.
Yeah, and I'm sure that we'll get there, but before we do, I am curious what you would say are some of the indicators that there is regulation happening, Because you also kind of mentioned there's some subconscious things going on we may not even be aware of it. So what would be some of the signals to know this is probably what's happening for me.
Yeah, okay, So when we are in a stress response, which means our nervous system is feeling dysregulated, fight flight, freeze.
Are fond.
Typically that's what we hear of as the stress response is that can show up somatically in our body and our actions and our words and our thoughts in different ways. So I usually like to think about it in like mental,
emotional and then physical symptoms. So some of the mental and emotional symptoms that your nervous system is disregulated, and a lot of these it's so interesting we've thought of these as like our personality, like oh, that's just how I am, right, I'm just like super type A, or I'm just like busy all the time, or I just worry all the time, or I just have a really hard time slowing down, or I'm just a spender or whatever it is. Those would all be symptoms that your
nervous system is dysregulated. Maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's edginess or irritability. Those are all like mental and emotional symptoms. And then on the physical side, when we are experiencing stress, our body sends us into one of those responses. It's not just like a mind thing, right, there's like a
physiological response in our body. So if we see a bill come through that we weren't expecting, or that bank account drops below a certain number something, there's something that actually happens in our body when we perceive that, right, our body releases these stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and that does things like it can speed up our heart rate, or it can change even like our digestion or immune system over time if we don't deal with it.
And then if it's chronic, that kind of stress is chronic, there's physical symm So maybe it's insomnia. Maybe you've dealt with gut issues that no one can really explain. Maybe you've had chronic muscle tension, right, that pain in your neck or your shoulders that just like doesn't go away, aching joints, even like autoimmune conditions, so often those are rooted in chronic stress, chronically dysregulated nervous system. And then those kind of symptoms that come from the inflammation of
being in that heightened response. So a lot of different things.
This is a little close to home for me. We are sitting here and we're we haven't we haven't talked about it on the podcast, but my body reacts very very poorly distress. And like two weeks ago, we're recording this in December, but two weeks ago I had a seizure, which is not my first seizure from there is no physiological reason except for stress, like is what has caused them? And internally in my head, I don't think I'm stressed. Yeah,
I think I'm fine. I'm managing everything very well. And then people will tell me back to me, like what's happening in my life for the past couple months, and it is, uh, it is just this whole is this wild disconnect between what I think is happening and what my body is processing is happening. It's wild what we don't connect. Yeah, and like so easy and that is a major, like extreme case. So like having like spending money on things we don't intend to or we don't
want to. That's a small scale thing that everybody is doing on a daily basis. So now that we've now that we've gotten into that, now.
That you disclosed very vulnerable information, Yeah, what do you think contributes to.
Our anxieties? About money, like when we're speaking specifically about dysregulation anxiety money, Like, what can we do when our finances are stressing us out?
Like if it was if it.
Was money stressing me out, hypothetically that life brought me to health crisis.
What hypothetically asking for a friend, what would you say?
Okay, So this is.
So good because I don't think it really matters so much the cause of your stress. So I can give you stuff around finances, but this will work for you too, because here's the thing. Our body doesn't understand a verbal language. So you cannot just tell your body that it's safe. You cannot just tell your body that it's going to be okay. You can't just tell yourself to chill out and calm down, like we've all tried that. It's not particularly effective because our body doesn't speak in that way,
doesn't communicate in that way. How does our body communicate? What's the language of our body? Breath, movement, sound, touch, temperature changes. Those are all the ways that our body communicates and understands safety. So if we're having some of these disregulated symptoms, whether it's because of our finances or something else that's been stressful, in our life, right. Maybe it's a health condition, maybe it's a cross country move,
maybe it's something with our kids going on. Maybe it's the lunch of a book or some big project or schedule. These are all things that are really stressful, and they can be good things too. Our body doesn't really know the difference. It just sees stressed, right. It doesn't really perceive good stress or bad stress or healthy stress or whatever. But it's released in the same way and we regulate in the same way. So we can talk about some different ways that we can show our body. Hey, chill out,
it's okay, We're not gonna die. Right. This is like just just numbers in our bank account. Let's get ourselves to a regulated place. We can make good decisions about this, because no good decisions are made when we're just frantic, right and in fight or flight or whatever it is that's going on. When you learn how to use these body based tools to show your body instead of tell your body, hey, we're good, we can come out of
a stress response. That's really where you start to see and notice a shift regardless of what's causing the stress.
Does that make sense, Yes, very much so.
And we're just laughing so much over here because oh, this is what we needed.
Okay, So let's then talk about.
That, because I think it is helpful for us to kind of then be able to know and when I think about what you're describing here, it makes a lot of sense. But I also know that when I come into these stressful experiences and I do kind of know what that feels like in my body, it will then send my mind on a tailspin. And then you're right,
then there's reactions and behaviors that happen from that. So maybe talk us through certainly what we can do, but yeah, how do we pull ourselves back from our mind going and beginning to make those behaviors? Like what do we do before that to kind of regulate ourselves in those situations?
Okay, so good? All right.
So two things that I'll just kind of like offer us reminders and then we can kind of jump into it. So the first one is that our body will always lead and our mind will follow. It's not the other way around. So we actually have to regulate our body.
And then you'll notice that your mindset will shift just even the way that our brain is structured, the part of our brain that sends that alarm system when we're feeling unsafe or whatever, stressed, whatever's going on, that part of our brain actually bypasses language and rational thought and all of these things. That's why we need to actually bring safety through movement or breath.
Or sound or touch or those types of things. So what does that mean.
That means that what's going on in our body can have a huge impact on our mindset, but what's going in what's going on with our mindset can only have a pretty small impact on what's going on in our body. Right, They're not like these equal impacts to each other. The second thing is that when you notice that that mindset is just kind of spiraling, right, you start ruminating worst case scenario. You know, your brain starts going to all of these crazy things that probably won't ever happen, but
you feel yourself kind of getting amped up. That is a really great kind of red flag waving reminder to get out of your head and into your body. And that's what I coach my clients, like, Okay, we're going down that path. Get out of your head and into your body. That's what I tell myself when I start doing it. Gay Michelle like you're starting to worry about stuff.
Get out of your head and into your body, and that's when we can start to use a lot of the body based somatic practices and tools that I teach. Bring safety to your body and your mind will follow.
Beautiful, you share what some of the what if I had?
Maybe, like after I evacuated a hurricane, like a flooded property in a small boat and a monster truck, Like, what should I have started after that to avoid like having a seizure several weeks.
Later asking for a friend?
Yeah, wow, I okay, So a little bit of backstory. But when I was in Miami for fifteen years I had I did property damage litigation, so all I was doing all day was helping hurricane victims and little did I know, I'm like, wow, the laws side of that with property damage ties so much into like it's trauma. It's those are traumatic events and the impact on our body and then teaching people what to do with that. So let's talk about it. Okay, so a lot of things.
One one of the most common reasons that I see that we become, especially women, disregulated, is.
Because we are not taught or we don't know what to do.
With our really big emotions, so we repress and suppress them. That causes disregulation in our nervous system. So stuff like what you survived with a hurricane, first of all, that's terrifying.
Second of all, there's probably a lot of like anger and maybe like rage tied to that, Like it's just so unfair, so many things lost, what your family had to go through, like I don't even know, but there's just a lot of emotion that can come with that, a lot of sadness that can come with that frustrating, and then we don't We just like make sure everyone else is okay around us, and we don't express or feel or release any of that. And that's like holding
the superinflated beach ball underwater. It's really hard and it's really exhausting, and it takes up a lot of space and before we know it, it kind of pops up and it splashes all over everyone, and then we're like, man, what do I do with all of this? So that causes our system to be in this chronic state of
stress and we don't know how to release that. So I think first it's like just that reminder that we have to have tools to handle our normal, expected, predictable emotions depending on what's going on in our life, right, and then to get out of our head and into our body, what does that look like? Something like that, I would imagine that you probably have a lot of active energy going on in your body based on an
experience like that and whatever kind of stress. Right, A lot of us that tend to be high on that activity level. If our stress shows up as like anxiety, or it's just this like phrenetic energy, or we feel like we have to stay busy all the time and we can't slow down.
That needs to be released.
So some somatic ways to do that are one my favorite is shaking. So it's literally just like we see it with our pets, right, Like if our dog, my dog sees a squirrel in the backyard and he like bam out the door. He's out chasing that squirrel. He was thrown into this stress response. But what does he do after that to like regulate his nervous system. He shakes, He like shakes it off. We've all seen animals do that in the wild. We're wired the same exact way.
So it's literally what it sounds like in like sixty to ninety seconds of just standing up and like shaking out your body, shake out your arms, shake out your legs, like if you want to put on one of your favorite like dance songs and just kind of wiggle and shake and move. Sixty to ninety seconds, you will notice a mark shift in the state of your nerves system as it releases a lot of pent up energy. And then you can introduce a practice that feels really soothing
and regulating for your nervous system. So maybe it's like a five minute breathwork meditation, or maybe it's just havening right and putting your hands, crossing your hands in front of your chest, on your shoulders, and kind of gently squeezing down to your elbows across your forearms in a way that feels really soothing. Maybe it is just practices of like orienting yourself. Sometimes when we go through things that feel really stressful, the way that our nervous system
responds is kind of to detach. Right, this is way too much. I'm just going to kind of like shut down and space out, and I'm going to find myself right scrolling a lot or on Netflix, or just on of zoning out.
My kids are like mom, mom, or like what like, I'm.
Just not not present, right, That's a very normal response to a lot of stress for a system. So bringing yourself back to the present, orienting yourself, grounding yourself, going through your five senses. What are five things I see? What are four things that I hear? Are three things I can touch? Just really simple practices to get out of your head into your body. Those bring safety, Those bring regulation to your to your system, and then your mind will follow.
Okay, this is kind of mind mind blowing. What is the difference between this stuff and something like exercise? Because I'm an active person runner, I lift weights and that is what I was using to kind of regulate the cortisol in my body to avoid this, and I'm like kind of beating myself up because it didn't it didn't work. But now you're talking about like completely different stuff. Yeah, what's the difference? Okay, this is this is so good too.
Nothing heals by pushing harder. So movement is so important to a regulated nervous system. But when we push ourselves in our exercise routine, if we're already at the edge of the capacity of our nervous system, exercise ultimately is a stress on our body right, lifting really heavy weights, hit workouts right, exerting ourselves. That can be enough if we're already at the edge to send our body over
its limit into one of these stress responses. So you know, if you're in a place or season of life where you're not experiencing a lot of stress, those types of exercises can be really good if you're And I'll speak for myself on the same way, like I have to check in in the morning.
There are mornings where I can have a cup of coffee and do a hit workout and I'm fine. There are mornings where I know I'm already at the edge of the limit of my nervous system and I skip the and I just sit on the ground and stretch and go for a walk around the block because I know that I don't have the bandwidth to handle more stress on my system in that moment. And it kind of goes back to when I was talking about our nervous system isn't good at distinguishing different types of stress.
Stress is stress. So yes, kudos to you and wanting to move your body to help deal with the stress. I think I don't think that's anything to beat yourself up over. I think that's actually a really intuitive response and pretty wise. It's just that when we're already experiencing a ton of stress. Otherwise we have to be careful because movement, really intense movement like that can be enough to send us over over our limit what our body can handle.
I really appreciate the way that you're connecting the dots
here for us. I think there's a lot of familiar things here, and then there's a lot of pieces that make sense, but maybe we haven't totally put into the puzzle yet, and so I just appre the way that you're describing this and what I'm also hearing from you, and you know, even my own understanding of our nervous system is that it is there to protect us, and there are situations where we need that survival instinct of fight, flight, freeze, fawn.
Like Jen, you needed to get out of a flooding house, and what your body did to do that was necessary. But then we don't often think about, Okay, that was a huge experience. My body was flooded with all sorts of things, and now there are actions that need to be taken to regulate once I have found safety here. And similarly, with financial things, there are times where it makes sense that this is scary. We receive a large, unexpected bill and we know we don't have the money.
To cover it.
Yeah, that disrupts safety and stability. So it's not necessarily about pushing back again what's happening and what our body is trying to tell us and alert us to, but the ways that we can care for ourselves in the midst of that, and then following that, and so with that, as we kind of like wrap up this very lovely conversation, I'm curious if you could say, like speak to that piece of what we might be able to see on
the other side than related to spending decisions. Like we've kind of come to this understanding we're starting to implement a few of these somatic body movements. What could we expect to see then in re entering the thing that maybe cause that anxiety, How we might expect to make better decisions there?
Okay, First of all, that was a beautiful summary of like bringing it all together. So yes, and then what happens when we're regulated? Okay, So when we are regulated and we have that safety in our nervous system, we have access to our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that makes good decisions. It's the part of our brain that can see things from different perspectives. It's the part of our brain that has access to higher language. It's the part of our brain that can
analyze things. So you know, it doesn't take a lot to understand why that would be really important in our
spending habits and how we make money. So I think it would be an awesome practice, Like if you have you know, family budget meetings, or if you sit down regularly and take a look at your finances, or even just like opening your mail or opening your inbox, like before you do that wherever your bills come in, can you do like ten jumping jacks, shake your whole body out for ten seconds, take a deep breath, and then go into that practice or that conversation or what have you,
because it'll have a big impact. And then what happens, Well, then you're not operating out of fear, right, It's like you take the fear glasses off and that lens is removed, and instead of seeing things with all of your filters and all of your biases and all of your past and your patterns, you have more capability to see things as they actually are. Right, you feel more empowered as you go into it. Instead of the worst case scenario.
You're more in a place where you can come up with a plan or make a call or whatever it is that you need to do, instead of being frozen in fear, feeling really angry, or being so anxious that
you're avoiding what needs to be done. So ultimately, with a regulated nervous system, you can show up and put into practice all of the tools that you have, right, all of the things that you learn on a show like this that you know but are really hard to carry out when you're stuck in by or flight or freeze or fun.
Yes, I mean, that's just we love the prefrontal cortex, and we love good decision making and helping our brains make good decisions, and this is just one more way to help our brains do that. And I'm just I've loved this conversation.
Do you know what else we love and feels regulating to us.
It's definitely not a fight or a flight or a freeze or aphon.
It's the bill of the wei.
That's right. It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
That bills bffalo bills, Bill clion.
This is the bill of the week, Michelle. Every week we yell at our guests and our listeners.
Now I'm realizing that might not be the Oh yeah.
Yeah, I do that so many times every week, Michelle. This is my life. I'm yelling at people and asking them to share their bill of the week. I would love to hear yours.
So good.
Yeah, this came through like my like, in prepar and preparing for this conversation, I'm like, this is brilliant and one of my favorite things that I've ever seen. Okay, here's my bill of the week. Before I started doing this work, right, I had a law firm and I spent fifteen years looking at and reading and preparing bills of sale.
So I'm bringing you guys a bill of sale, and I.
Am selling all of the stuff that we don't need anymore. Right, I'm selling like hustle culture. I'm selling all of these stress responses. I'm selling like jumping out of bed and being busy first thing in the morning. I'm selling frivolous spending around the holidays, or this use of spending and emercializing everything in order to feel connected to the people we love. Like I'm just I'm bringing a whole big bill of sale that you guys can take and sell all this stuff too.
Oh, I don't know we're selling llo because everybody listening is on the same path.
Yeah, that's gonna be a bill we don't pay unless unless the trash company will come and pick it up for us.
Then I'll pay the trash company for that.
They're still hauling junk away in Piel's County, so everywhere, still all over the roads or these big double dump like trucks.
Back it up.
I love that.
So creative, Michelle.
Wow, if you all listening, have a bill that you want to submit, if it's creative, if it's a bill that you don't need anymore, a bill you don't mind paying, a bill for the trash that you're throwing out. Whatever it is, your name is Bill, Google, friendspodcast dot com, slash bill. We can't wait to hear it. And now it's time for I'm gonna go quiet today.
Yeah, usually her lightning rounds are very aggressive. And we actually got we got a review, thankfully, it was five stars, but they did comment the first time they heard the lightning run it was.
Alarming, quite alarming.
Yeah, and not today, and I mad do that day. We're going to regulate you today because those shells here.
What is a recent money situation that felt overwhelming to you and how did you handle it?
Oh? My gosh, Okay, so like two months ago, now, I guess my family just moved from Miami to Houston. I had I've moved cross country, never with kids and owning a house, and there were just so many money decisions there, even the cost of moving, like the guy that came to her house and walked around for six minutes with the clipboard telling us what it was going to cost to move our stuff, Like I could not believe it. So that was really alarming and felt very
disregulating to my nervous system. But how did I handle it? I I this actually what I did. I jumped in my swimming pool and I just started doing laps. And then once I could think straight, I sat down with my husband and we came up with a plan and we actually decided not to use a moving company and we put We had a huge garage sale, sold a bunch of stuff, rented a small pod, and moved across country.
WHOA, so good.
That's the benefit of living in Miami at the time? Or wait, was your was the pool in Miami or Houston in Miami? Yeah? Okay, yeah, yeah, so you left it behind, but it did benefit you for a time.
Is that why people get cold plunges? Is that a nervous system thing? Wyo?
Okay, who knows if they know.
I don't know why they're doing it, You know what, I don't know if they do. This is so true, but it.
Makes me.
It looks like I'm being gritty.
Right, I've never done it, but okay, I think it makes more sense to me. I don't know if I will do it now.
Still I have done it, and I do like it, like I don't love it while it's happening.
Necessarily, but it is. It is calming.
I'm skeptical.
I'm just we can't find cold water here in Florida, so it's just no.
It just makes it more shocking to get out of the cold plunge because it's so hot out on the outside. Yeah, it just feels like it would be more shocking.
Okay.
Anyways, back on topic, recent money situation that felt overwhelming
to me. So we just got approved for the My Safe Florida Home grant that gets us ten thousand dollars for either something hurricane safe, and we have chosen windows, and in order to spend that tenth out to get the max of that ten thousand dollars, we have to spend at least five thousand, which in order to get an even amount of windows means spending nine thousand, which means putting eleven thousand down for it, because that's the
cost of the windows. So I'll get money back, but like I still have to put eleven thousand dollars down for windows I don't want and will not increase the value of this house that I plan to sell in several years and will not benefit from because they are on the second story of the back of the house that we use as a rental. And that is over.
So what did I do?
You haven't done anything yet, right, We're in the middle of it, so now you know, so.
Now definitely going to be shaking. Now I know what to do. I'm going to be shaking.
I think we probably need like more informat, like I think we need a follow up to that's because I think our implementation of this one episode's going to be a little wild, but we'll play around.
Michelle has opened up can of worms that may or may not be good for the show.
So for me, I did talk already about the trees that fell on our property and our house, and I'm not going to go there right now. You can listen to other episodes to find out about that I'm going to pick. I was looking into flights to go to see family for Christmas and was planning on booking this one ticket their tickets and as I was checking out, the prices doubled. As I didn't think that that was legal.
They could just change the prices when you're in the process of checking out, but it happened, and so that was overwhelming to me because it was already a lot of money, and then to double that amount was just beyond what I was willing to spend and it made me sweaty. So I just walked away. I was like, I'm not gonna let this cause me a sense of urgency, and now I think I'm gonna stay put for Christmas,
So I mean, I'm good with that though. I really a quiet Christmas after this book launch sounds great and I think Michelle would agree, if I can speak for you. So yeah, that's how I handled that. I walked away and I said, nope, not today, You're not taking my money. But had I had this conversation earlier, maybe I would have done some jumping jacks, but I still just would have walked away. I'm not I'm not doing that anyways, Michelle, this was incredible. Wish we had at least two more
hours with you, and our audience probably does too. So if they can get at least two more hours with you, where can they find you?
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me. You can find me on my podcast. It's called The Mom and it's all we talk about. There is nervous system solutions for anxiety, overwhelm and burn out. You guys should come listen. We're having Jen and Jill on the podcast, so you can come hear them on my show, and then you can find me on my website Michelle Grocer dot com.
Thank you so much, Michelle, this has been fantastic. I speak for myself and.
Hopefully and your friend.
Yeah, and my friends, my hypothetical friend, thanks for being here. Yeah, that was a lot. We had to wait a little while to record this intro outro. I think to give ourselves a little space between it, just to.
Let it all sync in I think a bit.
And like we said, it's not as if some of this is entirely new information. I just really appreciated the way that she presented it and helped us understand how each thing connects with the others. I think sometimes we've got these pieces that are just out there, disconnected, Like we've heard of somatic movement, we've heard of flight flight freeze, we've heard of overspending. But okay, how do all of
these play together? How do we integrate our whole personhood? So, yes, there's a lot of congruence with our messaging, but I think on this specific topic to really see how it all flows together and the simple practices that we can be doing to help ourselves on a regular basis as we inevitably hit these points.
Yeah, I don't think that it's life changing. I think it is definitely mind changing in that I overlooked this stuff and the impact it could have physically and I think this hit me because I was just having a conversation with a friend last night about how our bodies somehow we got into our mid thirties and our bodies started doing things because of stress when normally all our lives we've been very chill, people like, very even keeled.
Nobody would describe either of us as super emotional, and we've really prided ourselves and then taken that identity on. And that doesn't mean that the emotions in the stress are not there in our body. And so to have that conversation last night and then to have this conversation today was very timely. So I hope it's helped you, maybe give you another tool in your tool belt when thinking about why your actions are not aligning with what
your head says you want to do. And if it has helped you in some way, we'd love for you to leave a rating and review on Apple or a rating and comment on Spotify, kind of like this one. It's from Kathleen one two, three, happens to be five stars says it's not too late. I was never taught about money. In fact, I was taught to never talk about it, and it was only through finding the Frugal
Friends podcast that I realized I could educate myself. Frugal Friends makes learning about new ways of thinking around money and frugality easy and friendly. The hosts seem like empathetic people who've been there, done that, and are giving you their best advice from those experiences. I feel hopeful about the future now. I'm making changes and have told friends who are now listening, which means hey, I have frugal friends too.
Uh huh.
So thank you, Kathleen one two three. That's such a kind review. We so appreciate this kind of helpful feedback and encouragement for others to kind of know what they're going to find when they tune in.
So these reviews are so so helpful for us.
If you're listening and you haven't taken a chance to leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening, please do that. It would mean the world to us.
Yes, and we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. I have a question that I should have asked during the interview. Yeah, and I'm thinking of I don't know it. I'm sure a lot of people out there don't know it. What does fawn mean because y'all are saying fight flight, freeze fawn, right, and I know fight flight and I freeze. I know how to do those right.
Yeah.
What is fun fawn is it's adjacent to freezing, but kind of like a more timid approach to it, So like you're not incredibly frozen, but you have like this timid reaction. Now I'm realizing I'm not describing this very well.
So here we go with Google.
Yes, our friend who's like our frenemy in twenty twenty five.
I know Google has not been there. It's great.
It's really been bad for our business.
Yeah, like people pleasing behaviors avoiding the real danger or threat. So it's not an entirely like you're not running away, but you're but you're not freezing.
You're going with you're just kind of like yeah, okay, like a little baby fond deer where you're just like timidly responding to it, not pushing back to that circumstantial Yeah.
I think it's a It's been an addition in the last couple of years to those like three kind of known responses to help us understand some of the more nuances that can happen when it comes to certain type of like threatening circumstances, that there's there's something kind of in between there where it's not just a frozen response. I'm not doing nothing. I am doing something, but it's certainly not fighting.
M okay, got it. Like when riesand goes to in the the Queen I forget her name, but he like protects, he goes around with her and pretends to be like her minion, but he like.
It is a survival Yeah, that would be a survival instinct. Absolutely, Yeah, he's not. I mean, I guess you could argue that's a version of fighting. But he goes out, he kills a lot, you know, guy, Yeah, fight, he's freeze.
He's not running away. He's not frozen exactly.
Yeah.
Wow, way to bring in Akatar.
Yeah, now you're welcome.