12/07/2025
⚠️⚠️⚠️Trigger warning. This is about sexual abuse.
😭A Missing Link I Never Expected 😇
I had a fascinating conversation with my producer yesterday about money and what I felt comfortable accepting for being one of the main characters in an upcoming documentary.
As many of you know… I have a big problem accepting money.
I love freely gifting my time, knowledge, and resources.
And if I do have money… I give it away. Almost instantly.
For years, I’ve been trying to figure out the root of this.
Why did I make excuses not to take money?
Why I ran from people who tried to pay me even a dollar.
Why did it feel safer to pour out than to receive?
Yesterday, my friend/producer said something that hit me so hard it felt like time stopped:
“Sexual abuse survivors often reject money.”
And every cell in my body reacted.
I started crying before I could even think.
That was my missing link.
Thirty+ years later… this wound was still shaping my relationship with receiving.
I couldn’t rest until I understood it.
I had to follow that thread all the way to the truth.
I was finally able to see the entire pattern clearly—how the body, the subconscious, and the vows we make in moments of trauma can sabotage our ability to receive abundance, safety, or support.
If you have survived sexual abuse…
If you struggle with money, being seen, rejecting leadership, worthiness, or receiving…
Please read what I share below.
It might be your missing link, too.
And if this resonates with you, please share it with someone who could benefit from it.
We heal together. 💛
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How Childhood Sexual Abuse Can Link to Rejecting Money
1. Because the child’s body learned that receiving comes with harm
Sexual abuse wires the nervous system to associate being given something with danger.
The child “received” attention, touch, or secrecy — and it brought betrayal, pain, or shame.
So the subconscious forms a survival rule:
“If I accept things, I get hurt.”
“If something is given to me, it comes with a cost.”
Money is received.
Help is received.
Opportunities are received.
So the adult self, without realizing it, pushes them away to stay safe.
2. Because shame destroys worthiness
Children who experience sexual violations often internalize the belief:
“I am dirty. I don’t deserve good things.”
This belief doesn’t stay in just one area of life — it spills into everything:
They charge too little.
They give away their labor.
They feel uncomfortable asking for fair payment.
They apologize for existing.
They sabotage abundance.
Shame becomes the silent accountant of their entire financial life.
3. Because the abuser established a power imbalance
Money is deeply tied to power, autonomy, and choice.
Sexual abuse strips a child of all three.
The body remembers that:
You had no control.
You had no voice.
Someone else’s wants dictated your reality.
Later in adulthood, money represents a sense of control, and this can feel terrifying.
Receiving money can subconsciously feel like stepping back into a dynamic where someone else has power over you… Or like you now hold power, and that too can feel unsafe.
So the psyche pushes it away.
4. Because boundaries were violated, charging boundaries feels impossible
To ask for money, to keep money, to say this is my price — these are all boundary-setting acts.
A child whose boundaries were shattered grows into an adult who:
Struggles to say no
struggles to set prices
struggles to hold limits
struggles to enforce consequences
fears displeasing others
Rejecting money can sometimes be a way of avoiding the unbearable feelings that come with having to set a boundary.
5. Because the nervous system connects visibility with danger
Abuse teaches children that being seen — being noticed — attracts harm.
Money increases visibility.
More success → more eyes
More clients → more attention
More abundance → more exposure
So the subconscious says:
“Stay small. Stay quiet. Stay unimportant. That’s safer.”
This creates a pattern of self-sabotage, undercharging, or staying hidden.
6. Because many survivors became “givers” to survive
A heartbreaking truth:
Many children learn that if they give love, comply, remain silent, or provide care, they are safer.
So as adults:
They over-give
They under-charge
They put others first
They minimize their own needs
They feel guilty receiving anything
Receiving money breaks the old survival identity.
And that can feel like death to the subconscious mind.
7. The metaphysical layer: abundance gets tied to distortion
Energetically, sexual abuse often implants a belief that pleasure, needs, and nourishment are unsafe.
Money is nourishment.
Money is pleasure.
Money is expansion.
So the energy body rejects it because the deepest layers of the psyche say:
“If I receive, I will be taken advantage of.”
“If I prosper, I will be punished.”
“If I have more, I will lose more.”
Energy becomes entangled with fear rather than flow.
8. The spiritual layer: the child’s soul made a vow
Many survivors unconsciously make vows like:
“I will never let anyone have power over me again.”
“I will never owe anyone anything again.”
“I will disappear so no one can hurt me.”
Money requires relationship, presence, exchange, and visibility —
the exact things the vow was created to avoid.
9. The body-memory layer: money = adulthood = vulnerability
For many survivors, reaching adulthood, autonomy, or power triggers old wounds.
Money is a symbol of adulthood.
Adulthood is where the abuse happened.
So the body quietly blocks financial growth because it feels like approaching the same threshold where the trauma originally occurred.
10. The healing truth
The link between sexual trauma and rejecting money is not a character flaw.
It is a survival pattern.
You survived by shrinking, by giving, by being small, by needing nothing.
Those patterns were intelligent at the time.
But now…
You are allowed to rewrite them.
You are allowed to receive.
You are allowed to prosper without punishment.
You are allowed to hold boundaries that protect you.
You are allowed to let money honor your worth.
Money is not the abuser.
Receiving is not dangerous anymore.
Your body simply needs permission to update the old story.
