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 Helen,
When I was working on my doctorate, one of the assignments was to draw out my entire family going back five generations. Every relationship. Every pattern. Every loyalty. I did not expect that assignment to end up explaining my bank account several decades later.
I spent fourteen years as a psychotherapist tracing exactly that kind of thing — the external family system, the one you grew up in, and how its patterns quietly become yours and shapes who you are today unless you change it. That is family-of-origin work, and it has been the foundation of everything I did clinically.
And then I discovered Internal Family Systems, and it made complete sense to me. I had already spent years doing family-of-origin work, and IFS just turned that same lens inward.
IFS said something I had never considered; it is not just that your external family shaped you, you also have an internal family. A whole cast of parts inside you, each one with its own beliefs, its own fears, its own job to do. And instead of only looking outward at the family you came from, you can look inward at the family that is running you right now.
I took that lens and pointed it straight at money.
Here is what I have seen in over a decade of doing this work, Helen: it is never just "you" making a financial decision.
- There is a part of you that panics and saves everything.
- A part that checks the account balance eleven times a day.
- A part that avoids opening the statement entirely because it would rather not know.
- A part that spends the second the stress gets too loud, and a part that shames her for it an hour later.
- A part that works twice as hard as she needs to because rest has never felt safe.
None of these parts are the enemy. That is the piece almost every woman misses.
She thinks the overspending part is broken, or the avoidant part is lazy, or the anxious saver is just "how she is."
But every single one of these parts is trying to protect you from something. The question is never "what is wrong with me." The question is always what is this part trying to create, or prevent, or protect me from.
This is what I call your Inner Financial System — the internal cast of parts running your money, each one doing a job it learned somewhere, whether or not that job still serves you now.
- Sometimes it is the Achievement-Driven Earner, working harder and harder because production has always meant safety.
- Sometimes it is the Scarcity Sentinel, staying alert to every possible loss even when nothing is actually wrong.
- Sometimes it is the Worth-Conflicted Giver, undercharging or overgiving because receiving more has always felt like it might cost her belonging.
- Sometimes it is the Emotional Firefighter, reaching for money to create relief the second a hard feeling shows up.
- Sometimes it is the Avoidant Optimist, delaying the hard financial task and trusting it will somehow work out.
- And sometimes it is the Meaning-Seeker, looking to the income number as proof that the work, and she, actually matter.
So here is what I want to invite you into this week.
I built an assessment that walks you through this exact framework so you can find out which one of these is actually in the driver's seat with your finances right now in your real financial life.
When you take it, you will probably recognize her immediately. Most women do, and what comes with that is relief, followed by a real sense of spaciousness. You are not the problem. There is just a part of you in the driver's seat right now, and once you can name her, you can shift back into your own center.
Hit reply and tell me which one showed up for you — the Achievement-Driven Earner, the Scarcity Sentinel, the Worth-Conflicted Giver, the Emotional Firefighter, the Avoidant Optimist, or the Meaning-Seeker. I read every single one, and I promise you are not the only one who has met her.
With love, Dr. Helen
P.S. Once you know which part is driving, the next question becomes how you actually shift the seat — not by fighting that part, but by working with her. I'll show you how to do that using my E.A.S.E. framework. That is exactly where I am taking you next.
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