Claire Wasserman
speaker
537 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Claire Wasserman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So constantly remind yourself, okay, micro to macro, step in, step out, and take a deep breath. All right, let's assume that the trigger happens and you are caught up in that money spiral. All right, so let me tell you what's going on in your body. I think it's helpful to understand what is happening that is kind of out of your control so that you know how to deal with it better.
So whenever an anxious thought flares up, your body is going into fight or flight, which is really a state of contraction. And when you are in this state of contraction, it just becomes so much harder to to see alternative solutions, because quite frankly, you are not thinking clearly. This is not when we want to be making decisions about ourselves, our worth, money, or whatever.
It's all about calming the nervous system. So this brings me to prompt number two, the five-finger framework, otherwise known as BAFA. B-A-F-A-H. Okay, so this is a strategy that I came up with that has really helped me calm my nervous system. It's great to use when you're having any kind of freak out, but specifically today, it's financial freak outs. All right, so BAFA. B, it stands for body.
Wiggle your toes and take a deep breath. To get from your head, we want to go into our body. So the minute we're freaking out, let's try to get into our body by breathing. taking a deep breath and then wiggling our fingers and our toes. A is for acknowledge. So what am I really afraid of?
In a couple of minutes, we're going to go into a deeper exercise to unravel our core fears, but it is helpful in the moment when you are having that freak out to just face it, to name it. If you try to shove it into the back of your subconscious, it's going to be taking a precious energy that quite frankly, we don't have the luxury to spend. So why don't you just look it in the eye and say,
What am I actually afraid of here? So body, acknowledge, F for feel. Okay, so now that we've recognized the fear that we're having, let's try to find out where in our body are we storing this fear, okay? So you might wanna shut your eyes for a second. I'm feeling a tightness in my throat, or maybe it's your heart or your shoulders are up to here.
We always store things in our bodies, especially our anxieties. So see if you can locate it and then breathe into it. So just giving it a little bit more space, almost imagining like when you breathe into the fear, It's dissipating it. Or imagine breathing around the fear, making your body bigger. And inherently that then makes the fear smaller if you are visualizing it.
And if you're not a visual person, I do encourage you to just try this and you'll see that you're just going to be able to... get more into that relaxed state, right? We've got body, acknowledge, feel. Now we're on A for action. What is one step that you can take right now to address your fear? This has to be something you do in the moment. So it's gotta be realistic. It's gotta be reasonable.
And maybe it shouldn't take you more than five to 10 minutes. Just anything to get you from the thoughts and the feelings into movement, momentum, action. You will feel so much better knowing that you are doing something about the fear. And the last letter is H and that stands for hum. Yes, humming.
It stimulates the vagus nerve, which helps to move your body from that fight or flight state into more of a place of relaxation. I encourage you to try humming at any point during the day. I do it just naturally, but especially if you are feeling all kinds of feelings, let's do it together. Yeah, it does help.
And if you're feeling disconnected from your fears and your feelings, right, when you ask yourself, what am I actually feeling here now? What am I actually afraid of? And you just can't come up with anything. By the way, that's a lot of us. I want you to go look up the emotions wheel. It's also called the feelings wheel. And it's going to help you pinpoint at least one emotion.
For example, are you feeling bad? And then from there, it will prompt you, well, okay. More specifically, are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you busy? Are you bored? And then prompt you again.
The whole point is to get more familiar with the range of emotions that we have, the nuances around them, because when you're specific about what you are feeling, that can help then direct you to take more specific action to address it instead of just trying a whole bunch of stuff, seeing what sticks, and up, we're too exhausted, and we're back to our old patterns.
But I'll tell you this, whatever you are feeling in the moment, there's often a core fear beneath it, okay? And usually it boils down to two things. And I don't mean to grossly simplify here, but this has been my experience and as well as the clients I've worked with. Here are the two core fears beneath a lot of the financial anxieties we have, and it is this. Number one, being helpless.
And number two, being unloved or unworthy. But I should rephrase that. It's not really being helpless or being unloved or unworthy. It's specifically feeling helpless or feeling unloved or unworthy. This is not your fault, okay? This is all about your survival wiring. We evolved as human beings to constantly problem solve. But when you problem solve all the time, guess what that does to you?
At least for me, it makes me anxious to constantly be scanning the horizon for possible threats, right? So... Just thank yourself. You're feeling helpless. You're feeling unloved. Thank you. We're trying to protect me, but we're going to find another way. Which brings me to prompt number three. Let's address your core fear.
So we're going to talk about feeling helpless, feeling unloved, and feeling unworthy. And I'll give you exact prompts to ask yourself, hopefully in the moment, but you may not have time. So just circle back when you've got a little bit of space and energy to reflect. These will really help you. So here are the prompts if you are feeling helpless around your money.
What is the smallest action I can take? Small, that's the critical word. We want to build a muscle of sustainability here. And you're not going to be able to build those good habits if you can't be consistent with them. So it's got to be broken down to its smallest piece. So if you're feeling super helpless, drowning in debt, you're not going to solve all of it today.
Maybe that one small action is Googling credible sources. to figure out what your roadmap will be for paying down that debt. So it's not doing anything with that information yet. It's just gathering information. That brings me to my next prompt. What is standing in my way of taking that small action? Oftentimes, it is actually a lack of information, right?
In theory, it would be good to do X, Y, and Z, but then you're like, I don't really know how to do that. So maybe the first thing you need to address, right, the obstacle in your way is who can support me? Who can help me? Where can I go to gather more resources to help me figure out what my next action steps? Or maybe it's a question of time. you're just super busy or you feel super busy.
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