Did you grow up feeling like you were “bad with money” before you ever understood your ADHD?

What if the overspending, the avoidance, the paralysis, the guilt are actually your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do in response to fear, long before you ever had a bank account of your own?

This week on The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast, I'm joined by Catherine Morgan, a global speaker, author, and founder of The Money Panel®.

Catherine spent 17 years as a financial adviser, so she knows the technical side of money inside out. But over time, she kept noticing the same thing: people would get the "right" advice but not be able to act on it.

Catherine recognised that something else was getting in the way, which is what her work is all about now. She founded The Money Panel®, wrote the international bestseller It's Not About the Money, and has built a whole framework around the idea that our money patterns don't live in our spreadsheets... They live in our bodies.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why money feels like a difficult conversation, and what it's really about
• How fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses show up in our financial lives
• The concept of "money as energy"
• Why separating our self-worth from our net worth is the first real step
• Why women tend to carry money stories differently than men and what that costs us
• How financial stress shows up physically in the body, and how to work with it somatically
• Why 2026 feels like a closing door, and 2027 a new one opening
• How AI is reshaping careers and identity, and how to use it to spot the money patterns you're living inside
• How EFT can help release fear-based money patterns that are stored in the body
• What it looks like to move beyond healing into becoming a true money visionary

Catherine brings a rare combination of financial expertise, deep psychological understanding, and lived experience to this conversation. For those of us whose relationship with money has always felt bigger, heavier, and more personal than it should, this episode offers something genuinely different to the standard budgeting apps and hacks that just don't work.

This week’s episode is sponsored by Understood.org, the leading nonprofit dedicated to empowering the millions of people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. Their podcast, AHA Aha! Shared candid stories about ADHD realisations, including the unexpected, emotional and even funny ways ADHD symptoms can surface!

Join Catherine live in May

If this episode resonated, Catherine is hosting a free two-part live experience on 14th and 18th May to help you release a fear-based money pattern from your body and build your Personal Money Map.

Find out more about The Great Release here.

Join the waitlist for Wealth Resonance, an 8-week live, multidimensional pathway beyond the money mindset to deep financial transformation, integrating mind, body, and nervous system to embody wealth from the inside out.

Help & resources for topics mentioned in today's episode:

Refuge - help with financial abuse

Connect with Catherine via:

• The Money Panel Website: www.themoneypanel.co.uk
• Catherine's website: www.catherinemorgan.com
• You can also access Catherine's free four-part Somatic Journey to Release the Pattern that Pushes Money Away. Use the code WEALTH to access for free.

The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live Event Recording is here!

My first-ever ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live event sold out, and now the full experience is available to you wherever you are, whenever it feels right.

Alongside three neuro-affirming experts, we spent four hours exploring the questions that matter most to late-diagnosed women. Get lifetime access here!

Inside the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live Recording, you'll find:

• Kate Moryoussef on post-diagnosis growth and her gentle framework for what comes next
• Dr Hannah Cullen on the neuroscience of ADHD and why your brain works the way it does
• Hannah Miller on reconnecting with purpose through a neurodivergent lens
• Adele Wimsett myth-busting on hormones, HRT, progesterone and perimenopause

Understand yourself more deeply, feel less alone, and finally access the expert knowledge you deserve. Because every woman with ADHD deserves access to the knowledge, expertise and understanding that for too long simply hasn't been available to us.

To get lifetime access for £44, click here.

Links and Resources:

• Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website [here].
• Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod

Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.

Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

So hi everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm here as always helping you understand life through the lens of ADHD often diagnosed later on in life.

And I'm so excited to welcome back my friend Katherine Morgan who is here to talk all about finances, money, abundance, all understanding this through the neurodivergent lens.

Now I'm going to explain a little bit about who Catherine Morgan is, but you may have seen we've done a bit of work to get together and we've already had podcast conversations together and she is a global speaker, author and a visionary founder of the Money Panel, she's the creator of the groundbreaking Money Narratives Clearing Framework and she's also a former financial advisor with 17 years of experience.

And Catherine now focuses on financial well being and money psychology training coaches and professionals through her award winning Financial Coach certification program.

Her unique trauma informed approach has been recognized for creating tidal waves of change in the industry and her international best selling book, number one best selling book, It's Not About Money presents a psychological approach to money and recognizes one of the top 32 female entrepreneurs by business leader.

Katherine is on a mission to empower 1 million people towards greater financial equality.

I am so happy to have you here Katherine, and you understand this so well through this neuroaffirming lens, don't you?

You really know it from a personal perspective.

Yeah, I was diagnosed with ADHD two years ago now, so when I was 42.

And I know we've spoken about this before, but it was very much coincidental for me as part of my children going through their own diagnosis and me recognizing a lot of the signs and symptoms through the lens of their diagnosis for myself.

So.

And I know you know, many of your listeners as well will recognize similar experiences.

So yeah, very.

And it was so interesting for me given that, you know, I worked in financial services.

From the age of 18 and all through my 20s and 30s, I had a terrible relationship with money.

Even though I knew everything about the practical side of money, I wasn't living it myself.

And so I was holding on to a lot of money shame and guilt, you know, knowing all of that information and teaching other people about it and still not living it myself.

And so the ADHD neurodivergent side really helped me to answer a lot of questions about myself.

It's so interesting, isn't it, because you, like you said, you have the practical, the theoretical knowledge, and then what's being held in our body and our nervous systems.

And I think what the work you do is so important is that is recognizing our nervous system, understanding it somatically in our body, through our trauma, through our generational patterns, and that it's not just, you're good with money, you're not good with money, you understand maths, you don't understand maths.

It's so much deeper.

And like you say, the shame is pervasive and it, and it stays with us.

We pass it on to the different, you know, generations if we haven't got awareness around it.

And, you know, I've spoken about money quite a lot on the podcast.

We've spoken about the practical side, like literally the executive functioning side of it, the dyscalcular, all the different things that sort of like, are sometimes the root.

But also I think what I would love to do today is really go deeper, really understanding how it shows up in our nervous system.

Why does it feel so visceral sometimes to even talk about money?

It can be very triggering, uncomfortable.

People are just like, no, no, no, I'll talk about everything else, but just don't talk to me about money.

Why?

Why is that?

Yeah, I think the relationship that we have with money is really a mirror reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.

And like, just think about that for a moment.

You know, so much of our self worth and our identity is deeply connected into money.

And what money represents, and what money represents for a lot of us individually and at a societal level is power.

It's survival.

It's, you know, it's deeply rooted into the meaning that you give to money.

And most of that meaning is based on patterns that we have learned and picked up from our environments, from our parents and conditioning and societal conditioning.

And I'd love to talk a little bit more about the societal side because I think that from a nervous system perspective, when money triggers the nervous system, you know, it doesn't suddenly announce itself as a survival response.

It's just a way of being.

And underneath those patterns, the body is essentially running off of four main ancient systems.

It's running off of fight, flight, freeze, or a fawning response.

And so specifically with money, you know, that fight response often shows up when we want to try and control money, really doubling down into our budgets and our numbers and micromanaging every single penny, almost having this very tight grip on money.

And then we have the flight response, which is the complete opposite.

That's like avoidance.

Not opening the bank account statements, not wanting to send the invoice out, not wanting to chase payments, not wanting to have a conversation with our partners about money.

And then you've got the freeze response, which is like the complete shutdown where our body literally feels like it is paralyzed.

And you see this in nature when animals are in a freeze state is they just lock down and freeze.

And so we get decision fatigue, we get analysis paralysis.

We don't make decisions.

And then you've got the fawning response, which for women actually is probably one of the highest nervous system responses around money, which is where we go into our people pleaser modes.

And we want to help everybody.

And so we undercharge, we over deliver, we say yes to too many things without holding strong boundaries for ourselves.

And we often put everybody else's needs before our own.

Yeah, I mean, when you say about the fawning, we also see especially neurodivergent women, they are more vulnerable in different situations.

And there's, you know, it could be financial coercement.

There could be feeling like you're not worthy enough to be part of the money conversation in your, in your partner, in your partnership or your relationship.

The people pleasing side, like you say this, there's this worthiness.

I can't charge that.

Can we talk a little bit about that?

Because we do, I do see that like there is this self worth thing that we are.

We don't allow ourselves to have a voice with regards to money.

What is that about?

Yeah, I mean, self worth is so intertwined with identity.

And so the way that identity can show up is often when we express things about ourselves such as, you know, I'm bad with money.

And that's a really common one I hear with a lot of neurodivergent women is I'm bad with money.

And really what we're saying is that I am bad.

And what keeps us in those feelings of unworthiness is our language.

I am bad with money.

There's a Sense of identity deeply connected into this I am statement.

And it really has nothing to do with the money at all.

You know, it's very much that I don't feel a sense of safety to carry.

What often comes with the responsibility of having money or perhaps the feelings that sit beneath holding money.

If money, for example, was about manipulation growing up.

Because certainly that was my experience that men controlled money with women.

You know, my mum was in a financially abusive marriage, and so, you know, the pennies were always used as a way to manipulate her.

And so my belief around money growing up was that money is evil, money is controlling, money is coercive.

And of course, I didn't want to be associated with any of those values or those behaviors.

And so every time I received money, I would literally get rid of it as quickly as possible.

And so when you were talking about neurodivergent women being more open and susceptible to coercive control, financial abuse, those kind of experiences, that, that matters because when we then blame ourselves or other people blame us, that you're, you know, you're terrible with money.

Don't manage money.

Give it to me, because I'll do a better job.

You know, you're no good at that.

You know, we hear those things and then the RSD kicks in.

That I know you talk a lot about on the podcast, where we literally take those sayings and those statements as a truth about who we are.

And I'm, I'm so passionate about really allowing women to hear that.

It is about separating your sense of self away from money.

Like, you are not money, you are not bad with money.

You are not debts, you are not the amount of money in your bank account.

But it's being able to separate the self worth away from money that I think is really important for us to navigate.

I think for women, no one's, no one's ever taught us this.

Like, this is, this is for many people, a very, very new conversation.

And it can be quite.

People talk about money as energy, and I do believe that, but it's taken me such a huge amount of time to even understand this concept.

So if someone's listening right now and they're kind of like, what are you even talking about?

How is money energy?

Money is transactional.

Money is, you know, how would you explain this to somebody who is recognizing all these patterns and seeing this and saying, yes, I understand what you're saying, but how do I start bettering my relationship with money?

Yeah, it's such a great question.

And I think there's actually A lot of danger in, especially for neurodivergent women, I think there's a danger actually in going down that route of just thinking of money as abundance or our energy.

Correct.

And actually some of the affirmation work that is done in this space is dangerous because if we suddenly start saying things like, I am abundant, my bank account is overflowing with millions of pounds, and it actually isn't.

It creates this cognitive dissonance between reality and where we are, which actually just further deepens that gap and that sense of not being good enough.

So it's actually a topic area that I think we need to be speaking more about.

And it's less for me about the energy of it and more about the understanding that money really, it's about the meaning that we are giving to money.

Right.

The meaning that you are giving to money is creating a feeling, and that feeling is being created is sitting in our bodies and our bodies are then trying to process that information in a world where we are being given conflicting information.

You know, you only have to look at some of the societal messages directly to women that completely contradict the messages that are given to men, for example.

And we live in this very neuro, I guess, from a neurodivergent perspective.

You know, we live in a world that still hasn't caught up with the neurodivergence lens.

You know, we still live in a world where the financial system is built for an executive functioning, neurotypical person.

You know, it talks about managing money through apps and you know, go and sort out your pension paperwork and it's designed in a very executive functioning way.

And, and that doesn't work for neurodivergency.

So I think that every part of this conversation is more about looking at, looking at this through your lens and looking at this through the lens of the systems have been created and the systems don't work and we shouldn't have to change ourselves to fit into that system.

The system has to change to fit us.

I'm a massive believer in that and I think that there is more education and more research being done, thankfully, on the impact of neurodivergence on money decisions.

I was reading one just this morning actually that talked a lot about the impact on investment growth and how ADHD can actually make us more susceptible to taking higher risks, which can actually get us better returns.

But we can also be very susceptible to changes going on in the markets, which means that we can sometimes tamper a little bit too much with our investments.

Yeah, I can see that.

I can see you.

Listen, you've got to remember, gambling, overspending, scrolling on social media, this is very much part of that dopamine seeking behavior that we see very prevalent in adhd and that can lead down a path of difficult financial situations and impulsivity and finding ourselves in positions that we don't want to.

And that sort of breeds self shame.

I want to go back to like the nervous system, somatic side because I feel like sometimes we can be quite esoteric in this kind of conversation.

And I wonder, what does it feel like in our bodies if money does not feel safe?

The way I like to think about this, and again, this is how my brain works too, is that if you were to imagine that you are in relationship with money and imagine that money was a person for a moment, and you imagine that this person could be your best friend, or they could be a complete stranger.

It could be something that you've been hoarding and holding tightly in your body, or it could be something that you've just been completely disassociating with because of the meaning that you're giving to money.

It doesn't matter.

Whatever that part represents for you right now, that that is how money is currently showing up for you.

And when I think about being in relationship with money as if it were a person, I imagine, well, what does that person look like?

What does that person sound like?

What does that person feel like when I bring it towards me when I'm in receiving and what does that person feel like when I'm receiving, wanting to push it away?

And there might be certain scenarios where it does feel safer for you to bring money towards you.

And there may be times, seasons in your life where you've just needed to push it away because that's the way that the nervous system works is it is there to protect.

That's your brain and your nervous system's main job.

So it's doing a really good job.

And so if you were to characterize money in that way, the way I like to do this is to, you know, if you're in business in particular, imagine that you're opening up the door and you're walking into a boardroom and you're walking into that boardroom with all of these different people that represent the different parts around money.

So there might be one part of you that wants to be the savor thinking about the future and earmarking things ahead.

There might be another part of you that's very in the moment, that kind of impulsivity side that once the Dopamine hits.

There might be another part, another person with money that's at that boardroom table, that is your visionary, that is the, the version of you that wants to break through the old systems, that wants to be deconditioned from the way that women are spoken about through the media with money that, you know, women just manage the household person, men make all the big investment, important decisions.

There might be another part of you there that is worried about conflicts.

Well, what happens if I decide that I want to go and spend lavishly on my holiday this year?

There might be another part of you that is thinking something entirely different.

And I think if you imagine yourself walking into that room and inviting all of those different parts of you that show up in different seasons of your life, that have been present throughout your life and that may be present in the future, it really helps you to sit in a place of contemplation of how have these different parts of me and those relationships to money supported me?

And how have those different parts challenged me or sabotage me in some way?

And you can almost like look at it from those two different sides.

How has it supported me in my relationship to money and how has it held me back in some way?

And I like to do this with my journaling.

So I'll this is an exercise I get all of my clients to do and I'll ask them to get a journal, grab some of those multicolored legamo pens for each of those different parts.

So maybe there's the saver and the spender and you can journal on one page of what would the saver part of you be wanting to communicate about your relationship with money?

What does it often say to you?

Put some money aside for your future, you know, save for your future retirement, put some money aside for your next property purchase, those kind of things.

And then you can write on another page, maybe the spender.

What is that part wanting to communicate with you about money.

And that could be, well, you know, I want that extra handbag or I want to invest with this coach, or I want to go on this luxurious holiday that I've just seen on Instagram.

I'm looking for that risk taking moment.

I'm looking for that instant dopamine hit.

So and you can kind of communicate from both of those parts before you then turn the page again for the third time and then write from another part of you that can potentially see some patterns or limiting beliefs that are present in the conflict between those two parts, between the saver and the spender.

In that example, And I think that's a really nice practical way of actually just bringing the reality of this money is energy conversation into a practical lens of okay, what does this actually mean for me and where am I feeling that?

In my body, in my nervous system.

Yeah, that's so helpful, isn't it?

Because this is like it's learning a new language, you know, and maybe we'll come on to it AI.

But this is a new language model, like a high is.

And we're having to break down the old way, this old conditioning that perhaps our mums and our grandmothers were working off.

And we are entering this new, this new era.

And maybe from a energetic or astrological or however you want to look at it, or you just feeling it because you're on the ground and you're seeing AI is becoming a lot more prevalent.

We are seeing breakdowns of ways of doing things.

We've seen people earning money in new ways that we never thought would possible.

We're seeing people who are thinking, I'm not going to go to university anymore.

Like what is the point of that?

What a waste of time and money like this is.

It's like a crumbling of, of the society that we've kind of like held on to whether or not we've liked it or not.

But it's kind of helped keep us safe.

And you know, I've got older kids now and one's at uni, one's going into uni.

I've got a daughter who's like about to do her GCSEs next year.

And I'm thinking, is she even going to want to go to university?

Like what options, like what jobs are going to be available for them?

How are they going to make money?

There's like a fear based.

My nervous system is going into like, how's it going to all work?

How's it all going to work?

And then there's another part of me is like this is quite exciting to see a crumbling of things that we've been told is the way to do things.

What are your thoughts on this and what do you see playing out?

I'm very interested to know.

Oh, I love this question so much.

Whenever I think about this astrologically, we are going through the biggest shift in over 400 years.

And I follow the work of a really amazing guy called Richard Rudd.

He's the founder of Gene Keys and.

I've heard of him.

Yeah, if you haven't go like looked or explored Gene Keys, it's fascinating.

And the way that Richard describes This is.

When I listen to Richard and his work, and his work is very rooted in human design, astrology, a lot of ancient wisdom and poetry.

And I really sense this.

You're talking about the destruction of these old systems.

We're seeing this in every aspect of our lives.

We're seeing in the educational space in that the educational systems are not fit for purpose.

We're seeing it in the political space, we're seeing it in the financial space.

And what that's doing is it's bringing up a lot of fear in our bodies.

And when we're going through this fear, we're looking for certainty.

That's what I feel everybody right now is looking for.

Where can I go and find some element of certainty and financial certainty?

And the bit that people are skipping is they're moving or they're trying to move from this place of fear into a place of abundance.

And the bit that's missing that nobody is talking about is acceptance.

You cannot move from a state of physical, emotional state of fear into a place of love and abundance and gratitude and appreciation and self actualization.

You cannot move from a pattern, an emotion that is contracting like fear.

It might be anger, it might be shame, it might be guilt, it might be regrets.

You cannot move from those states into higher frequency states and bypass acceptance.

How do we get to acceptance?

We have to sit in the deep uncomfortableness of what we are currently trying to navigate in a system and many systems that are breaking down and rebuilding because we don't know what those new systems look like.

We're going through a astrological shift of new systems being created for the first time in 400 years.

So it's like going back to when we went from the industrial revolution, we're going through the AI revolution and we don't know what that looks like because no one has ever lived through web 3 and probably web 4 in the not too distant future where AI is going to take over some of these jobs that we are still talking and educating children to move into, and quite frankly probably careers that won't even exist in a few years time.

So there's a big identity question here for me around how do we sit with that uncertainty of what if?

What if suddenly my job or a large percentage of my job is being done by technology?

Where does that leave me and my value and my sense in the world if I'm no longer validated by my job title or what I do in the world?

And it brings up a lot of identity, fear for people.

Yeah, I'm so glad that you, you said that.

I mean, acceptance is, it's that kind of like, pause, isn't it?

It's that moment where we can just like breathe and just be like, this is beyond my control.

Like, this is just.

I can't, you know, white knuckle this anymore.

I can't keep trying different things.

And I think with, like you say, this AI revolution, we, we have no idea and very few people do.

You know, yes, maybe they can predict where things are going to be in the next year or so, but like you say, we really don't know.

And that is scary and that is okay to say.

My nervous system does feel unsafe right now around money and how I'm going to make money and lean into trust.

You know, it is a scary time for many people.

And where do we dig deeper to find that trust?

I think, I think that there's a lot of value in people giving attention to a few things.

I think the first thing is to use AI as a pattern recognition tool, like one of the best things that you can do.

This is something that we teach in, in one of our programs, which I know you're, you're supporting us with this year.

K is around using AI as a way to, to recognize the patterns that you are in around money.

And so you can actually have some conversations with an AI platform, an LMM system like Claude or.

I mean, Claude is my, my favorite LMM platform, predominantly because they, you know, they Anthropic.

Hire a philosopher, Amanda, I forget her surname now, but this lady called Amanda, she's a, a philosopher that is employed by Anthropic.

And she is responsible for building the ethics behind Claudes.

And one of the things I love about Claude is I will go in and regularly and have a conversation with an AI somatic coach around.

This is what I'm recognizing in myself.

This is what I'm feeling in my body right now with money.

And over time, what, what that does is it, it shows me through pattern recognition in a way that I can't even see in myself.

And I do a lot of this work, I teach this work.

There are some patterns that we just can't recognize in ourselves as human beings.

And so using AI in that way, I think is a very useful tool to go deeper into the understanding of those patterns.

And I think that tools like Emotional Freedom Technique, which I know you and I are both EFT practitioners of, is another really great way for you to have and Utilize your own body as a therapeutic tool to regulate your nervous system and to move you from those fears, you know, those contracting, energetic feelings that we talk about through, into acceptance, you know, by tapping on those meridian points.

And it is safe for me to feel this fear and still be able to move beyond that into a place of safety in our nervous systems.

So I think having those somatic tools and using AI to spot and recognize those patterns that you have with money are two of the best, like, things that I'm talking about right now in my community spaces.

I do believe that we have our own pattern recognition in our bodies because we start tapping and it's that even though I feel scared, triggered, worried, whatever that might be, and I send love and acceptance and all of that, things start coming up and, and we start recognizing, like, whether it's a memory or it's an old belief.

And that is pattern recognition, isn't it?

That's like, you know, odd inner pattern recognition.

So it's okay to say, you know, even though this, this is all very overwhelming and tap, tap, tap, and all of that, we're able to notice what's going on in our bodies, what we're holding, and then it's okay just to say, I'm gonna let that go.

I'm gonna try and release that or whatever that might be.

And I think that we need these practical tools and we need, like you say, the somatic tools that we can blend together so we don't feel like we're disempowered.

In an age where some people are really ahead of the game with AI I know that people, that some people in my community are like, I'm too scared to even go there.

Like, I'm too scared.

I don't even have a clue.

And that, that worries me a little bit because I do believe that this, this is it now.

We're not.

There's.

There's no going back.

We've crossed the threshold.

I try to hold back a little bit, thinking from a morality perspective.

Oh, I'm not gonn.

But, you know, I think we're gonna, we're all gonna have to get there or we're gonna be left behind.

But how do we regulate and ground our nervous systems while this crazy shift is happening beyond humanity's, you know, conception?

Like, it's.

It is really hard, 100%.

I think it's jarring for all of us.

And I think that certainly when you're learning about AI, you know, I think it is important to take some time to contemplate and consider, how are we using AI, and we are actually responsible for the way that these platforms grow.

I know when I first started using AI, which was around 18 months ago now, and I would say I'm probably quite advanced in my AI use, I was very concerned about the information that I was sharing with AI.

And I do think when it comes to finances, I Do you think we need to be careful of, you know, sharing personal data?

I still would not encourage anybody to drop a bank statement into AI and get it to spot spending patterns or financial patterns.

I think it's really important to be aware of the risks of sharing that financial data and how that data is shared.

So whenever I'm teaching AI, I always.

I'm not a teacher of AI, but when I'm.

Whenever I'm talking about AI in connection with money, I do believe it's important for people to be fully aware of, you know, using AI in a way, but not sharing personal data.

So if you're going to share a bank statement, making sure that you're crossing out all of your name, address, account details before you share that information is really, really important.

So, you know those light bulb moments we often talk about so much on this podcast and in this community, where you suddenly just realize it's like, oh, my goodness.

Whether it's a child that's been diagnosed and you see that in yourself, oh, my goodness, I'm NeuroDivergent, or that's ADHD, or that is my autism showing up, there's a podcast entirely dedicated to those moments, and I think you're gonna really love it.

It's called ADHD AHA.

It's hosted by Laura Key from Understood.org and I've been listening to a few of the recent episodes of ADHD Aha.

And what really stands out to how candid and relatable it is.

So the host, Laura, speaks to people from all different walks of life about the exact moment they realize their brain worked differently and how that shifted everything.

And what I love about the podcast is how it reflects the emotional complexity of ADHD in women, especially for those of us diagnosed later on in life, where there's often grief and relief and recognition and so many pieces falling into place at once.

It's a real sort of moment that we'll never forget, really.

It's deeply validating, often quite moving.

It reminds you that your experiences make sense and even if no one has explained them before.

So to listen, search for ADHD Aha in your podcast app.

That's ADHD Aha spelled a H a. I really hope you find it as interesting as I did.

And now back to today's episode and just tell me a little bit about, I guess, your work.

I know you mentioned that we are collaborating together.

I know you've got a fantastic new course or program.

What are you.

How would you describe it?

And I guess what, what's driven you to want to work to this much deeper level?

On the, on the somatic side, now you're not just sort of a financial coach or you're not just there sort of as an advisor.

Like, this is.

This is much deeper work.

And I guess what, what's led you to this place?

So to answer your first question, having been a financial Advisor for over 17 years, I knew all the practical things about money, and yet I was still stuck in some of the patterns that we often recognize, especially with neurodivergent women.

So I know that the practical financial education is not the only solution.

I think it's part of it, but I don't think it's the sole solution.

And actually underneath our behaviors is our thoughts, our beliefs, and our feelings.

And I don't think enough attention is given to that in the financial education space.

And so I've really moved my work into that much deeper lens.

I also know that I don't do shallow things.

Like, I don't have shallow conversations.

It doesn't bring me any joy.

I have to go deep in.

It's part of my astrology as well.

I was born during a Pluto transit, and so my work's purpose is about going deep.

It's about understanding emotions.

It's about understanding the reasons why we make decisions with money.

It just brings me so much joy to do that work.

And so the work that we've developed now is about creating more of a lived experience rather than a course or a program.

You know, there are many, many courses you can find.

There's books on these subjects.

I've written one on this subject.

There are many good places to start, but I think from a lot of people, they've done those things.

They've read the books, they've done the affirmations, they've maybe even done some of the mindset work.

And things are still not shifting.

And so the, the experiences that we've created are an invitation for those people who want to explore the deeper side of their relationship with money, which is really about exploring the deeper side of what money means in relationship and in relationship with self.

And that's the work that I. I'm really excited to create and that is the work that has had the most profound effect on my financial well being and my own financial health is by doing that really deep, somatic work.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds amazing.

I'm really excited.

I know I'm coming in.

I'm talking about RSD and that, that really nuanced conversation of like self worth and charging and stepping into that place of like knowing that we are deserving and that I guess maybe there's imposter syndrome and there's also people pleasing and the perfectionism and this sort of like blend of seeing ourselves and thinking, why do I think I'm not deserving of that?

Or why.

I hear this a lot from.

From different women especially.

It's very sort of female oriented that like, how can I, how can I charge that amount of what will people think of me?

And I do think RSD plays a huge part in what we think we're worthy of charging or asking for a raise or having a conversation or believing that, that they, they can make more money than they're making.

I know I'm something that I experience a huge amount.

I live and breathe this myself and then try and support the women through it.

It's like, I think you probably do the same.

It's just like you just crack another, another level that it's like, oh, there's.

Another 10 levels above there's never ending level.

Yes.

And it's interesting all the examples you gave there about things that you're hearing that the word I was in every single one of those examples, you know, why would people pay me for this?

You know, because we make it about ourselves.

And when we hold deep core wounds about who we are in the world, then that's the piece we have to navigate is separating who we are, our sense of identity away from money.

And where I see the biggest opportunity for this, like, if I was to put my visionary hat on, is I think we've done a lot of work over the last 10, 20 years in the healing work.

Right.

In the trauma work, the trauma.

You know, we've seen a lot of it in the online space.

We've seen a lot of it in work that you may have read, you know, in books that have been published in the last 10 to 15 years.

And I think we're shifting away from it being about healing those patterns and moving towards a place of future, like future focus, future outcomes.

There's a real danger in staying in, in that space of healing needing to be fixed.

And it's important to do that work.

Don't get me wrong, I've had many years of therapy and many personal experiences that have really cracked things wide open for me to go into some of those deeper explorations there.

And I think that there is a big shift energetically of moving out of the healing patterns and into a place of how do I actually get to experience more joy, more safety, more love in ourselves?

And that's a very future state to move towards as a place to a difference of moving away from a place of pain and shame and fear, if that makes any sense.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's something I talked about in my, in my recent live event.

I gave a talk on post diagnosis growth and recognizing sort of similar, similar to post, you know, traumatic growth is like, yes, it's very easy to stay.

Like you say the healing or the victim or the like, oh my God, this happened to me.

And yes, that, that definitely serves a purpose, but it's, it's that, okay, now what.

Where we, where are we going to see ourselves?

How does our future, future look?

And that's really exciting.

And I personally love working in that space because we can only stay in that, that space, you know, that, that kind of like the grieving or the anger or the, like you say this sort of like healing space for so long, it has to move.

It's got to move through us.

It does.

And I think that that can't be forced, it can't be rushed.

And I, my invitation, when I think about this work and certainly when we, when we're inviting students into Wealth Residence, for example, which is our signature experience, is we're inviting them to come in.

If they are in that place of willingness to move from this place of healing into this like future visionary, I call it the money visionary role.

It's like if you feel that pull, if you feel that tug to come away and out of that cycle in that season, then you know it's the right time.

You know, I do think that we all have certain seasons of our life and certain things that are meant to happen at certain times and we should never rush that season.

Yeah, yeah.

So tell people how they can work with you and what this experience is.

And I guess we're going to put all the details in the show notes.

But yeah, people are sort of feeling that now they're listening to this conversation and they really do resonate, but they've sort of been sat in this quite heavy energy for a long time and they're just like ready now.

We're listening to this now in spring, summer, and it's, you Know, this is a time that many people feel energized to move forward and to see the future.

How can people work with you now?

Yeah, thanks for inviting that question.

I think leading from what we've just spoken about, Wealth Residence is our signature experience.

It's an eight week experience navigated online in a group and it's done in a really beautiful, very curated way.

So we begin by actually somatic, what we call somatic mapping.

So we're mapping out what are the lived experiences that your bodies are holding on to that are maybe keeping you in those feelings of fear around money.

And because once we can acknowledge what those are, then we actually teach how you can use techniques such as emotional freedom technique will take you through the whole tapping protocol.

And I know that's in your, your toolk it as well, Kate.

And it's having access to tools such as emotional freedom technique.

We also introduce you to parts.

So where I was talking about bringing your parts to a boardroom conversation, we'll be able to explore what those different parts of you might be and then really getting into creating those nervous system safety patterns so that at any given time you have the toolkit within yourself that when you're navigating fear or uncertainty, you've got a toolkit where you don't have to be reliant on anybody else.

You can be, you know, in that space of self empowerment, self realization, to have that toolkit available to then move out of fear and uncertainty, which I think we're only going to navigate more of in the next 12 months ahead, into a place of acceptance, not bypassing that into then a state of love and gratitude around your relationship with money.

And that's the kind of arc that the journey that we have created in that container, in that experience.

And you know, we do seed other things, you know, we seed examples in there, you know, how would you go about creating an AI somatic coach to do that pattern recognition for you?

So we teach that within the experience as well for those people who are ready to go and do that, you know, and having conversations openly about money I think is a really courageous first step for many people to, to make.

So I'm really excited to be holding space for this work this year.

Well, I know it's going to be very powerful because you, you do a lot of powerful work and I think maybe very British perspective that we have never been taught to talk about money openly.

You know, it's been very, very closed off and it's been sort of almost like, you know, we don't talk about that.

It's a taboo subject, which isn't helpful because money is part of our life and it takes, you know, it's a huge part of the way we live.

And if we can't talk about it, we can't verbalize and we can't contextualize and understand it, you know, it's only just going to be there as this, like, very scary anomaly that we can't quite pinpoint and will, you know, we just need to be able to open the door, talk about it, understand it, and normalize, normalize having conversations and asking questions and being open.

And that is why, you know, we said at the very beginning in your biog that you, you know, you want to champion financial equality, especially in women.

And if we can't talk about it and be in safe spaces, like what you're doing, then more women.

We need more women with good ethics, good morals, who want to make deep change to help more people.

We need that money to get into these, these female spaces here, here.

And like, here we are.

And especially in this context, you know, gender is one inequality we have, neurodivergence is another.

And I think that the more acceptance we can move into that, actually it's a real superpower.

Like, I consider my neurodivergence as a way that, yes, it has kept me in patterns of overspending in my 20s, but actually it, you know, enables me to look at things differently.

I'm very sensitive to my emotions.

I'm very, you know, I take opportunities, I say yes to things, probably more than I should sometimes.

But I think that we are living in a society now where gender, you know, the gender gap is actually less material than the gap that we have that needs to be spoken about for neurodivergent women.

I know from navigating many life cycles and seasons of my own life, like perimenopause, for example, you know, it does warrant more money.

And so we do need to be having these conversations, especially as women, because men are ahead of the game and we are navigating seasons in our life that require more money.

And I think that a lot of this comes down to generationally shifting away from it being about independent financial freedom to collective financial freedom, rather than making decisions based on our own individual needs, is switching that lens onto the collective needs, bringing that back to what do we need as a collective rather than what do we need as individuals?

That's, that's what I'm excited for.

I think that's a brilliant point.

You know, the getting you know, support with our health and our emotional well being.

It comes with privilege.

And you know, here in the UK we're seeing, you know, real shift towards more private care and this more holistic care.

Unfortunately, we are having to pay for it and we feel quite disempowered if we can't afford and so within stuck.

So we need to empower more, more women to, to hold this money and be able to use it for, for good and for their, their health.

And because the more women are leading and more women are showing up, then we're sort of becoming the role models for the, for the next generation.

But I do, I think we're a bit messy in the middle at the moment.

We're sort of kind of navigating two generations, aren't we?

We're sort of like the old, the old conditioning, we're like pulling away from it.

But there's, there's this deep hangover that we're trying to get rid of.

So unfortunately, I think we're doing the hard work but maybe making things a bit easier for the next generation, I hope.

I think you are definitely the visionary in this space and I'm so excited to have you back on talking about all of this.

I know that anybody that signs up to your wealth resonance will learn all about this.

It's, I think it sounds like the most incredible container, whatever you want to call it, but.

And I'll make sure that we put all the, the information in the show notes so people can really read about it and understand it more.

If it does feel, you know, like being called to you, where would people find you?

What's your website?

And yeah, let's tell people how they can get in touch.

Yeah, well, we can pop all the show notes links into, into the, the podcast here I think as well.

The, the other reference or resource to mention is that if you're listening to this and it's outside of this current conversation because Wealth Residence, we open twice a year if this is outside of that time.

But we also do have a little mini 3 hour somatic online course called the Body of Wealth.

We'll give you a free coupon code so that your audience can, can go and grab that for free.

And that's a really great place to begin if you're wanting to just start this journey in the somatic sense of your relationship with money.

Thank you so much.

There's been an absolute joy.

Always very interesting to talk to you, Katherine.

So thank you so much.

Katherine Morgan, thank you so much for having me.

If you've been affected by difficult topics mentioned in today's episode, please do go to the Show Notes for links to helpful resources and support.

Thank you for being here and listening to today's episode.

I just want to remind you that if you are looking for more support on your ADHD journey, there are so many resources waiting for you over@adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk so inside the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Workshop library you'll find practical and compassionate guidance on topics such as nervous system regulation, rejection, sensitive dysphoria, perfectionism, emotional regulation, hormones, parenting and so much more.

All designed specifically for late diagnosed neurodivergent women.

You can also explore my new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Tool Toolkit, which was published by dk, which is also available in ebook and audiobook, which is packed full of tools to help you feel calmer, more regulated and more like yourself.

And if you do crave a bit more deeper connection and ongoing support, come and join us inside the More Yourself community.

It's a gentle space for learning, reflection and connection with other neurodivergent women.

And you'll also find the recordings from our first first ever ADHD Women's Wellbeing Live event, which brought together incredible speakers and a room full of inspiring women for a truly special day.

We have recorded it all for you and it's there to buy.

So whether you're just starting your journey or looking to go deeper, there's something there for every stage.

Just head to adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk to explore everything.

And as always, thank you so much much for being here and for being part of this community.