no fixed protocol in my work
I know what it feels like to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank and still not feel safe enough to keep it.
I grew up knowing money was hard and dangerous. Not because anyone sat me down and explained it that way, but because my body learned it early, in the tension that charged the room, in what was said and what was carefully never said, in the way financial stress shaped the atmosphere of everything around me.
And then in 2021, when I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, financially stable, more than enough by every external measure, I still didn't feel safe enough to hold it. I didn't feel good enough to deserve it. I didn't feel worthy enough to keep it. So I gave it away.
Not because I was irresponsible. Not because I didn't know better. Because my nervous system had spent a lifetime learning that money wasn't safe to hold, and no amount of external stability had touched that pattern underneath.
I had the qualifications. I had the clinical training. I understood trauma, attachment, nervous system regulation, the neurobiology of survival responses. And none of it protected me from the moment I looked at my own bank account and felt, not relief, not pride, not security, but a quiet, familiar dread.
That was 2021. And that moment is why everything I do now exists.
The long way around to the work I was always meant to do.
I didn't arrive here in a straight line.
I spent 15 years as a hairdresser, which taught me something no university could. That people tell the truth when they finally feel safe enough to speak. Sitting behind the chair, holding space for strangers who became regulars who became people who trusted me with the things they'd never said out loud, that was my first education in what it means to create a container where someone can finally exhale.
Then came 20 years in community services. Homelessness. Mental health crisis. Supporting carers through suicide. Early intervention with children and youth living inside systems that had already decided what was possible for them. I sat with people in their hardest moments and learned that the patterns keeping them stuck were rarely about willpower, character, or choices. They were about survival. About what the nervous system had learned to do to keep someone safe in an environment that wasn't.
And then, quietly, I started turning that same lens toward myself.
I hadn't completed Year 12 when I applied for university. I was raising children, working in the NGO sector, carrying the invisible weight of over-responsibility that healthcare workers wear like a second skin. University didn't feel like something I was allowed to want.
And then something shifted, the environment changed, a relationship became safe enough, and a thought arrived that I hadn't let myself think before.
Why not me?
I applied. I got in. And what I discovered wasn't just that I was capable of it. It was that nothing had ever actually been stopping me except what I believed was available to someone like me.
That's the pattern. That's always been the pattern.
How I Work
I work relationally, guided by the nervous system of the person in front of me. Safety is the compass. The pace, the tools, the depth of our journey together, all of it follows how safe enough feels in your body in any given moment.
I understand money as relational too, because the quality of our relationship with money shapes everything about how it moves in our lives. And like any relationship, it can shift. Money is energy, and energy responds to safety. This means there is:
no curriculum you'll be put through
no predetermined path you'll be guided along regardless of where you actually are.
There is only the work that your nervous system is ready for, held in a relational container that builds trust over time, at the pace that genuine integration actually requires.
I sit with relational trauma.
I understand what it costs a nervous system to have learned that relationships, including the relationship with money, aren't safe.
And I understand that the path forward isn't more information or more strategy. It's safety, built slowly, in a relationship that can hold what's there.
What I understand now that I wish I'd known then.
The same nervous system responses that shape how we survived childhood shape how we relate to money as adults.
The freeze before opening the banking app.
The fawn that discounts the fee before the client even asks.
The fight that works harder and harder without ever feeling financially safe.
The flop that shuts down entirely when the numbers feel like too much to face.
These aren't personality flaws. They aren't discipline problems. They aren't signs that you aren't smart enough or good enough or built for financial stability.
They're survival patterns. And they were learned in environments where they made complete sense.
For healthcare professionals and therapists specifically, there's an additional layer of shame that sits on top of all of it because...
You know the theory.
You've read the research.
You've sat with clients through their most activated moments and helped them find ground.
And still, your own money patterns don't shift.
Still, the invisible ceiling holds.
Still, something in your body says not yet, not you, not safe enough.
I know that shame intimately.
And I know it doesn't mean what you think it means.
My Training
Over the past 20 years I’ve spent time going deep, not wide, in advanced clinical training in the modalities I use most:
Master of Social Work
Bachelor of Behavioural Science (Psychology)
Accredited Social Worker
Certified Practitioner in the Trauma of Money™ Method
EMDR and Relational Integrative EMDR (including advanced training, GTEP, and IFS-EMDR integration)
Brainspotting (Phases 1 and 2, with advanced training in relationships, children and adolescents, and expressive arts)
Resource Therapy and IFS-Informed practice
Certified Practitioner in Root Cause Therapy
Trauma-Informed Manifestation Coaching
These credentials matter. And what matters more is that I have walked this path myself, not theoretically, not as a case study, but in my own body, my own bank account, my own inherited patterns, my own moment of sitting with hundreds of thousands of dollars and feeling like I had to give it back because I didn't know how to be safe with it.
I built the N.E.R.V.E. Method™ because the tools that changed everything for me didn't exist in any money coaching program or business course. They lived at the intersection of nervous system science, trauma therapy, somatic healing, and the kind of compassionate, shame-free relational space most of us never received around money growing up.
The framework underneath all of it is simple, even when the work isn't.
What I Stand For
The N.E.R.V.E. Method™ works differently because it starts where the pattern actually lives.
Safe enough relationships with money and with yourself.
Good enough parenting, partnership, and practice, not perfection, but enough.
The truth that inherited trauma and over-responsibility were never 100% yours to carry, and that you have a choice about how much of it you put down.
More than just enough. Actual abundance. The kind your nervous system can hold without bracing.
Let's Connect
30 minutes | $97 | Online
You've been carrying this quietly for a while. This connection call is where we put it on the table together: your money patterns, your practice, your nervous system, and getting honest about what's actually going on and what working together could look like right now.
No pressure. No pitch. Just a real conversation with someone who understands both the clinical and the human side. You'll leave with clarity, knowing whether this is the right fit and what the work ahead looks like.
N.E.R.V.E. Method™ Intake & Mapping Session
60 minutes | THE BEGINNING
Before any container starts, before any deeper work happens, we need to understand what'sactually driving your financial patterns at a nervous system level. Not the surface behaviours,not the symptoms you've already identified, but the root pattern underneath, where it lives inyour body, where it came from, and what it's been protecting you from.
In recognition of the deep history and culture of this beautiful Island, Lutruwita. We acknowledge the traditional Custodians of this land, the Palawa people. Recognising their continuing connection to Land, Sea, Waterways, Sky and Culture. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the stories, traditions and living cultures of the Traditional Owners across this Country, including acknowledging the role that non-indigenous social workers had in the creation of the Stolen Generation.
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