Why You Can Manifest Money but Still Struggle to Hold It

So many high-level, successful women are amazing at manifesting money. They’re calling it in. They’re getting the pay rise, the promotion, the new clients, and the bigger months.

And yet, somehow, the money doesn’t stay. It flies out. The bank account doesn’t actually grow. Or it grows for a moment and then drops right back to where it was. And this is where the real conversation starts, because manifesting money and holding money are two very different things.

The first thing you need to understand is that the energy of money is neutral. Money itself is not good or bad.

You are the one assigning meaning to it. You’re the one deciding what money represents, what it says about you, what happens when you have more of it, and what happens when you don’t. That meaning becomes your relationship with money. It becomes how money feels in your body, how it moves in your life, how you experience it, and whether it stays.

I know this work deeply because I had to heal my own relationship with money. I grew up with intense scarcity, to the point where I wouldn’t buy myself breakfast most days just to “save money.” And that didn’t come out of nowhere; it came from my family. My dad grew up watching his own father lose a massive amount of money, and that kind of loss doesn’t just disappear. It becomes money trauma, and money trauma is real (and is very much passed down). It’s not about being broken or doing something wrong. It’s about safety.

That trauma got passed down to me as “hold, hold, hold,” “save for a rainy day,” “don’t spend,” and “spending is bad.” So even when I started making more money, my nervous system didn’t actually feel safe with it. This is where most people get stuck, because they focus only on money mindset. And mindset matters, but it’s only about 20 percent of the equation. Eighty percent of the signal in your body runs from the body up to the brain, not the other way around.

We don’t manifest through the mind. We manifest through the body.

If your nervous system doesn’t feel safe to hold more money, you might be able to call it in, but you will sabotage it. You’ll overspend, unconsciously create expenses, and lose it just as fast as it came, because your system is trying to bring you back to what feels familiar and safe.

This is why people get stuck at the same income level no matter how much they “work on their mindset.” No matter how much money comes in, the bank account stays the same. Or worse, it drains. You might notice that every time you make more, more bills show up. Random charges. Parking tickets. Speeding fines. Subscriptions you forgot about. It’s not that you’re bad with money. It’s that your nervous system is rejecting money to keep you at your current threshold.

When something feels like a really big deal in your body, you won’t hold it. If a $40,000 raise feels terrifying, overwhelming, or “too much,” you either won’t get it—or you won’t keep it. Your system says, this isn’t safe, this isn’t mine, this is too much responsibility, too much risk, too much pressure. And so it goes.

This is also why expanders are so powerful. They help normalize what you want. They close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, so it doesn’t feel like such a leap. When the gap closes, the body relaxes. And when the body relaxes, money can stay.

So, if you’re struggling to hold money, it’s important to ask yourself a very honest question: Why don’t I want more money?

Not why should I want it?... Why don’t I want it? Because that question will tell you exactly where the block is. Maybe having more money feels dangerous. Maybe it feels like it would create more fights. Maybe it feels like someone would try to take it. Maybe you learned that rich people are greedy, or that money ruins relationships, or that being the breadwinner causes resentment.

Trauma doesn’t have to be a big, dramatic event. It can be subtle, inherited, or as simple as watching your parents fight over money or watching one parent resent the other. Those experiences live in the body, and the body remembers.

Another piece people miss is capacity. If your nervous system is already maxed out and can’t handle one more demand or stressor, how is it going to handle more money? 

There has to be space in your body, in your energy, and in your nervous system. Regulation is important, but regulation alone isn’t enough. You have to increase your capacity so you can hold more without burning out.

This is why healing money trauma isn’t just about journaling, affirmations, or meditation—although those things help. It’s about rewiring the nervous system and increasing its threshold for more: 

• More money
• More responsibility
• More ease
• More expansion

Sometimes the resistance to holding money isn’t even about money. It can be about trust. Trusting your intuition. Trusting yourself to make changes. Trusting that moving to the next level won’t destroy you. Even healing your relationship with the masculine—with men, with support, with being held—can radically change your relationship with money.

TL;DR: Manifesting money is one thing. Holding money is another. 

If money keeps slipping through your fingers, it’s not because you’re undeserving or "doing it wrong." It’s because there is something in your system that doesn’t feel safe with more. And that is not something to shame; it’s something to heal.

When you heal the trauma, regulate the nervous system, and expand your capacity, money no longer feels like a threat. It feels normal. And when it feels normal, it stays.

If this landed, and you know you’re ready to stop white-knuckling money and actually feel safe holding more, this is the work we do at The Immersion. We don’t just talk about mindset—we literally rewire the nervous system, heal the trauma underneath the patterns, and increase your capacity for more.