6.15 | Building the Muscle of Reciprocity

>> Isha Vela: Welcome to Waking Up Wealthy, the podcast for visionaries and rebels who are ready to revolutionize their relationship with money and create powerful collective ripples with the money they make. I’m your host, Isha Vela, trauma psychologist, somatic practitioner, financial professional and minimalist, bringing you practical money tools, unconventional wealth perspectives, and Aquarian era business strategies to guide you in building wealth that’s aligned, ethical and empowering. Let’s wake up to the true meaning of wealth together. 

Hello and welcome to the Waking Up Wealthy podcast. I’m Isha Vela, your host. I’m a psychologist, matriarchal wealth strategist and activist, somatic practitioner and founder of the Wealth Ecology Institute. I wanted to talk today about reciprocity because it is the foundation of a gifting economy. I believe it’s the foundation of giving and receiving, which, yeah, is. Is the foundation of a matriarchal economy. And in my experience, I don’t feel like people really understand what that is. And most people think that reciprocity is, I give you something, you give me something back of approximate equal value, if not now, then later. And what that is is transaction. And when we talk about giving and taking and having it be balanced, most of us think about having that happen between two individuals. But if we are to create an indigenous matriarchal economy, we have to dismantle the individualism, right? Adopt a collectivist identity, and, and that allows us to see ourselves in the bigger web of relationship. And then we also have to receive the, or release rather the, the transactionality. So there’s two parts to this. And when I began channeling the spirit of money six years ago, I began to have experiences that made it very clear that reciprocity is something that happens within the bigger web of relationship. And I’ve shared the story with before, probably, it was when I was experiencing or exploring rather polyamory. And, you know, it wasn’t. It was a series of events that happened where, you know, I would give someone attention, care, love, and that person wasn’t available to me in the moment that I wanted them to be, right? So there wasn’t a, a transaction. But what happened, I noticed that pretty soon thereafter, and that’s why I sort of put it together, was that hours, it was just a short time later, I would receive that same care, love, support, attention from somebody else that I was in relationship with. And some of these were platonic, some of these were romantic. So it wasn’t just polyamorous relationships, it was relationships in general. And I really began to see myself in that bigger web, I began to see that bigger field of relationship and give and take. So it was pretty, pretty amazing. And then, as that was happening, I began to do the same with money. I would donate money from this place of very freely giving, not looking to have it be transactional, but from the place of just pure generosity. Like, yes, let me give this to you. And again, hours later, or within 24 hours, I would receive probably like a similar amount back to me, more or less. And I was like, wow, that’s so incredible. And it just made it so clear to me that the energy of love, the energy of money, it’s. It’s just all one. It’s just energy, right? And it’s just the same. It’s the same frequency, right? It’s. It’s an extension of us. So that’s what sort of. It’s kind of flattened the hierarchy between like, oh, love energy or money energy. It’s just all energy. And that’s how energy moves, and that’s why money wants to move. But most of us are taught transactionality pretty soon after we’re born, when we first come into the world, if you grew up in a healthy family, we’re not able to give, right? Maybe we give, but we’re not aware of our giving. When we’re tiny babies, people are taking care of us. They are giving us love, attention, care. They’re changing our diapers or feeding us. And maybe we give by just being our lovely selves. Maybe we coo in a particular way that delights the people that are taking care of us. But the point is that we receive just by being. But when we begin to walk and talk, the adults around us begin to have expectations of us, expectations around giving and taking. And a lot of us learn that in order to receive love, belonging, safety, we need to give something. Oftentimes it’s giving up something. but the giving is being good, being a helper, not being fussy, or being quiet, right? And so we give up our voice, or we give up an aspect of identity, or we have to sort of push a part of our personality down. Then when we come into our educational environments, it’s pretty much the same story. We have to be a good student, we have to do our work to get the good grade, or we have to behave in order to get the attention of the teacher. We get a good grade, then we get into a good school, we get a job, we’re a good worker, and then we get paid, right? So this, it’s a whole colonization into or, learning into transactionality, that we learn that owing someone is, a problem to be solved quickly because the owing hangs as this debt that feels pretty terrible in people’s bodies when in actuality it’s the substance of being in relationship with them. Okay, and I’ll get to that piece in a moment. So we’re not taught to be relational. We’re taught to be transactional. And so in that process of everything becoming a transaction, usually between two people, people, we are cut off from that bigger web, from the bigger energetic field we’re connected to. And I just have to talk about network marketing for a second because even when we’re networking, where we have the best opportunity to be to feel that bigger field of relationship, we often. The way the, BRO network marketers have done it is that, you know, you talk to someone, you reach out to someone, because ultimately there’s an end goal of getting something from them, which is whether it’s an appointment, whether it’s a sale, something, right? Or getting them recruited to your team. And a lot of BRO network marketers operate from a place of transactionality, which is why network marketing has gotten such a bad reputation, because it’s become extractive and transactional. It’s exploitative when you approach it in that particular way. And I’ve spoken about that in another episode of the podcast. I believe it was season six, I’m not sure in early in the year, where I talk about network marketing being matriarchal, if you approach networking or creating relationship or nurturing relationship from that pure, energetic place. Right? So that’s what we’re talking about here, right? Getting very specific about the energetics of the giving and taking. Because both reciprocity and transaction involve giving and receiving. But, they run on a completely different energetic law, right? They run on a completely different engine. And if you can’t tell the difference in your own body, you will spend your whole life either extracting without knowing it or protecting yourself. So, well, you’ll never let anybody in. Okay? And this episode is about naming the difference and more importantly, about learning to feel it in yourself, in real time, in your actual relationships. So let’s talk about transaction reciprocity and extraction. So let’s get clear about what each one of those is, because the language matters. So a transaction like, you know, I talked about earlier, it’s the. The relationship settles immediately, right? You’re the you. The loop opens, right? When I give you something, I get you coffee, for example, and then the loop closes when you get me Lunch a few days later, right? Where even the account is closed. Like a bar tap. Like, you open it and you close it and the value gets measured and matched. Right? So you think about like, well, okay, so coffee is not equivalent to a, dinner. So maybe the next time I need to set up the ante, because, you know, they spent. I spent this much on a coffee and you spent that much on a dinner. Right? So you’re, you’re measuring and you’re matching and you’re making sure that it’s even. And the relationship ends the moment that debt gets paid. Reciprocity doesn’t work that way at all. Reciprocity is one of the six higher laws, which I just want to briefly name. I’m not going to name all of them, but I just want to. I do want to name that the law of circulation and the law of gratitude are also part of these six higher laws. And it is in fact the law of gratitude that opens the door to reciprocity. I’m going to talk about that a little bit later. because in reciprocity, the loop stays open. It doesn’t close on a schedule, and it doesn’t require that. That what comes back to be equal to what went out. Hey, real quick, before we get back to the episode. You keep saying you want an indigenous matriarchy now, and I believe you. And it’s going to require a relationship with money that’s completely outside of the TRADFI model and a body that’s mapped to ecological systems. So I made something for that. Flow is a matriarchal money masterclass followed by five emails over five days, each providing you an internal shift and a concrete action. Step to Match walks you through the somatic and ancestral patterns running the show and the structures that let money move through community instead of stagnating and scarcity. By the end of the week, you’ll be moving money like a matriarch. So find the link in the show notes, sign up, and flow will come straight to your inbox. Okay, let’s get back to it. And it doesn’t even require that the gift return to the person from the person who gave it. Right? So it doesn’t have to come. It doesn’t have to come to the same person you gave it to. Right? So I got you coffee. That doesn’t mean you have to buy me dinner or coffee or do anything. Right? The loop stays open, we stay in relationship. But this makes people supremely uncomfortable because fears come up around being taken advantage of. And this is where sort of the childhood stuff comes in that there is this vulnerability there that feels very uncomfortable. It feels exposing fears come up around being taken advantage of because a lot of people have been. And this is why developing trust is essential to practicing reciprocity. And in reciprocity, what you give moves through a whole community or through a whole energetic field, however you want to see it. And it’s circling and circling and circling. And the reason why I mentioned that other higher, higher law of circulation is because circulation is the point. It’s like the essence, right? We talk about flow, right? Move money like a matriarch. Flow is the essence, right? To keep circling and moving and moving and moving. The circulation is the point, like I said. And the ongoing imbalance isn’t a problem to fix. It’s part of the ongoing relationship. It keeps you connected to the person. The connection is the point as well. And then let’s talk about extraction, because that’s the shadow side of all of this. And it’s the reason why so many of us don’t trust reciprocity or default a transaction because it’s shorter term and it feels safer than being extracted from. And extraction is what happens when somebody keeps taking from an open loop, right? Like let’s say you buy me coffee and you keep buying me coffee and I keep creating situations where you buy me coffee and I’m not returning on the favor. I don’t replenish the energetic in, in the energetic loop, right? And I exploit the very trust that is required for reciprocity. Pretty much all of us know what this feels like. Some have experienced it in the extreme, but even, even one or two experiences of being extracted from trust becomes harder to achieve. So I just want to name that and normalize that because for all of us this is a trust building process. And you know, I experience trust issues all the time, right? And what we don’t want to do is we don’t want to protect ourselves. We want to be. We want to use discernment. But what we don’t want to do is protect ourselves with the boundaries that feel like walls, right? So discernment leads to healthy boundaries. But sometimes when there’s boundary created with fear, it becomes a wall. And sometimes that fear and that grief shows up at self. Western culture trains us into this by default. And we’re taught that independence is the goal, right? So we, we sort of keep people out. We don’t any, we don’t owe anybody anything. It’s a badge of maturity. But structurally it’s not independence. It’s the refusal of interdependence. Because interdependence is the standard, it is the default. But we’re pushing away, we’re refusing it. And sometimes that’s a money block because it’s an energy block, right? So it’s like, it’s a, it’s a love block, energy block, money block. It’s all energy, right? So we want to open that up in a reciprocal frame. Debt isn’t a burden. Debt is connective tissue. It’s the thing that keeps us bound to each other instead of walking away from each other the moment the exchange is complete. Okay. And once you begin, once you can see this, right? Once you can see this, once you can start seeing it everywhere, like it’s. You’re gonna, like, you’re gonna bring awareness to how this is showing up in your life. I love this part. So for example, I’ll, use an example of. I want to share an example of how it showed up for me. Okay. So when I was moving out of my apartment in Connecticut, I was basically, you know, downgrading to two suitcases. And I had lots of furniture. Not lots. I had some furniture, I had plants, I had pots and pans, all the things, right? Desks. And this woman that I had met through my oldest child, I met her through my kids hockey team and we became instant friends. It was like we hung out one night and talked for five hours. And she was just like the sweetest person. And she’s like, yeah, I’ll help you move. Like, let me know when you want me to come over. And I’m like, oh my God, like, you helping me move, like moving is so, like, oh, it’s so tedious. Really. Do you want to do that? She’s like, yeah, yeah, no problem. So she came by and she basically moved, I would say half of my apartment. The big stuff in my apartment. And I, just even thinking about it right now just is. I just feel this overwhelming gratitude and appreciation for her because it was just so easy, seemingly for her to do it. And I was so grateful and relieved to get the help because I was overwhelmed. And now the furniture is in her house. And when, you know, in the first six months that I’d moved, she would, she would leave me a voice message. She’d be like, oh my God, I love how your couch looks in my living room. And I was like, oh my God, that’s beautiful. And she would send me a picture of the plant that I had given her. So it was really, really nice. And you know, we’ve kept that loop open, and I haven’t quite reciprocated that huge favor she did to me. We still could stay in contact. And of course, that thread is, you know, is open, that loop is open between us. But I haven’t quite given it to her at that level. And that’s okay, right? Like, I still aware of it. I’m not tracking it obsessively, but I’m aware of it. I’m just like, yeah, like, you helped me. Yeah, that’s cool. Like, I love you. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, in many cultures, the exchange is what builds and holds the relationship. What’s moving between the hands is beside the point. That’s not that important. It’s just that something is moving. There’s substance there. There’s something. So I, want to now switch gears a little bit and talk about where I’m taking this next, because it would be really easy for us to now default into like, oh, my God, that person never closed. That person was. Is transactional. And that person, wow, they. They really, like, you know, they sucked me dry. Or, they were takers. And it would be a really easy thing to just point out other people. Right. But that’s not what we’re doing today. Because this episode, and my invitation to you ongoingly is to. Is to be aware of how you show up in relationships. And I, want you to be aware of, like, how am I present in this exchange right now? Am I keeping score? Right. Because again, like I said earlier, I. I do keep score sometimes, you know, when I don’t have that trust established. You know, my. My vigilance is a little higher. And so it’s important that you use discernment when you’re still developing that trust. But when there is actual trust, notice how. How you’re keeping track, or notice if there’s hyper vigilance, or notice if there’s anxiety when somebody’s giving to you, because it means like, oh, I’m gonna have to owe them. Right. And I’m gonna go ahead and describe some survival patterns that we learned early on as we were learning transactionality. And these are ways that we’ve developed to protect ourselves in relationship. These show up as blocks to receiving, to entering into reciprocity. And they really reveal a lot about ourselves. And they also reveal where we become takers in the relationship or where we refusing interdependence. So this is something we need to look at because it’s part of the healing that happen that we need to do in order to embody true generosity that supports a gifting economy, that supports a. An indigenous. Indigenous matriarchy. And I want to note first, before we talk about the. The patterns, what it feels like in your. In your body when you’ve entered into extraction, even unintentionally, because I have. Right. It’s. It’s this sense of entitlement to what you’re receiving rather than being moved by it. I gave the example of the couch because it was a moment where I felt deeply moved. There was no part of me that expected or felt entitled to receive that level of care. In other situations, I have felt entitled. Right. Maybe because of my privilege. Right. Like, there’s different reasons why we feel entitled. Maybe we feel like that person owes us something or, you know, we’ve already decided we’ve created a story where that person owes us something. So that can. That sense of entitlement can let you know that maybe you’re taking. There’s another, more subtle piece that sometimes we forget that we just received something or that somebody gave us something. And that can be a part of extracting. And this is really about being honest with yourself. you know, just kind of like loosely tracking. Like, do I. Do I give as much as I receive, or am I taking more than I’m giving? Right. So you want to be just kind of noticing that. And what I also want you to be aware of is closing the loop of, like, giving and receiving out of a place of fear. And it might look like a boundary on the outside, but it’s really just an urgency to repay the second you receive something, whether it’s a compliment or a gift. Right. Notice if what you’re doing is trying to stop the discomfort. Somebody gives you a compliment, oh, my God, that dress is so beautiful. And you say, thank you. My God, so is yours. You look great as well. We do this automatically sometimes. But what. What would happen if you’re like, thank you. Thank you. I really. I really love this dress. I bought it at such and such. Yeah, it’s really great. Thank you. Isn’t that uncomfortable? Right? We’re not giving it back. You’re like, what the hell? You’re not giving it back. So. And notice if. If you do that, and notice if you have a tally in your head of what you owe. I do this sometimes, too. Or I do this thing too. Or giving before anyone asks. Right. So that you never feel indebted to anyone. Like, I’m just going to give more so that I’m always just a little bit above the other person just to make sure that I’m the one that’s giving more so that I never feel indebted. Okay, and what else did I want to say? So in a scenario, where you’re sick and somebody says, why don’t I just bring you soup? Like you’re in bed, you’re, you have the, you have Covid or you have the flu, let me come by and bring you some soup. And you’re like, no, no, no, no, I’m okay, I’m okay. Like, it’s fine, it’s fine. I, I don’t, don’t come over with this. If I’m okay, I’m just gonna, I’ll order some soup from the, from the restaurant and. Right. Somebody wants to bring you soup, you don’t want them to, to get, go out of their way. Which is a story you’re telling yourself because you don’t want to burden them. The story is, you are a burden. And this is part of the, the stories we create as we’re growing up, as we’re learning transactionality in our childhood. Many of us grow up with our parents feeling resentful of needs that we have. Because parents, you know, they’re working within a capitalist patriarchal structure. They’re stressed out, they’re, you know, they’re having to pay bills and, and take care of everything. Right? They’re in a nuclear family model probably. And so we receive that resentfulness and we personalize it. We make it about ourselves. So we don’t want to feel that debt of like, my parents are giving to me and I should, I should really get back to them because, you know, a lot of parents gave us guilt trips, right? Like, they’re like, everything I do for you. And you’re so, you’re so unappreciative, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So we feel like a burden. I’m digressing a little bit, but I just wanted to make that point because it is important. So back to the reciprocity and what that actually feels like in your body when you’re in it. So what it feels like is that you can receive being helped without rushing to even the score. And when you’re being helped, you can feel that gratitude and that appreciation. It’s kind of, it’s a, it’s a flow state, right? It’s kind of like a, where you can feel it like coming out of your chest. Your internal ecosystem feels settled, not anxious, feels settled inside the Exchange instead of this, like, tight or resentful feeling and you’re not immediately creating a tally. So now let’s talk about the five patterns. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ve heard me talk about them before, I’ve given them different names at different times. I apologize if that’s confusing. But the names that they have now make them really much easier to understand. And if you want to do more reading on this, this is from Steven Kessler’s the Five Personality Patterns. It’s one of the. The books that hurt me to give away because it is like, it’s a bible of defense mechanisms and it’ll make you such a better person and it’ll make you some so much of a more patient person when you see these patterns inside other people. Anyway, so we have the five relational patterns, and those are the Avoider, the Appeaser, the Endure, the Controller, and the Perfectionist. So much better. Right? Better names. So I want to walk you through these today and I want you to look at where extraction is happening, where there is reciprocity. right. This is kind of the shadow work that we’re doing. And I’m not asking you again to figure out what describes somebody else in your life. I’m asking you to sort of look at yourself. So let’s talk about the avoider first. So the avoider is the person who is sick and orders the soup from the restaurant because they want to sidestep the loop altogether. They want to stay distant enough so that there’s no real exchange, no real debt. It doesn’t even have a chance to form. There’s a total, excuse me, hyper independence. And there’s underneath that, a real fear of entering into that relational loop. It doesn’t feel safe at all. The appeaser has two subtypes, so there’s appeaser one, which is the over giver. And this is where I want to make sure that I’m giving a little bit more than I’m receiving so that I never feel indebted to anyone. And from the outside it looks like generosity, and it can be, but underneath it’s like a debt avoidance really. and there’s a strong energy of having to give in order to get right. So this person grew up in a family where they had to be a good child, they had to be a quiet child, or they had to do something specific as a child to receive the love, care, attention and belonging. What else did I have to say about that? In the end? Yeah, I think this Type this Type 1, has a really hard time just receiving. Like they didn’t experience that. So it’s unfamiliar and it’s scary. And if you see yourself as this type, you really just need to practice receiving and just not doing anything at all. And obviously tell the person that you’re practicing so that they don’t grow resentful of you. But here’s type 2. The type 2 has a flip side of being in collapse. So this person is in a lot of need. They’re sort of this in a help me state and they’re actually extracting from other people. There’s a state of vulnerability. They need a lot of help and sometimes they do receive quite a bit, but because of where they are, they’re not able to give it, give it back. and these, you know, these can, these people can be takers because we often think about takers as being aggressive, but this is actually more subtle and elicits vulnerability. And that’s how we sort of get, get caught up in it. The endurer, the third type stays in exchanges that don’t feel reciprocal at all, but they keep performing openness on the outside while they’re like brooding and resentment the whole time underneath. Right? They’re resentful. They fe. They give because they feel like they have to. They do it out of a sense of obligation, but resented, like I said, the whole time. And in terms of receiving, they, they don’t receive really well because they. Part of their wounding is having been extracted from. And you know, we experience this wound in a lot of different ways or we experience extraction in our childhood in a. Lots of, in lots of different ways. You know, and this is perhaps like, you know, a parent that was like a helicopter parent and they just were like, just a little bit oppressed in that relationship, like overbearing. Right. So they’re used to being sort of like pulled from and they resented. So they don’t really know how to receive and they don’t. Yeah, they don’t know how to receive either. They don’t really do it very much. They don’t trust it. The controller is more of an extractor type. and specifically they need to control the terms of every exchange. Like nothing moves unless they’ve defined how because vulnerability feels completely unsafe. So they tend to take because receiving feels weak. So they can’t trust themselves to ask for help because that’s way too vulnerable. So they default to extraction, the perfectionist, which is the last type. They can’t receive help unless the conditions are just right. They can’t receive in general. for example, in business, it’ll show up as, this website is not perfect, therefore I can’t put it out into the world, and therefore I can’t receive money. or I have to be just right. Or I have to be good enough in order to receive. And you have to be good enough in order for me to receive from you. Right? I’m. I’m putting my standards of goodness, of perfection onto you, the giver as well. And so for all of these shadows, the invitation is to observe the pattern or the dynamic anchor in what you would love to see more in the world, Right? Like, what is your. What is your. What are your values? What is it that you truly believe and would love to see more of? And then lean into that energy and behave from that place. Like you can actually choose to trust. Choose. Choose to take the risk to trust and then move from that place of trust. Yeah. And so it’s like, it’s really choosing trust versus fear. You know, doing that all the time and noticing when you’re in these interactions. So here’s what that looks like in practice. The next time somebody offers you a. A gift or a compliment, some help, just give yourself a pause, right? Just take a breath, take a beat, and notice what your body wants to do. Does it want to deflect? Does it want to minimize? Does it want to immediately reciprocate? right there on the spot so that the moment doesn’t linger. Or do you argue with the person that you don’t really need the help? Right. Sometimes somebody offers me help, and I didn’t ask. My, my oldest child and I, we just had a exchange about this earlier this week. And I said, it’s like, why, why don’t you let me help you? And I said, because I didn’t ask for it. And so they were like, but what’s that about? And I was like, I, I want to. Like, I can do it because I’m, I’m. I come from a I can do it generation. But, But yeah, like, I don’t always want to be helped, so I like to be helped when I want to be helped. But again, right, Controller. Controller. You can see it showing up right now. So I was having a controller moment. But yeah, so oftentimes we argue that we don’t really need the help, right? They want. Somebody wants to open the door and they’re like, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay. You know, so that impulse is data. And don’t worry about what the other person is doing or what their intentions are. Just focus on what’s happening inside of you, inside of that pause. And when it’s someone you trust and this is where it gets really juicy, let those loops stay open. That’s the whole practice. That’s the muscle you’re building. So reciprocity. If you take anything away from this episode, take this. Reciprocity is wealth building. It’s. It’s like the oldest sense of that phrase. Long before you were taught to believe there was wealth on a piece of paper, reciprocity was wealth. And that’s exactly what we’re moving back into. It’s the wealth of being held by other people and by being someone that others can be held by in return without either of you needing the ledger to be balanced by next week. Right? And you don’t need to understand this intellectually anymore. You now have the muscle. You now have the. The practice of noticing the pattern, aligning, with what you believe in, and then, like, choosing to align and then choosing to move from that place. Right? That muscle is there. It’s there the whole time. Now it’s time to, like, do the reps. So this week, let one loop stay open a little bit longer than usual and see what happens. All right, I look forward to hearing your stories. All right, bye. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on itunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. Until the next episode, I’m sending you fierce, fierce love.