Have you ever noticed how easy it is to give, but how uncomfortable it feels to receive? Whether it’s a compliment, unexpected kindness, financial support, or even an opportunity you’ve been working towards—receiving can bring up feelings of resistance, guilt, or even fear. Many people assume this means there’s something wrong with them, or that they’re just not good with money, or not “ready” for abundance. But the truth is, your difficulty with receiving has less to do with your mindset and far more to do with how safe your body feels.
Receiving isn’t a matter of worthiness alone. It’s about nervous system safety. When your body doesn’t feel safe expanding, whether emotionally, energetically, or financially, it will unconsciously resist, block, or even sabotage the very things you say you want. And the worst part? You might not even realise you’re doing it. In this post, we’ll explore why receiving feels so vulnerable and how you can start to soften those protective layers, creating a body and energy system that’s open to support, connection, and abundance.
Receiving Isn’t Just a Mindset. It’s a Felt Sense
You might have done all the affirmations. Told yourself you’re worthy. Even journaled on abundance and visualised the life you desire. But still, when good things come your way, a part of you tenses. You question whether it’s too much. Whether you’ve earned it. Whether it’s going to be taken away just as quickly. This internal flinch is not because you don’t believe in your worth. It’s because your nervous system doesn’t yet feel safe to receive.
Many of us have been conditioned to associate receiving with danger, shame, or exposure. If you grew up hearing things like “you have to work hard for everything” or “don’t be greedy,” your body learned that receiving freely, without struggle, wasn’t acceptable. If you were praised for independence or survival, then being helped might now feel like failure. These beliefs create invisible rules around what is or isn’t okay to allow in.
- It’s not about deserving: You can consciously believe you’re worthy of more while your body still resists receiving it. Worthiness doesn’t automatically equal safety.
- Old stories shape new blocks: Phrases like “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “you have to earn your keep” may seem harmless, but they plant deep roots that can grow into discomfort with ease and abundance.
- You’re not bad with money: You might simply never have been shown what safe, supported receiving looks like. Without that example, your nervous system may default to familiar survival patterns, even when your circumstances change.
When you realise that your resistance to receiving is protective, not personal, you can start to approach it with more compassion and curiosity.
The Nervous System’s Role in Receiving
Your nervous system is designed to keep you safe. Its entire function is to detect threat or safety in your environment and respond accordingly. The challenge is, it doesn’t just react to physical danger, it also responds to emotional, relational, and energetic cues. So if receiving attention, love, or money has ever felt unsafe in your past, your body may interpret those things as threats now.
This is why you might feel anxious when you receive more money than usual. Or why you struggle to accept help, even when you desperately need it. Or why you deflect compliments without thinking. Your nervous system isn’t trying to sabotage you, it’s trying to protect you based on past experiences.
- Safety over strategy: You can plan, visualise, and manifest all you want, but if your body doesn’t feel safe holding what you’re calling in, it will find subtle ways to push it away.
- Receiving can trigger survival states: More visibility can feel like more vulnerability. More money can feel like more pressure or responsibility. More love can feel like more risk. These aren’t logical thoughts, they’re embodied responses.
- Hypervigilance in disguise: Overworking, overgiving, and needing to control everything may seem productive, but often they’re symptoms of a body that doesn’t trust it’s safe to receive. If you don’t believe it will last, you try to earn it again and again, even after it’s arrived.
Understanding this changes everything. It helps you stop blaming yourself and start building a deeper sense of safety in your own system.
Practices to Rebuild Safety Around Receiving
Healing your capacity to receive isn’t about flipping a switch. It’s a slow, intentional process of building safety in your body and softening the old protective patterns that no longer serve you. The goal isn’t to force openness. It’s to create an environment, internally and externally, where your system feels safe enough to allow, enjoy, and integrate what’s coming in.
This work is subtle but powerful. It requires you to pay attention to the little moments when you contract, the times you deflect, and the ways you minimise your joy. Then, instead of judging yourself, you begin to meet those responses with presence and patience. You show your body that it’s okay to soften.
- Notice the small things: Receiving isn’t just about big wins. It’s also in the everyday moments. Do you brush off compliments? Decline help even when you’re struggling? Feel uncomfortable when something comes easily? Start tracking these micro-moments and practise softening your response, pausing, breathing, and saying thank you without deflection.
- Regulate first, receive second: Before stepping into something expansive, whether it’s receiving money, praise, or an opportunity, take a moment to ground your body. Use tools like slow breathing, gentle movement, or placing your hand over your heart to remind yourself that you’re safe. After receiving, take time to integrate, don’t rush to the next thing.
- Celebrate without explanation: When something good happens, practise enjoying it without justification. You don’t need to explain why you deserved it or downplay it to make others comfortable. Let yourself feel the joy of receiving fully, without conditions or disclaimers.
The more often you engage in these practices, the more your nervous system learns that receiving isn’t dangerous. Over time, the contraction softens, the flinch fades, and the flow opens.
Conclusion
Receiving is not a reward for hard work. It’s not something you have to earn, prove, or hustle for. It’s a natural part of being in relationship, with others, with life, with the universe. But if your body doesn’t feel safe, it will block that flow, not because you’re unworthy, but because it’s trying to protect you in the only way it knows how.
When you begin to work with your nervous system instead of against it, everything changes. You start to notice when you’re closing. You learn how to stay open. And slowly, receiving becomes less about effort and more about allowing. You stop bracing, and you start breathing. You stop pushing things away, and you start letting them in.
Let this be your reminder: You don’t have to earn softness. You don’t have to prove your way into support. You’re allowed to receive simply because you exist. And as your nervous system learns that truth, deeply and consistently, you’ll find that receiving becomes not just possible, but pleasurable.
