Soma Flow

The Mercedes That Took Me for a Test Drive

• Tabitha MacDonald • Episode 61

Share episode

Send us a text

A cheap SUV booking, a midnight shuttle to a sketchy lot, and a surprise upgrade to a luxury Mercedes turned into an x-ray of my deepest money beliefs. I thought I wanted passive income and a bigger online business—until my body told a different story: more visibility felt dangerous, responsibility felt heavy, and wealth felt like a target on my back. That night exposed how safety, not strategy, decides what we allow ourselves to hold.

We dig into the patterns underneath the panic: old scarcity from post-COVID upheaval, the reflex to fix and rescue as a way to feel loved, and the subtle ways codependency keeps us focused on controlling others instead of regulating ourselves. I share how taking radical responsibility changed my relationship with my daughter and why upgrading your identity is less about grit and more about building a nervous system that can handle being seen, paid, and supported. If you’ve ever braced when something good arrived, this conversation will feel like a mirror.

Are you ready to feel supported on your healing journey?  The Soma Flow Library of Healing is now available.  With a powerful meditations, hypnosis sessions and Superconscious Recodes to restructure your unconscious patterns, this is a must have tool to your journey back to you.  

✨ Ready to take this work deeper?

If today’s episode spoke to your soul and you’re ready to rise into a life aligned with your truth, I’d love to invite you into Soma Rising—my signature transformational journey for women who are done playing small and ready to reclaim their power, purpose, and intuitive knowing.

In Soma Rising, we dive into shadow work, emotional healing, the Enneagram, and Superconscious transformation—all with the intention of helping you align your mind, body, heart, and soul for a life of deep flow and fulfillment.

🌿 You’ll be guided step-by-step through the inner shifts that lead to outer change—supported by powerful tools, a sacred community, and the wisdom of your own body and soul.

Come home to yourself. Join us in Soma Rising—your next level is waiting.

✨ Learn more and sign up online.

💫 About Tabitha

Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome pain fast so they can experience the love, success, freedom, and fulfillment they truly desire.

Additional Resources:

SPEAKER_00:

Today, I want to tell you a story about unconscious beliefs. My name is Tabitha MacDonald. Welcome back to the Soma Flow podcast, where we explore the intersection of mind, body, and soul transformation and how the unconscious patterns you don't even know you're running are actually the ones running your life. Have you ever noticed that when you're really going for something, it seems like there's a big hurdle or challenge that comes in and like prevents you from getting that thing that you want. So the last 30 days I've been working specifically around money beliefs and wealth manifestation and generation. And I have an online business and I have a podcast and I have things that I'm doing to start building out passive income. Cause I've always had the mindset that like you have to work hard for your money, you have to be present, like that time mentality around money generation. And as I wanted to go for an online business, as I wanted to create passive income, I'm coming up against hurdles. I didn't even know that I was gonna have to jump over around money, around wealth and responsibility, consistency, leadership, being seen. The list is very long. So we've been working through those in my business class, and I've had a lot of aha moments about how I've gotten in my own way. And the great news is it's me who's gotten in my own way. There's no some mystical force that's like preventing me from having great success. That's a hundred percent just me. And I actually like being in that place because that means I have the ability to shift it. So here we are doing all of this work. I'm gonna tell you right now, it was emotionally exhausting. I had to take a lot of hard looks at choices I've made since COVID, because of COVID, what happened to my business after COVID. And then I had some other really life-altering events that created even more catastrophic thinking around money and wealth. Mostly that money is not really safe. And if you have it, you're gonna be a target of attack. And here it is. It's Saturday night. My daughter needs my help. She was recently in a car accident, and um, luckily she's safe. She's fine, everything's fine, but she's also moving into an apartment. And then, like, one of those things is hard for an adult who's had a lot of life experience navigating challenges. Both of those things and navigating a breakup at the same time, that's hard. That's really hard. And we were gonna go to Disneyland for my 50th birthday, but life happens and we weren't able to, so you know, the path was to come go down to Arizona and help her get settled and her new, and her her new experience of the next level of adulting. And my plans shifted because I got sick. I got really sick. And I don't normally get sick, but this cold or whatever I got took me down. And I could not drive down the way I had planned. And I turned 50 and I was really upset because I thought, look, oh, why bother planning anything? It never goes as planned. This is another belief. And so I had to shift all of my plans, and I booked a flight using miles, and it was um late at night, and then I wanted to find a rental car so that um we had a car that I could drive around in. And I looked for like the cheapest SUV I could find because I knew we were gonna be moving furniture and stuff like that. So I go on Expedia and I find a cheap SUV, and it was like gonna be like a Ford, you know, small SUV, enough for us to get around in. And I booked it on Expedia, not realizing like how Expedia works and like bringing together a lot of sometimes not so known companies. So I'll just say that I should have done a little bit more research, but I was in a hurry and I was sick. And so I was mostly just looking at the bottom line and the price tag. So here it is, it's already late at night. It's like what 10:30 when my plane lands. I'd already worked all day and I'm still recovering from a cold. And I get off and then I get a text message from this rental car company saying you have to follow these instructions, like some weird spy game. You have to go take a write at the third poll on the, you know, it's like it's those kind of weird instructions, and I'm thinking, what did I just get myself into? I thought this was like a company that would just be at the gate, like all the other ones. No, it came with a map, secret codes, like all kinds of weird stuff. So there it is, like it's late, I'm tired, I'm dragging my suitcase across the Phoenix airport, hoping this company doesn't close because now it's getting you know past 11. And oh, so then you have to take a take this weird elevator, and then you have to go wait for a shuttle, and then the shuttle takes you off site. So we get into this dark van in the middle of the night in Phoenix, and I'm starting to freak out. So it I'll just say that I'll backstory to a smidge. The lady who sat next to me on the plane must have been on drugs because she was one of those people who was like looking around and like kind of sketch and kept making weird like faces, and I and I was like, I feel like she's on meth or something, and I'm not feeling totally safe. So I'm gonna preface this by saying I didn't feel totally safe getting off of the plane. So this whole like adventure made me feel even less safe. Now, safety is hugely important to me, especially as a woman walking around in a city. I don't really know at night, especially 11:30 at night. So we get into this shuttle with all of these people. There's like, I think three families in there. And it freaked me out because I did not feel safe. I was like, I don't know if this company's legit. This is how I die. They're taking me to some like drug lord's house, and I'm gonna be sold off into the middle of the night. No one will ever see me again, and nobody will help my daughter get a new car. So this is my mind, right? Because it's late at night. I'm sick. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to manage my mindset that day. And actually, that's not true. I totally was managing my mindset that day. I just, you know, this just pushed my nervous system over the edge. Have you ever had that experience where you were like in a situation and you're like, logically, I don't think, you know, I'm gonna be taken away and killed. But like there's something in my brain that's telling me right now that this is how I die. So um, so I get in there and it's this weird house, like looking building, and there's like drug addicts outside wandering the street. And I know they're drug addicts because of how they walk and how they're dressed, you know. I can make safe assumptions that they roll on, that there's a lot of people around me on drugs. And so I'm already on like hyper alert, and I'm like, why is there this random car place in the middle of this like drug-infested part of Phoenix? And why is it in this old house with like disco music? It was like house music playing, and it was dark, and there was like these like lines of for like you know, uh, what you would see like going into a club, and it was so weird. And I get to the counter and the guy starts asking me strange questions, and then he keeps going back to this secret room and coming back out and then giving me different information. And I'm like, oh great, this is definitely how I die, right? Like, this is it. Like, I'm glad there's other people here. At least I won't be dying alone. And so, but also I was like, There, it was just weird. I'd never had this kind of experience at a car dealership or not at a car rental place. And so by the third time, he comes back out and he goes, Okay, well, it's gonna be an extra$500. And um, I was like, wait, what? What didn't say that online? Like Expedia never said it was gonna be extra. And he goes, Oh, well, you'll get it back. It's an extra deposit. And so I'm thinking in my head, like, this is a scam, and I need to get an Uber out of here, but I'm also not gonna go outside and wait for an Uber in the middle of this neighborhood where there's like people walking around who don't look safe. So here I am in this dilemma. I'm like, I'm just gonna have to fork over the money and I'll deal with Expedia later and and and whatever is going on. So finally, after this guy goes back and forth to this private room a bunch of times, comes out, um, and then he says, Okay, now go outside and your car will be there. So I go outside, and this lady pulls up in this what had to have been the most expensive car I've ever driven in. It was like this large Mercedes SUV. And she hands me the key. And um, I've never driven a Mercedes ever. And I couldn't even figure out how to turn it on or how to put it in drive. And then bless her heart, the lady who brought who brought me the car didn't speak English. And she's looking at me like I'm absolutely insane because she's like, You don't know how to drive this car. And I'm like, no, I drive Toyotas. Like, I don't know where's the shifter, it's not even there. Like, how, like, how do you put it into drive? Like, it was really, and now I'm freaking out because I'm like, now I'm like gonna drive off the lot in this car, and I don't even know how to put it in drive. And how do I even know? So this is what's happening in my mind. It was, I'll just say it was an absolute shit show because I'm sitting there thinking, this car probably costs more than my house. I don't even know if I have enough insurance to cover it. Should the people on the street carjack me? Like that's what this is what's going on in my head right now. And then as I start driving, I haven't figured out how to make it work. Driving off the lot, my brain starts going wild. There was a guy who just told me about a carjacking at a party I had been at a couple days before. And I'm like, oh, great, this is this is how it this is how it happened. Someone's gonna carjack me because of this car. And if someone hits me, I'll owe thousands of dollars. Or worse yet, someone's gonna hit me, then carjack me, and then probably kill me. And like now I'll owe money for the car and I'll like be dead, or like worse yet, somewhere else in a hospital. So this is like literally going through my mind as I'm pulling off the lot, right? And I not any part of me felt grateful to have this nice, beautiful luxury vehicle. All I could think of is I don't want this kind of responsibility, and this is not safe. There's probably a tracker on the car, and this is how we die. Like I um I'm laughing because saying it out loud now, it seems so ridiculous. In the moment, I felt very afraid. And I think in the moment is when it hit me, all of my old money fears were right there in the driver's seat with me. I didn't feel safe being seen with something expensive. I didn't feel safe being the person with a nice car, and I didn't feel safe holding that much value. It wasn't the car that scared me. It was the part of me that still believed that having more makes you unsafe and makes you a target. And here's the thing when we do deep unconscious work, when we start recoding our old identity, we don't always feel the shift while it's happening. But the universe will test that new structure. It'll say, Are you sure you're ready to hold this kind of wealth? Was I ready for a new level of wealth? Did I feel safe in it? Or did I still have resistance living in my body that was used to struggling? And is this like the old identity coming up, creating this? Or was it just a little bit of a check in to see if I was ready for the thing that I said I wanted, which was wealth and success? So if you've been doing the work, like journaling or recoding and any kind of therapy or coaching or shadow work, and it feels like everything is falling apart, it might actually be that your new structure is being given a test drive. This also mirrors what's been happening in my relationship with my daughter, with my business, with my friends, with my love life. I've been healing a lot of codependency strategies that have prevented me from having the kind of love that I want, the kind of love that my soul knows that I want. And part of that pattern was always trying to fix, trying to rescue, trying to control everything outside of me so I could feel safe, supported, loved, a deep sense of belonging inside of me. So my daughter and I used to bond over talking about other people, always blaming the outside world for how things were going in our lives. And since I've been doing all of my healing work, I don't do that anymore. I take full responsibility for the way that my life appears and what's happening in it. That was a huge part of my recovery from being codependent, was taking full responsibility for my emotional state without blaming anyone or anything outside of me for it. And because of that, I don't usually sit around talking about people anymore. Like there's no, oh my God, this person did this to me, and this is why I can't have what I want. And I realized that that's how she was raised because I was very codependent, right? So it was always like, well, we um it's my partner's fault that we're having all of this drama, or it's this person's fault, or it's this person's fault. Like uh, without fully owning my feelings. And I didn't realize it until I she moved away and I started doing a lot of my unconscious restructuring work, recode work, and changing my identity to someone who lives in a more secure attachment style. And then when we get together sometimes, she'll be like, Oh, why can't you just be like how it used to be? And that would be like where we would sit around and bitch and moan about how other people were, if they would change, then we could feel better. And sometimes we have a hard time relating now because I don't do that anymore. And I realize that I'm the one who changed the rules of the game. I'm the one who changed how I see the world and how I relate to it. And sometimes she doesn't know who I am in that place. And so she struggles to know me, not because she's she's bad, but because she's used to growing up with a mom who actually was very codependent and felt very disempowered by other people's behavior. So to be a new version of me and going and seeing her, I have to hold a lot of compassion and grace for her experience of kind of getting to know me. But then also my old shit comes up, right? So, like I'm here wanting to help her and rescue her, but also hold boundaries and integrate all of the nice structural work I've done around a secure attachment style. And meanwhile, I'm also dealing with her in a really upregulated state because she's going through big adult stuff that's scary. And it should be scary because adulting is, let's just be honest, it's not always fun, right? And so my like blame about myself, my own parenting, and my mom guilt is like up, right? It was like, oh man, if only I had given you a better dad, or if only I hadn't made poor relationship choices, you wouldn't have learned that from me, or maybe if I hadn't have, you know, been so resistant to my online business, I'd have more money and I could help you out. And all of this mom guilt is running in my head like an old recording of an old identity, like kind of like you just turn on a rerun of an old show and you're like, I don't think I like that show anymore, but it's so good, I don't want to stop watching it. And then all of a sudden you're like fully mesh, and it's like two days later, and you're still watching the old show, and you're like, oh crap, what happened to the new one? I don't know because I'm back in the old one. So this comes from this old structure of codependency, and it comes up when I'm around her specifically because there's this part of me that's like, well, I don't know how to be her mom in this new place, and I don't want her to stop loving me. And it comes from that deep wound of not belonging, of rejection, of guilt, like the old stuff, right? Of being codependent. And I remember like when she was little, I always blamed everyone else for being overweight, why I lost my money. It was the government's fault, it was COVID's fault, um, why my relationships didn't work, it's not my fault. I always date narcissists, I always date addicts, like I don't have a choice. This is how I was raised, and I can't get out of it. Like, there's just this prison of my old identity. And the truth is, none of that's true. Those are all lies. They're all lies that my unconscious tells me and continues to tell me. And the only way you really know if you're buying the old story is by looking at the results you have in your life. Codependency is a trap and it keeps us focused outward instead of inward. And the truth is it's your relationship with your yourself that determines how safe you are, how wealthy you are, how loved you feel. It's the relationship that you have with you, how aligned you are with your higher self, with your with your soul, with who you really are, your higher level of consciousness outside of all of these human conditions. And whenever I'm around her, I really struggle with my old patterns because I have mom guilt, to be honest. And it's like, oh, well, if I help her fix her financial problems, she maybe she'll need me again and I'll have I'll have meaning back in my life. But when I do that, I'm not helping her. I'm holding her back from creating her own wealth story, aren't I? I'm keeping both of us trapped in the old frequency of struggle and disempowerment. Like life is happening to us, not through us, not because of us. Your unconscious is always looking for evidence to prove your beliefs true. If you believe people or circumstances are responsible for how you feel, your unconscious will constantly find situations to validate that. But when you start believing you are at cause for your reality, that you are the source of your wealth, peace, and power, your unconscious begins aligning with that empowered state. Look around your life right now. Look at your health, your relationships, your finances, your sense of purpose. They are all mirrors of what your unconscious assumes life should be. Beliefs are simply automated choices, and most of them are so old and embedded that we don't even see them as beliefs. We see them as truth. This is where coaching has helped me probably the most because I wasn't able to identify my beliefs. I could only identify like maybe thoughts or things like that, but the deep rooted, rooted, root-level beliefs I couldn't see because they were too true. Coaching helped me realize that we are constantly needing to look at the outcomes in our lives so that we can see what beliefs are still running the show, like a rerun. I would also say that this is why recode work is so powerful because it updates those unconscious programs so that your your reality, your structure of reality and your identity can finally support what your soul is trying to create, what your soul is going to create, and what the universe is going to gently or not so gently guide you towards. And we want to utilize the tools that are available to us to explore that. So I'm gonna give you a little homework assignment or a little self-development tool that I actually really love. So I love using ChatGPT for helping me uncover my unconscious patterns. So I went into ChatGPT and I said, here's my current financial situation: the good, the bad, the ugly. Can you tell me what unconscious program, what unconscious belief structure is operating in the background that I'm not allowed to know? And once I told it the story about the Mercedes and driving off, Chad GBT gave me the exact belief that was stopping me from building my online business. And once I saw the belief that clearly, there was this like moment of, ah, I see it now. I couldn't have seen it myself. And you can do that by like saying Chad GPT act like a um life or business coach or money coach or uh, I usually like to say an intuitive coach. And here's the scenario. Can you help me find the unconscious belief that's preventing me from having the kind of soul-aligned success and wealth that that I know I can see in my mind? And then it'll usually give you not only here's probably what the belief structure is, but also here's how to bridge out of it and reframe it. Also, I like to use the recode for this. So you can use your superconscious to recode and restructure your reality. And it's really fascinating because you start making these, you when you're working with your unconscious structure of reality, you're making so many shifts that you don't even remember the old structure half the time until you get put into a situation and all of a sudden you're just covered in this ick feeling and you're like, this isn't me. But then you realize that was you, but you've just made so many shifts in your identity that that's no longer the home you live in. And it's not a bad thing because that home wasn't broken. That home was necessary to get you to the home that you live in now. Just like my first car was this dinky yellow dots, and I think they made like 400 of them in the whole world. I think the thing was like 400 bucks, and I maybe lasted 100 miles. It did not last long. I don't even think they sold replacement parts. That's how few of them were. That was my first car. My next car was a Honda Civic hatchback, and it was a little bit better. It was$1,200, right? And then my next car was an up-level from that, and then my next car was an up level from that. That think about that as you're unconscious. Gradually you just think, like, wow, I'm just up-leveling, and I can't even imagine buying that little old yellow dots and anymore. But I'm so glad I did because I learned how to buy a car. And then I learned, you know, what kind of car not to buy. And then, you know, make sure they're still making them so that there's parts available. Um, things like that. And then, you know, as you start, and then here it is, the universe is like, well, you said you want wealth. Here's this beautiful Mercedes that's actually cheaper than anything else on the market because, you know, of what happened. And um, how comfortable are you in it? Not comfortable at all, actually. I was freaking out the whole time I was in Phoenix. All I could see was people trying to hit me in their cars. Like, I mean, to be fair, there were a lot of car accidents on the road, and Phoenix Scottsdale drivers are a little bit, they're a lot different than Oregon drivers. And so, like, to be fair, I also work on a lot of car accidents, so I'm always looking for danger because I hear accident stories all day long and what happens to people. So there's a few other reasons why that was happening. But also, the universe was like, you said you wanted wealth, here's something that represents wealth. How comfortable are you in it? And the answer was I wasn't. I wasn't at all. And as I was driving through this like Phoenix neighborhood, and here I am driving this Mercedes through the dark, these sketchy streets, it started dawning on me that money is not dangerous. It's how I respond to it. That's why I can't have it, or I choose not to have it, or I resist creating the kind of wealth that my soul is begging me to create. Because money is not dangerous. The car wasn't testing me, my identity was testing me. Was I ready for the kind of soul-aligned success and wealth that I know I've been asking for? Or did I still have some work to do? Did I maybe need to get like a Highlander first, or you know, something like that? So, when was the last time something good triggered your survival response? It made me feel very betrayed, to be honest. Like, why did I make such a poor choice? Now, all of this sounds very strange coming out of my mouth, and probably a lot of you are thinking, like, why wouldn't you have been super excited to have this really nice car? Well, because it came with a lot of financial responsibility. And that's the thing that I've been working with with my new online business was a new bigger business has a lot more responsibility. It's going to take me learning how to manage wealth in a different way, manage a lot more people because it's a group program. So instead of it being one-on-one, it's gonna have more people needing assistance at the same time. Do I have the structure set in place? What do I need to do? Who do I need to grow into to be the CEO of the company that I'm growing? And I'm so grateful for that Mercedes-Benz and that dodgy car rental place because it pulled all of that up for me to integrate, to explore and to examine where the cracks in my foundation are still hiding, are still stopping me from creating the kind of life that my soul is leading me towards. And I'm happy about it. And I know that that experience was happening for me, not to me. And that's how I know my unconscious identity has shifted. Because being able to say that with absolute certainty that it was happening for me, that I created it, that it was happening through me made me realize that I'm the boss of my life now. And that actually feels pretty darn good. So I want to ask you: do you feel any lack of safety when you think about money? Or holding abundance? It could be abundant love, health, being in alignment with your purpose, your higher self, your intuition. Or do you feel responsible for it in a way that makes you want to give it back? Like if someone gives you a compliment, you have to give them a better one back. If someone wants to gift you time, do you feel like you have to give it back double? And one question I love to ask myself is what would it take to just feel worthy of the gifts the universe wants to bestow upon me? And anything in the way of that, delete, uncreate, and destroy across all time, dimension, space, and realities. That's a little sentence I like to say when I know there's a block and I can feel it, but I don't quite know how to shift it yet. And then I just keep focusing on the thing that I want, the thing, the vision, the picture that my soul keeps showing me. And I just stay committed to the end result no matter what. And I know that my identity is shifting at a at a level, speed, and pace that it's comfortable shifting at. And that requires a tremendous amount of patience and also perseverance of staying the course, even when I feel like everything's falling apart, and knowing that it's actually all just coming. Together. If this story resonated with you, take a moment to reflect on where you might still feel unsafe being seen in your wealth, your gifts, or your power. And if you're ready to recode those old unconscious patterns that keep you looping in struggle, come join me inside Soma Tribe, where we're creating soul aligned success from the inside out. Until next time, stay in your flow, my friends. Stay connected to your truths and remember your soul is the safest place you can be. Much love.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Tabitha MacDonald

Host