7 Audits, 4 Weeks, a Spiral, and One Woman

Best gift ever…

Ever since I started my first business back in 2016, I had a fear of tax time. I remember my CPA, looking down at me over her glasses, as she told me the IRS does not like business losses. She also told me they would not like me doing something new. Her husband was a doctor. I was a doctor. It was clear she saw no reason for me to pursue this business venture.

Saying YES to my calling

Yet, I felt this deep calling, this urge to provide a truly holistic experience of wellness. I’m not talking about the whole variety of things people call holistic or alternative. I’m talking about going straight to the roots, extracting the trauma beneath the symptom. I was unwilling to leave patients/clients suffering when I’d learned how to extract their problem.

The amazing thing was multiple areas of their lives would improve. A doctor approached me for help with her knee pain. Turns out she was creating a workshop and was afraid of moving forward. We did a session by phone. Not only did her knee pain improve, but she also doubled enrollment in her workshop the next week.

This is why I was doing this! This is why I had dedicated so much time and money to my businesses, while working as a doctor, while single-parenting five kids. This experience made it worth it.

As did the next and the next and the next.

There was a huge learning curve

I was trained as a doctor. I don’t have a business degree. I was also very trusting that business coaches knew how to expand my reach, when really, they knew what to say to get my money.

My healing skills exponentially increased. My ability to attract ideal clients not so much.

So, each year, around June, I’d start feeling this sense of dread. Six more months to be profitable. Three more months to be profitable this year. Holy crap — there’s only two more months to show a profit. Oh my gosh, this is the last month to make enough money to be profitable. There grew this increasing stress and increasing dread, as each day went on.

Enter the spiral

Now here’s the thing. I used to manifest like you wouldn’t believe. I’d simply have a thought, and whatever I wanted or needed would be mine. One year, I was booking a $2000 VRBO for a summer trip and needed to move some money around to make it happen. I simply had the thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t need to pay this deposit today.” Within 30 minutes, the owner emailed me and told me I could pay the deposit in June if that were easier. I wasn’t trying to manifest anything! The thought simply flitted through my mind, and it was made manifest. That’s the way life was — until 2016.

In 2016, I moved to coral in spiral dynamics. Coral is around the mid-point on the infinite platform. Anyway, all heck broke loose. My ways of doing things no longer worked. To be fair, I was warned that would be the case in meditation. I didn’t know how dramatic it would be!

Suddenly, if I set a goal, I moved further from it, despite taking inspired action. It didn’t matter what it was. If I set out to get new clients, I got fewer clients. If I set out to lose weight, I gained weight. If I set out to energetically resolve my own foot pain, it got worse. It didn’t matter what it was or how I went about it, my actions no longer worked.

Imagine trying to make my businesses successful when every well planned, well executed activity took me further away from profitable!

Every year, my end of year dread would start. Every year, I dreaded meeting with the CPA. I even hired four in the past five years, trying to eliminate this shame.

The evolutionary shift

Fall 2020, I made an evolutionary shift. It was huge. Spring 2018, I’d shifted to teal. Fall 2020 the shift was to aubergine, aka orange2. Now I know there are few people as obsessed with spiral dynamics as me. Suffice it to say, evolutionary stages of orange (and by contrast orange2) are all about money and goals. The rules on the infinite platform are quite literally 180 degrees different from those of the finite platform.

This was a huge shift.

Over the past 15 months, my views toward money and success evolved. I developed internal abundance (the best thing ever, by the way). I no longer saw my worth as being dependent on how much money I had in the bank, how much debt I had, or how much money I made. I had understood this for years, cognitively. Suddenly, I embodied it.

It got to be June — no panic. Then September — no dread. November — still good.

Now for the gift

Late November, my husband told me we were being audited by the state — one of my businesses for four years and one for three years. The auditor specifically wanted me to justify my business plans and intent to be profitable. It’s exactly what I’d feared all those years, exactly what I’d dreaded.

Except, I felt no fear. I felt no dread. I felt no shame. I felt JOY. Why? Because I didn’t care. Sure, it would be nice to pass the audit (I keep great records and am a rule-follower regarding deductions). But regardless of the outcome, my self-worth as a human was no longer on the line.

The results of the audit will not change my worth as a human, my inherent value. They also will not affect the value I bring to others or the amount of good I can bring to the world.

And the present moment

The timing of the audit allowed me to settle even more deeply into the present moment. In the four weeks I was given to provide all documentation, I had a week of vacation, two birthdays, 30+ hours of continuing medical education and more for my medical license and board certifications — oh, and this little-known holiday, Christmas — all in addition to working. I had to be entirely present with each moment — and was.

Completing seven audits was merely an inconvenience — two days out of my life. But what it gave me was so much more — a solid knowing that the part of me that felt fear, felt scarcity, felt shame about money is gone. She served me well. And it was time for her to move on. Today I feel like Captain Marvel. “I have nothing to prove.”

Bring on 2022.

Disclaimer: This answer is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. It’s a recount of how I’ve been able to help myself and others heal from narcissistic abuse and how it may be helpful to you.

Dr Melissa Kalt, MD is a trauma and covert narcissistic abuse expert who helps high-impact women break free from the longstanding after effects of narcissistic abuse. Download her free risk-assessment guide, 3 Hidden Financial Risks Every High Income Woman MUST Avoid While Coparenting with a Covert Narcissist and find information on working with her on her website.

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