Financial Therapy: Transforming Your Relationship with Money

Money impacts nearly every aspect of our lives, from our daily decisions to our long-term goals and relationships. Yet for many people, financial concerns trigger stress, anxiety, and even avoidance behaviors that can further complicate their financial wellbeing. If you've ever felt your heart race while checking your bank account or avoided financial tasks altogether, you're not alone. Financial therapy with Audrey Schoen, LMFT offers a path forward—one that addresses both the practical aspects of managing money and the complex emotions that influence our financial decisions.

What Is Financial Therapy?

Financial therapy is a specialized field that combines personal finance expertise with therapeutic techniques to help people improve their relationship with money. As defined by the Financial Therapy Association (FTA), it is "a process informed by both therapeutic and financial competencies that helps people think, feel, communicate, and behave differently with money to improve overall well-being through evidence-based practices and interventions."

The Financial Therapy Association (FTA) is an organization comprised of professionals dedicated to the integration of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, and financial aspects of well-being. This organization promotes the understanding of how financial issues affect how we think, feel, and behave with money.

Unlike traditional financial planning that focuses primarily on numbers and strategies, or conventional therapy that may not specifically address financial concerns, financial therapy bridges this gap by addressing both worlds:

• It's comprehensive: Financial therapy intervenes in various areas, including cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, and financial aspects of your money experiences.

• It's personalized: The approach recognizes that your financial behaviors are deeply connected to your thoughts, feelings, and past experiences with money.

• It's transformative: The goal goes beyond just improving your bank balance; it aims to improve your overall well-being and create lasting change in your relationship with money.

Financial therapy emerged following the 2007-2008 Great Recession, when many people experienced significant financial trauma. Research suggests that 90% of financial decisions are made emotionally rather than logically, and 73% of Americans cite finances as their primary source of stress—more than politics, work, or family concerns. The Journal of Financial Therapy has published numerous studies highlighting how emotions influence our cognition, behavior, and relationships, particularly in the context of money.

How Financial Therapy Differs from Traditional Approaches

To understand what makes financial therapy unique, it's helpful to compare it with traditional approaches to personal financial planning and mental health counseling:

Aspect Financial Therapy Traditional Financial Planning Mental Health Therapy Primary Focus Emotional and practical aspects of money Financial goals and strategies Psychological wellbeing Credentials CFT-I™ certification, often with additional licenses CFP®, CFA, CPA LMFT, LPC, LCSW, Psychologist Topics Addressed Money scripts, financial anxiety, spending behaviors, financial trauma Investments, retirement, tax planning, estate planning General mental health, relationships, trauma Approach Integrative, addressing both numbers and emotions Technical, focused on financial optimization Psychological, focused on emotional healing Outcome Goals Improved financial behaviors and overall well-being Wealth accumulation and financial stability Symptom reduction and improved functioning Ethical Standards Dual fiduciary and therapeutic responsibilities Fiduciary duty to client's financial interests Confidentiality and client welfare

When you work with a financial therapist, you're getting the benefit of expertise in both financial matters and psychological approaches—creating a safe space where you can address both the practical financial challenges you face and the complex emotions that might be getting in your way. Financial advisors focus on helping clients achieve their financial goals through expert advice, but may not delve into the emotional and psychological aspects of money management like a financial therapist does.

The Five Core Domains of Financial Therapy

Financial therapy explores five interconnected areas that influence your financial life. These areas—cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, and financial—work together to form your complete relationship with money.

1. Cognitive Domain

This domain examines your beliefs and thought patterns about money. Did you grow up hearing phrases like "money doesn't grow on trees" or "rich people are greedy"? These early messages form what we call "money scripts"—unconscious beliefs and biases about money that can drive financial decisions decades later.

For example, if you watched your parents struggle financially after a job loss, you might carry financial anxiety even when your own situation is secure. Financial therapy helps identify these limiting beliefs and replace them with more balanced perspectives. Understanding the distinction between conscious and unconscious beliefs is crucial, as both can significantly influence your financial decisions and overall well-being.

2. Emotional Domain

Money evokes powerful feelings—anxiety, shame, pride, security, even excitement. These emotional reactions to money often drive financial decisions more than logic does. Emotional responses to money shape our cognition and interactions, influencing how we perceive and handle financial situations.

Financial therapy helps you explore these emotional reactions because understanding them is key to making more balanced choices. When you recognize why you feel intense guilt spending on yourself but freely spend on others, for instance, you gain freedom to create a more balanced approach to your resources.

3. Behavioral Domain

This involves examining your actual financial habits and patterns. Do you avoid checking your bank balance? Shop impulsively when stressed? Put off saving for retirement? Financial therapy helps identify these patterns and develop practical strategies to shift them toward healthier alternatives.

Understanding the interrelationship between behavior, thoughts, and emotions is crucial for facilitating these changes. The integration of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and relational aspects can collectively influence your financial well-being and personal relationships.

4. Relational Domain

Money impacts our connections with others in profound ways. Financial conflicts are among the top reasons couples seek therapy. Financial therapy explores how money affects your relationships and helps develop healthier ways to communicate about finances with partners, family members, and others.

The relationships in our lives significantly impact our financial perceptions and behaviors. Immediate and extended family, friends, coworkers, and clients influence how we think, behave, and relate to others regarding money. Interactions with others regarding money impacts emotional responses as well, influencing personal relationships and relational dynamics.

5. Financial Domain

Of course, financial therapy also addresses the practical aspects of your financial situation—budgeting, debt management, saving strategies, and planning for the future—but always with an awareness of how the cognitive, emotional, behavioral and relational domains influence these practical matters.

What makes financial therapy so effective is addressing all these domains together. For example, someone struggling with credit card debt needs more than just a repayment plan. They need to understand the emotional triggers behind their spending, challenge unhelpful money beliefs, and perhaps address relationship dynamics that contribute to the problem.

Why People Seek Financial Therapy

Money worries keep many people up at night. Research shows that 73% of Americans name finances as their primary stress source—outranking politics, work, and family concerns. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority reports that 60% of adults experience significant anxiety about their personal finances.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified these pressures, with nearly half of U.S. households experiencing job loss, layoffs, or pay cuts by February 2021, creating financial wounds that many are still working to heal. Financial therapy has been recognized in prominent media outlets like Good Morning America and The Washington Post, emphasizing its relevance and credibility in addressing these widespread concerns.

People typically seek financial therapy when they notice patterns like:

• Feeling intense anxiety or completely shutting down when trying to manage finances

• Using shopping as an emotional band-aid or being unable to spend money even on necessities

• Experiencing recurring conflicts with a partner about spending, saving, or financial goals

• Carrying the emotional weight of past financial hardships like bankruptcy or poverty

• Struggling to adjust to sudden wealth from an inheritance or career success

• Hiding purchases, debts, or accounts from loved ones (financial infidelity)

• Feeling paralyzed by financial uncertainty during major life transitions

These challenges aren't just about dollars and cents—they involve complex emotions, relationship dynamics, and often, unresolved past experiences. Many struggle with unconscious money scripts—deeply held beliefs about finances formed during childhood that silently drive adult behaviors. That's where financial therapy offers something different from traditional financial planning.

Specialized Techniques for Financial Healing

When money issues run deep, standard budgeting advice often isn't enough. Financial therapy takes a different approach by addressing the emotional and psychological roots of financial challenges. Financial therapists have been recognized in prominent outlets like the Kansas City Star, highlighting their contributions and visibility in mainstream media.

As a financial therapist, I use specialized techniques designed specifically for the unique intersection of money and emotions:

Brainspotting

Brainspotting helps clients identify and process specific points in their visual field that connect to emotional activation around money issues. This technique can be remarkably effective for accessing and processing financial traumas that standard talk therapy might miss.

When a client feels intense anxiety about checking their bank balance, for instance, Brainspotting can help locate and process the neurobiological source of that reaction.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)

As a Certified Master Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) Practitioner, I offer clients a powerful way to process financial trauma quickly and effectively. ART uses eye movements to help the brain process distressing money memories and replace negative images with positive ones.

This can be life-changing for someone carrying what researchers sometimes call "financial PTSD"—intense reactions to financial stressors that mirror symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques

For clients struggling with unhealthy money behaviors, I integrate cognitive-behavioral techniques to identify and challenge distorted thinking patterns about money. Emotions influence our cognition, behavior, and relationships, affecting how childhood experiences shaped current money beliefs. We then work to replace limiting beliefs with more balanced perspectives.

Mindfulness Practices

Mindfulness practices help develop awareness of emotional triggers behind problematic financial behaviors. For example, a client might learn to recognize the feelings that precede impulsive spending, creating space to make more intentional choices.

SMART Financial Goal Setting

We work on creating SMART financial goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives that align with personal values. This helps bridge the gap between emotional insights and practical action.

Through these approaches, clients can transform their relationship with money from one characterized by fear and avoidance to one based on confidence and clarity.

Life Transitions That Benefit from Financial Therapy

Life transitions often shine a spotlight on our relationship with money, bringing financial and emotional challenges to the surface. These pivotal moments frequently benefit from financial therapy:

Marriage or Partnership

Marriage often reveals just how differently two people can view money. One partner might see money as security to be saved, while the other views it as a resource to be enjoyed now. Financial therapy helps couples understand each other's money stories and develop approaches that honor both perspectives while building toward common goals.

Divorce or Separation

Divorce creates financial complexity that goes far beyond dividing assets. Many people experience profound anxiety about supporting themselves after years of shared finances. Financial therapy provides a space to process these emotions while developing practical strategies for financial independence.

Career Changes

Career transitions shake our financial foundation, whether they're chosen or forced upon us. The irregular income patterns and financial uncertainty of these transitions often trigger deep-seated money fears that benefit from therapeutic support.

Inheritance or Windfall

Receiving significant assets can trigger unexpected feelings of guilt, overwhelm, or fear of making mistakes. Some people even report feeling paralyzed by the responsibility of managing inherited wealth, especially when it's connected to the loss of a loved one. Financial therapy helps navigate these complex emotions.

Caregiving Responsibilities

Adult children often face difficult decisions about their own financial security while trying to provide for aging parents' needs. Financial therapy offers support for navigating these emotionally charged situations with clarity and compassion.

Retirement Planning

The transition from earning to spending savings represents a profound psychological shift that many find unsettling. Financial therapy helps people address the identity questions and lifestyle adjustments that come with this major life change.

Entrepreneurship

The irregular income, investment decisions, and risk management aspects of business ownership can trigger significant stress. Financial therapy helps entrepreneurs develop healthier relationships with business finances while maintaining personal financial health.

Each of these transitions presents both challenges and opportunities for growth. By addressing both the practical and emotional aspects of these changes through financial therapy, clients can navigate these pivotal moments with greater resilience and clarity.

The Financial Therapy Process: What to Expect

Starting a financial therapy journey might feel unfamiliar at first, but knowing what to expect can help ease any uncertainty. Unlike traditional therapy or financial planning, this process addresses both your emotional relationship with money and practical financial management through the integration of cognitive emotional aspects.

When we work together, I create a safe, judgment-free space where you can explore your money story. Many clients tell me they've never spoken so openly about money before—and are surprised by how liberating it feels to finally do so. Understanding cognitive and relational realities is crucial, as it helps in recognizing the interconnection between emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Step 1: Comprehensive Money & Mindset Assessment

The foundation of effective financial therapy begins with understanding both your financial situation and your psychological relationship with money. This dual assessment helps us find not just what's happening in your financial life, but why it's happening.

During our first few sessions, we'll explore:

• Your current financial reality—including income, expenses, assets, and liabilities

• Your personal money timeline—mapping significant financial events throughout your life

• Your "money scripts"—unconscious beliefs about money that drive your financial behaviors

• Your emotional responses to different financial situations

This comprehensive assessment creates a roadmap for our work together. You might discover that you have adequate income but still experience intense anxiety about spending, or repeatedly sabotage saving efforts despite stating that financial security is important. These insights help us design interventions that address both practical financial management and the underlying emotional patterns influencing your relationship with money.

Step 2: Integrated Interventions During Sessions

Once we understand your unique financial situation and money mindset, we'll implement targeted interventions that blend therapeutic techniques with practical financial guidance. This integration is what makes financial therapy so powerful—we're addressing both the numbers and the emotions behind them.

In our sessions, I draw from evidence-based practices in both mental health and financial disciplines. On the therapeutic side, I might use psychoeducation to help you understand how financial behaviors are influenced by psychological factors, including the neurobiological impact of financial stress. This knowledge alone can be empowering, helping you realize that your reactions to money aren't "crazy"—they're normal human responses.

For deeper emotional work, especially when past financial experiences have been traumatic, I might suggest specialized approaches like Brainspotting or Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). As a Certified Master ART Practitioner, I've seen how these powerful modalities can help process financial trauma more quickly and effectively than talk therapy alone. These approaches help your brain process distressing financial memories and replace negative images with positive ones.

We'll also work on narrative reframing—helping you develop new, more empowering stories about money and your financial capabilities. This might involve challenging thoughts like "I'm terrible with money" and replacing them with more accurate and helpful perspectives.

On the practical side, we'll develop realistic cash-flow plans aligned with your values and goals. If debt is a concern, we'll create manageable strategies to address it while minimizing financial stress. Throughout this process, we'll establish SMART financial objectives that provide clear direction.

Step 3: Tracking Outcomes & Adjusting the Plan

Effective financial therapy isn't static—it's a dynamic process that evolves as you grow and change. That's why regular assessment of progress and flexible adaptation are essential components of our work together, as they reflect our financial health.

Throughout our sessions, we'll track both financial and psychological progress. On the financial side, we'll monitor specific metrics relevant to your goals—perhaps your savings rate, debt reduction, or adherence to spending plans. We'll also note changes in your day-to-day money management habits and celebrate progress toward specific financial objectives. Financial issues also affect how we think, feel, and behave, influencing our overall well-being and relationships.

Just as important, we'll track psychological shifts in your relationship with money. Are you experiencing less anxiety when paying bills? Have you noticed changes in your money beliefs or thought patterns? Has financial communication with your partner improved? These subjective measures are powerful indicators of healing and growth.

Our tracking isn't about perfection—it's about progress and learning. If you "slip up" on your financial plan, we won't dwell on shame or blame. Instead, we'll view it as valuable data that helps us understand what might need adjustment in our approach.

Common Questions About Financial Therapy

What problems can financial therapy help resolve?

Financial therapy can help with a wide range of money-related challenges that affect both your financial wellbeing and emotional health.

In my practice, I regularly help clients overcome financial anxiety and avoidance – that overwhelming stress about money that leads you to procrastinate on important financial tasks like checking your bank account or planning for retirement. This avoidance often makes money problems worse, creating a vicious cycle that financial therapy can help break. Relationships with friends, coworkers, and clients significantly influence financial behaviors, shaping how we manage and perceive money. These relationships affect how we think, feel, and behave with money, often contributing to financial anxiety and avoidance.

Many clients come to me struggling with behaviors like compulsive spending or its opposite, extreme frugality. These behaviors rarely stem from a lack of financial literacy – instead, they're typically driven by deeper emotional needs or past experiences that we can address together through our work.

Money conflicts in relationships are another common issue I help with. When you and your partner come from different financial backgrounds or hold contrasting money values, these differences can create significant tension. Financial therapy provides a safe space to develop shared approaches while honoring each person's unique money history.

If you've experienced bankruptcy, significant financial hardship, or economic abuse, you might be dealing with financial trauma. Using specialized approaches like Brainspotting and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), we can process these difficult experiences and reduce their impact on your current financial decisions.

Other situations where financial therapy proves valuable include adjusting to a sudden inheritance or windfall, healing after finding financial infidelity (hidden spending or accounts), addressing career and entrepreneurship anxiety, and working through retirement identity concerns as your relationship with money shifts in later life.

Whatever your specific challenge, financial therapy addresses both the numbers and the emotions, helping you develop a healthier relationship with money that aligns with your deepest values. Financial therapy can make a positive difference in individuals' lives by addressing the root causes of financial struggles rather than just treating symptoms.

How many sessions does a typical financial therapy program take?

One of the most common questions I receive is about the length of the financial therapy process. The honest answer is: it depends on your unique situation and the integration of cognitive emotional aspects in financial therapy. Several factors influence the timeline, including the complexity of your financial circumstances, the depth of emotional patterns related to money, and your specific goals. The integration of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and relational aspects can collectively influence your financial well-being and personal relationships.

That said, I can share some general patterns I've observed in my practice.

For some focused concerns, short-term work of about 6-10 sessions may be sufficient. This might include addressing a specific financial decision (like whether to buy a home), learning basic financial communication skills with your partner, or working through a discrete anxiety trigger (like fear of checking investment accounts during market volatility).

More commonly, clients benefit from medium-term work spanning 3-6 months of regular sessions. This timeframe allows us to change established money patterns, heal from moderate financial trauma, resolve ongoing couple conflicts about money, or develop entirely new financial management systems that better serve your goals.

For deep-seated issues, longer-term work of 6+ months provides the space needed to address complex financial trauma, transform deeply rooted money belief systems that affect multiple areas of life, or rebuild financially after major setbacks like bankruptcy or divorce.

I also offer intensive therapy options for those who prefer a concentrated approach rather than weekly sessions. These intensives can be particularly effective for clients who are highly motivated or have specific time constraints that make a traditional weekly format challenging.

Rest assured that financial therapy isn't an open-ended commitment. We work together with clear goals and regular progress assessments, adjusting our approach to ensure we're making effective use of your time and resources. My goal is always to help you develop the insights and skills you need to continue your financial healing journey independently.

Can couples and individuals both benefit from financial therapy?

Absolutely! Financial therapy offers significant benefits for both individuals and couples, though the focus and approach naturally differ depending on whether I'm working with one person or a partnership.

For individuals, our work centers on your personal relationship with money. We might explore your unique money story – the experiences and messages about finances you've carried since childhood – and how these influence your current behaviors. Individual financial therapy can be particularly powerful for addressing specific financial anxieties or traumas, developing healthier financial habits that align with your personal values, processing emotions related to financial setbacks, and building confidence in your decision-making abilities.

When working with couples, we focus on the relational aspects of money and how we relate to others regarding money. Money is consistently ranked as one of the top sources of conflict in relationships, often because partners bring different money values, experiences, and priorities to the table. These relationships influence how we perceive and understand the role money plays in our lives. In couples financial therapy, we work on identifying and finding ways to honor these differences while creating shared financial goals. We develop effective communication skills specifically around money topics, resolve conflicts about spending or saving patterns, rebuild financial trust if it's been damaged, and create systems for managing money as a team.

In my practice, I sometimes recommend a combination approach – perhaps beginning with individual sessions to address personal money patterns before moving to joint sessions, or alternating between individual and couples work to address both personal and relationship dynamics. This flexibility allows us to tailor the process to your specific situation.

Money touches nearly every aspect of our lives and relationships. Whether you're seeking financial therapy as an individual or with a partner, the goal is the same: to create a healthier, more intentional relationship with money that supports your wellbeing and aligns with what matters most to you.

Becoming a Financial Therapist: Education and Credentials

The fascinating field of financial therapy continues to grow as more professionals recognize the powerful connection between financial well-being and mental health. If you're curious about pursuing this emerging discipline, understanding the certification pathways is your first step toward helping others transform their relationship with money.

The gold standard credential in this field is the Certified Financial Therapist-I™ (CFT-I™) designation, offered through the Financial Therapy Association, an organization comprised of professionals who focus on integrating various aspects of well-being, including cognitive, emotional, behavioral, relational, and financial elements. The FTA is an organization that focuses on merging various dimensions of well-being to support professionals in the field. This certification represents a genuine commitment to professional excellence and competence in the integrated practice of financial therapy.

To earn CFT-I™ certification, professionals must complete the FTA's comprehensive educational video series and competency training, accumulate 500 hours of financial therapy-related work (with at least 250 of those hours in direct client service), and pass a certification exam. Professionals must also adhere to the FTA's Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics, plus maintain continuing education to keep their skills current.

What makes financial therapy unique as a career path is that professionals typically enter from one of two directions. Some begin as mental health professionals—therapists, counselors, social workers, or psychologists—who recognize the need to better address financial issues in their therapeutic work. Others start as financial professionals—planners, counselors, or accountants—who want to incorporate psychological insights into their financial guidance.

Regardless of your starting point, becoming a financial therapist requires developing strong competencies in both therapeutic and financial domains. The certification process is dedicated to the integration of financial and therapeutic competencies to effectively serve clients with the full spectrum of their financial and emotional needs.

Transform Your Relationship with Money

Financial therapy offers something truly unique: a bridge between the practical world of money management and the emotional landscape that shapes our financial decisions. This integrated approach recognizes that spreadsheets alone can't solve money problems when our financial behaviors are deeply influenced by our thoughts, feelings, past experiences, and relationships.

Financial therapy can make a positive difference in individuals' lives by addressing the root causes of financial struggles rather than just treating symptoms. It helps individuals understand the role money plays in their lives by examining the influence of relationships on their perceptions and behaviors regarding money. Whether you're dealing with financial anxiety, recovering from financial trauma, navigating money conflicts in your relationship, or working through unhealthy spending patterns, this approach provides tools to create lasting change.

I've seen how specialized approaches like Brainspotting and Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) can help clients process financial trauma and anxiety in ways traditional talk therapy or financial planning alone cannot. These evidence-based practices allow us to access and heal the neurobiological imprints of financial stress, creating space for new, healthier patterns to emerge.

The journey toward financial wellbeing isn't just about reaching specific financial goals—though that's certainly part of it. It's about developing a relationship with money that feels aligned with your values, supportive of your overall well-being, and conducive to healthy relationships. It's about freedom from the grip of financial anxiety and the ability to make confident decisions about your resources.

About Audrey Schoen, LMFT

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in financial therapy, I combine therapeutic and financial competencies to help clients transform their relationship with money. My approach is informed by advanced training in several evidence-based modalities:

• Certified Master ART Practitioner: Accelerated Resolution Therapy offers powerful tools for processing financial trauma quickly and effectively.

• Certified Brainspotting Therapist: This innovative approach helps locate and process the neurobiological sources of financial stress and anxiety.

• Relational Life Therapy: RLT techniques help improve communication and connection around money issues, particularly for couples.

I work with individuals and couples, with particular expertise helping entrepreneurs, law enforcement officer spouses, and those struggling with trauma, perfectionism, anxiety, self-criticism, people-pleasing, unhealthy relationship patterns, reactivity, money anxiety, and imposter syndrome.

My practice offers both in-person sessions in Roseville, California and secure virtual therapy throughout California and Texas. I utilize detailed measurements to track progress, ensuring that our work together produces tangible results.

If you've been struggling with financial stress, anxiety, or conflict, you don't have to face these challenges alone. With personalized support that addresses both the practical and emotional dimensions of your financial life, you can develop new patterns that support your financial goals and overall well-being.

Ready to transform your relationship with money? Reach out for a consultation to discuss how financial therapy can help you achieve greater financial confidence and peace of mind.