What Is Financial Therapy?
Sunday, October 19, 2025.
It’s two in the morning.
Rain needles the skylight. The radiator hisses like it’s trying to calm you down.
You lie awake, doing math that refuses to stay still.
If the mortgage clears Monday and the transfer lands Wednesday—
maybe you’ll be fine.
Everyone has a private hour like this.
Money anxiety has become America’s unadvertised religion.
We don’t just calculate; we confess. Every spreadsheet hides a prayer.
We live in a culture that sells certainty to the anxious, then blames them for worrying.
And it works—until the silence in a bedroom grows louder than the numbers on the screen.
When Arithmetic Becomes Autobiography
Financial therapy begins where numbers stop making sense.
It’s the study of how emotion, memory, and relationship shape the way we earn, save, spend, and give.
The Financial Therapy Association defines it as:
“a process informed by both therapeutic and financial competencies that helps people think, feel, communicate, and behave differently with money.”
In practice, it feels less like therapy about money and more like therapy about everything money touches.
Behavioral economists Kahneman and Tversky (1979) proved long ago that humans are not rational actors with emotional side effects; we’re emotional creatures who sometimes make rational excuses. Financial therapy takes that truth seriously—and kindly.
Alex and Mara
When Alex and Mara came to me, they swore they were fighting about money.
He saved to feel safe; she spent to feel alive.
His spreadsheets were armor; her online cart, a pulse.
Each thought the other’s habits were the problem.
But their arguments weren’t about overspending or control.
They were about whose fear got to run the marriage.
His father had been laid off three times—scarcity taught him vigilance.
Her mother rationed affection like coupons—deprivation taught her defiance.
Every fight at their kitchen table was a rerun of those original stories.
When they finally understood that, they didn’t need a new budget.
They needed a new language.
Financial therapy didn’t make them rich. It made them honest.
The Science Behind the Feelings
In the Journal of Financial Therapy, Klontz and Britt (2012) argued that money distress is rarely about math; it’s emotional inheritance disguised as arithmetic.
Later, Britt, Huston, and Durband (2015) found that how often couples argue about money predicts satisfaction more strongly than conflicts over sex or parenting.
And according to the American Psychological Association (2022), 65% of Americans name money as their top stressor—more than health, politics, or work.
These numbers sketch a national nervous system on alert.
When we feel financially unsafe, our bodies respond as if danger were physical.
Financial therapy helps people notice that moment—the exact instant a spreadsheet becomes a survival plan.
The Emotional Work of Financial Therapy
I’m not formally trained in Financial Therapy. In my office, sessions rarely sound like financial planning. If you need a quant with clinical skills, I’m not your best pick. But the clients I engage with sound more like:
“I sometimes hide receipts from him.”
“I can’t stop checking my balance.”
“I feel like a child asking my partner for help.”
We start with story—what money felt like growing up.
We trace patterns—how those feelings reappear in adult behavior.
We co-create a new language—how to talk about money without accusation or apology.
And we build choice—habits that align with values, not fear.
People cry when they talk about their first allowance.
They remember the smell of worry in their parents’ kitchen.
They realize money has been the family ghost all along.
Here in the Berkshires, I’m told that the quiet often helps.
The hills enforce perspective.
Even shame sounds smaller at this altitude.
The Five Emotional Money Scripts That Keep Couples Stuck
Every couple lives inside a financial mythology—scripts written long before they met.
The Scarcity Script: “There’s never enough.”
Even abundance feels temporary. Hoarding, micromanaging, and guilt thrive here.
The Worthiness Script: “If I earn—or give—enough, I’ll finally be okay.”
Success becomes penance. Generosity turns self-punishing.
The Avoidance Script: “If I don’t look, it’s not real.”
Bills stay unopened, and optimism becomes armor.
The Control Script: “If I manage everything, nothing can hurt me.”
Hyper-responsibility replaces trust; love becomes a risk ledger.
The Freedom Script: “I won’t be trapped.”
Spending feels like rebellion; independence replaces intimacy.
Financial therapy doesn’t shame these patterns.
It treats them as the love letters they once were—written to keep a younger version of you safe.
The goal isn’t to delete them. It’s to revise them for adulthood.
The Culture Behind the Crisis
Our national myth is self-reliance.
We believe we should bootstrap our way out of any hole, even our emotional ones.
But self-reliance is often lonely work.
Money remains America’s last great taboo.
We’ll talk about trauma, sex, even therapy itself—but not credit card debt.
We’d rather confess infidelity than bankruptcy.
Financial therapy approaches and interrupts that silence.
It asks what capitalism never does: How are you feeling about all this?
It isn’t anti-success. It’s anti-self-deception.
It returns context to the ledger, where judgment used to live rent-free.
The Berkshires as Antidote
The Berkshires reward slowness.
People come here to remember what unscheduled hours feel like.
After sessions, some walk along Onota Lake; others sit with coffee at Dottie’s in Pittsfield, replaying old money stories in gentler light.
When the noise of comparison fades, the nervous system resets.
Money loses its bite.
What’s left is simply life—earned, shared, and occasionally forgiven.
The Invitation
If you’re awake at two a.m. doing your own back-of-the-envelope rescue math—
pause.
You’re not failing at adulthood.
You’re demonstrating fluency in an old language you may no longer need.
When you’re ready, maybe I can help. That is if you just as long as you don’t need a quant. Think of Financial Therapy as a continuum of competence.
While most couples might not require a CPA with a counseling degree, I find it comforting to know that the issue of American family financial health is so thoroughly addressed that this level of deep expertise exists.
Perhaps, however you do it, you’ll translate your money story into something more human and livable.
Because financial freedom isn’t about “enough.” And not every therapist need be a CPA to engage on this issue.
It’s more about the elusive and subversive quality of enoughness—the quiet conviction that you already have enough in your own life.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
American Psychological Association. (2022). Stress in America™ 2022: Money, inflation, and stress. APA Press. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2022/money-inflation-stress
Britt, S. L., Huston, S. J., & Durband, D. B. (2015). The relationship between money arguments and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Financial Therapy, 6(2), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.4148/1944-9771.1083
Castillo Financial Therapy. (2023, July 14). What is financial therapy? Castillo Financial Therapy Blog. https://www.castillofinancialtherapy.com/blog/what-is-financial-therapy
Financial Therapy Association. (2024). About financial therapy. Financial Therapy Association. https://financialtherapyassociation.org
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–292. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185
Klontz, B. T., & Britt, S. L. (2012). Financial therapy: History, review, and future directions. Journal of Financial Therapy, 3(2), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.4148/jft.v3i2.1807
Marcus by Goldman Sachs. (2024, May 22). What is financial therapy? Marcus Insights. https://www.marcus.com/us/en/resources/lifestyle/what-is-financial-therapy
Maryville University. (2023). What is financial therapy? Online Finance Programs. https://online.maryville.edu/online-bachelors-degrees/finance/careers/what-is-financial-therapy
NerdWallet. (2024, March 10). How a financial therapist can shift your money mindset. NerdWallet Finance. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-financial-therapist-shift-your-money-mindset
SoFi. (2024, February 8). What is financial therapy? SoFi Learn. https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/what-is-financial-therapy
The Wall Street Journal. (2024, April 7). Financial therapy is booming. Here’s why. WSJ Personal Finance.https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/financial-therapist-money-anxiety-b85ab0f4
eMoney Advisor. (2024, March 18). What is a financial therapist? eMoney Blog. https://emoneyadvisor.com/blog/what-is-a-financial-therapist