Financial Therapy
Psychotherapy addressing the emotional, psychological, relational, behavioral, and cultural dimensions of money.
Why Financial Therapy?
Money is rarely only about numbers. It can become connected to our sense of safety and self-worth, our responsibilities to others, and the choices we believe are available to us. The meanings we attach to money develop through experience and within the family, cultural, relational, and economic contexts of our lives.
Because money carries these meanings, financial concerns can evoke powerful emotions, strain relationships, lead to avoidance, or raise difficult questions about what is enough – even when the practical numbers appear manageable. Financial therapy offers a space to better understand these experiences and respond to them with greater clarity, flexibility, and intentionality.
Common Areas of Focus
Emotions and patterns involving money
Financial anxiety, stress, shame, guilt, or fear
Avoiding financial information, conversations, or decisions
Difficulty spending despite having adequate resources
Difficulty saving or setting limits
A sense that self-worth, safety, or success depends on money
Recurring financial patterns that are difficult to understand or change
Decisions and transitions
Major purchases, commitments, or changes in lifestyle
Career changes and changes in income
Job loss, unemployment, or financial insecurity
Retirement and the psychological transition away from earning
Inheritance, sudden wealth, or changing family resources
Balancing financial limits with important life goals
Relationships, family, and identity
Differences about spending, saving, earning, or risk within a relationship
Family expectations, support, obligation, and financial boundaries
Money histories and beliefs carried from childhood or previous relationships
Wealth, privilege, responsibility, and questions about what one owes others
Culture, social class, identity, and upward or downward mobility
Connections among career, income, status, values, and financial security
A Whole-Person Approach
Financial concerns rarely exist in isolation. I will work to understand your relationship with money in the context of your mental health, identities, experiences, cultures, relationships, work, family, values, history, and practical circumstances. This broader perspective helps illuminate not only what you do with money, but what money means to you and what emotional or relational functions particular patterns may serve.
Therapy may focus closely on a financial concern, address related patterns across multiple areas of your life, or shift in emphasis as your needs and goals evolve. A whole-person approach also recognizes that some financial stress reflects real material constraints or systemic conditions rather than an individual psychological problem.
Financial Therapy for Individuals
Individual financial therapy can begin with a focused money concern or with a broader desire to understand how financial experiences connect with other areas of your life. Our work may remain centered on money, or it may include related concerns involving anxiety, self-worth, career, family, identity, relationships, or major transitions.
Financial Therapy for Couples
I offer financial therapy for couples with a generally stable relationship foundation who want help addressing money as a specific area of their shared lives. Our work may involve understanding each partner’s money history and beliefs, communicating more openly, navigating differences in values or risk tolerance, addressing anxiety or avoidance, setting boundaries with family, or approaching shared decisions more collaboratively.
If financial conflict is part of broader relationship distress spanning multiple areas, comprehensive couples therapy with another provider may be a better fit.
LGBTQ+ Family Building
A related specialty within my broader practice is supporting LGBTQ+ couples as they navigate the emotional and financial complexities of family-building through assisted reproduction, donor conception, surrogacy, adoption, and other paths to parenthood. This work draws substantially on my financial therapy expertise because these paths often involve consequential financial decisions, trade-offs, uncertainty, and stress.
From a financial therapy perspective, our work may involve clarifying shared priorities and financial limits, considering the costs and trade-offs associated with different family-building paths, navigating differences in risk tolerance or willingness to assume debt, discussing family support and financial boundaries, and balancing hopes for parenthood with other needs and longer-term financial security. These financial considerations are one part of a broader therapy process that can also address the many emotional, relational, identity-related, and practical questions that arise during the family building process for LGBTQ+ families. This service is intended for partners who share a commitment to pursuing parenthood rather than those seeking discernment about whether to become parents.
Wealth, Inheritance, Privilege, and Responsibility
Financial therapy is not limited to financial hardship. Significant wealth, inheritance, or upward mobility can bring complicated emotions and relationships, including guilt, secrecy, pressure, mistrust, uncertainty about purpose, or questions about responsibility to family and community. Therapy can provide a confidential space to examine these experiences without assuming that having financial resources eliminates emotional difficulty.
What Financial Therapy is – and is Not
Financial Therapy is not about telling you what you should do with your money. It is psychotherapy rather than financial planning, accounting, legal guidance, or investment advising. I do not create financial plans, select investments, recommend financial products, or determine whether a particular transaction is financially advisable.
When helpful and with your permission, I can collaborate with a financial planner or another financial professional so that the psychological and financial dimensions of your concerns can be addressed in a coordinated way. Therapy can complement their technical expertise by addressing the emotions, relationships, values, and behavioral patterns that influence how you understand and use their guidance.
Professional Background
I am a licensed psychologist and a member of the Financial Therapy Association. My financial therapy work is also informed by my training and research in vocational psychology, including scholarship examining psychological and financial coping during unemployment and the broader connections among work, income, identity, and well-being.
Scheduling and Meeting Options
Financial therapy is available to individual adults and, within the focused scope described above, to couples.
I offer in-person therapy at my Dupont Circle office in Washington, D.C., as well as virtual therapy for clients in D.C., the broader DMV area, and participating PSYPACT states.
Interested in Working Together?
A free 20-minute consultation gives us an opportunity to briefly discuss what you are looking for, answer initial questions, and consider whether financial therapy may be a good fit.