Healthy Love and Money Blog

         It is a process to improve your financial wellbeing and takes time and effort to get to the place where you are at ease with your money— where you feel secure in your future and happy with yourself and your financial situation. At times, before you get there, you can find yourself in a place of overwhelm. You may feel like you have failed and those voices in your head, the ones that can be your biggest cheerleader or your worst critic, maybe beating you...

          As a financial therapist, I want to educate my clients on what financial wellbeing is, and what may be blocking them from reaching their financial goals. Financial planners and other industry experts have plenty to say about the topic, but I’m going to share from my perspective. In this post, I will explain more about how emotions, thoughts, and past experiences create our money relationships and impact our financial wellbeing.

How do we define...

When working with financial therapy clients, we delve deep into their emotions, where the emotions come from, and how they impact the client, relationships, and their financial future. We look at both the good and the bad, address them, and create a plan to move forward so they can find financial wellbeing and the security they desire. One barrier that often comes up is the theological teaching of original sin and the chronic shame this causes. With the theory of original sin we are taught...

        I can tell you as a Financial Therapist one of the key barriers I see to my clients’ financial wellbeing is SHAME. Professionally speaking, I consider shame to be the most destructive psychological forces we deal with as humans. The intense negative emotions it causes makes us feel unworthy, which affects our self-esteem, our relationships, how we generally show up in the world, and our financial wellbeing. So where does shame stem from?

What causes shame and...

        When people talk about financial wellbeing, many times they talk about their wealth, their portfolio, or their financial security. However, financial wellbeing is more than that. It has to do with your psychological and spiritual relationship with money and how it impacts your financial decisions. These aspects of financial wellbeing can be influenced by your family, but also from your cultural and religious background. To find a sense of confidence in money...

          In my recent LinkedIn article and blog posts (When You Need A Financial Therapist and What is in The Financial Therapist’s Toolbox), I have discussed the field of Financial Therapy. The formal education that is required to become a Certified Financial Therapist. And the experiential education therapists choose to develop their unique approach to helping their clients. The question now is, what are the next steps to be sure you choose the right...

         Financial therapists have a toolbox filled with skills they can use to help their clients. In my last post, I told you about the formal education required to become a Certified Financial Therapist, which is a very comprehensive, intense process. Additionally, through life experiences and other educational avenues, therapists develop techniques and skills they then choose to use when serving their clients. It takes a broad knowledge base, as well as those...

      You may not be familiar with the field of Financial Therapy, or that there are therapists who specifically work with people on their emotions around money. A Certified Financial Therapist must complete formal educational requirements that train them on how to guide their clients in improving their money relationships by understanding their money beliefs. As the client, it is important to understand the different aspects of the therapist’s training before choosing to...

        If we are honest, we all want to improve our relationships. We have an idea of what the perfect relationship may be. It could be someone you know personally or from a favorite television show or movie. It’s important to remember though, what you see in others may be what we call the ‘highlight reel’ of their lives, the parts they want others to see. Reality just might be a less rosy picture. As to those characters you connect to on-screen, they...

     Your first understanding about money and what it can, or cannot do, you’ve learned from your family system. That system includes parents, step-parents, siblings, step-siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and the list goes on. Everyone within the system has an impact. Your group can be large or small, depending on your family structure. There can be a variety of relationship dynamics within that system, too - married, divorced,...