Is Financial Therapy Right for You? 10 Signs Your Money Problems Are Actually Trauma

People come to psychotherapy for a wide range of reasons.  Often, they’re suffering from depression and anxiety.  Sometimes they need support in adjusting a life transition.  Frequently, relationship challenges are what prompt them to seek help.  Rarely, if ever, do people reach out to a therapist for help in navigating financial issues.

Although we hear almost daily about the increased financial stress Americans are facing, few spaces exist for us to talk about money.  In our culture, money is seen as a taboo subject, even as it affects almost every aspect of our lives.  Finances are thought to be the realm of accountants and financial planners; money is a practical matter, not a topic for psychotherapy.

In my 25 years practicing trauma therapy, I have learned that these messages are not only incorrect – they’re harmful.  When we see money as solely a practical matter, ignoring underlying emotions, financial problems are understood as a lack of financial literacy or willpower.  This is a recipe for shame and self-blame, leaving people feeling alone and stuck.

The truth is that challenges around money – such as chronic overspending, financial avoidance, and underearning, to name only a few – can never be fully resolved unless we address their psychological roots. 

Here's what I've learned: when people struggle with money, it's rarely about money itself. It's about trauma.

That's where financial therapy comes in. Not financial planning—therapy. Let me explain what that means, and help you recognize whether your money struggles might actually be rooted in trauma.

What Is Financial Therapy?

Financial therapy is psychotherapy that addresses the emotional and psychological roots of your relationship with money. It's not about creating budgets, managing investments, or developing financial plans—that's what financial planners do. Financial therapy is about understanding and healing the trauma, shame, and nervous system responses that keep you stuck in patterns you can't seem to break.

As a Trauma of Money™ certified practitioner, I work with people who find themselves repeating the same destructive money patterns despite knowing better. People who earn money but can't keep it. People who freeze when making financial decisions. People trying to break generational cycles but finding themselves pulled back into familiar patterns.

Financial therapy recognizes that your money behaviors aren't happening in a vacuum—they're shaped by your early experiences, your family's relationship with money, past trauma, and the survival strategies your nervous system developed to keep you safe. When we understand this, we can work with your nervous system to create new patterns rooted in safety rather than fear.

This work is especially for 'cycle breakers'—people who are creating a different financial life than the one they grew up with, and discovering that healing is more complicated than just making different choices.

In the approach I use, we also explore the systemic factors that impact your relationship with money. Generational cycles are often shaped by racism, sexism, and the extreme socioeconomic inequality that our economy has been built on.   Centering this reality is crucial to removing the shame that financial challenges often carry.

10 Signs Your Money Problems Are Actually Trauma

If you recognize yourself in several of these patterns, financial therapy might help you understand what's really happening—and more importantly, how to heal.

 1. Money Conversations Trigger Panic, Shame, or Rage

When someone brings up money—especially in intimate relationships -your reaction is disproportionate to the moment. Your heart races. Your palms sweat. You feel a wave of shame so intense you want to disappear. Or you feel rage bubbling up, defensive and sharp. You shut down the conversation, change the subject, or lash out.

These aren't overreactions—they're trauma responses. Something about money discussions touches an old wound: maybe growing up in a household where money meant conflict, control, or unpredictability. Maybe experiencing financial abuse in a relationship. Maybe internalizing messages that you're bad with money, irresponsible, or undeserving. Your body remembers what your mind might not fully recall, and it's trying to protect you from re-experiencing that pain.

2. You Alternate Between Deprivation and Overspending

You swing between extremes: strict deprivation where you deny yourself everything, followed by periods of uncontrolled spending. You might go weeks eating rice and beans, then suddenly buy things you don't need and can't afford. There's no middle ground, no moderation—just all or nothing.

This pattern reflects all-or-nothing thinking, which is common in trauma survivors. It often develops as a survival mechanism in environments where resources were unpredictable or scarce. Your nervous system learned to operate in two modes: restriction (to prepare for scarcity) and release (because the pressure of constant deprivation becomes unbearable). You're not failing at moderation—you're stuck in a nervous system response that hasn't learned there can be a middle path.

3. You Can't Open Your Bank Account or Check Your Balance

This is one of the most common signs of financial trauma, and one of the hardest to admit. You know you should check your account. You know avoiding it makes things worse. But when you even think about logging in, your body responds with dread, anxiety, or a complete shutdown. So you don't look. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months. Bills pile up unopened. You operate in a fog of not-knowing, which paradoxically feels safer than the panic of knowing.

This isn't laziness or irresponsibility. It's your nervous system going into freeze mode—a trauma response designed to protect you from overwhelming feelings. The problem is that money has become associated with danger, shame, or pain, and your body is trying to protect you by shutting down your ability to engage with it at all.

 4. You Feel Guilty or Anxious When You Have Money

Instead of feeling relief or security when you have money, you feel anxious. Maybe you feel guilty—like you don't deserve it, or like having it means someone else doesn't. Maybe you feel exposed, like having money makes you a target or changes who you are. You might feel compelled to get rid of it quickly, give it away, or downplay that you have it at all.

This often comes from survivor's guilt, particularly for cycle breakers who are doing better financially than their family of origin. It can also stem from messages that money is bad, that having money makes you greedy or selfish, or that you're betraying your roots by having more than your parents did. Your system might be trying to keep you loyal to your family or community by not allowing yourself to prosper beyond them.

5. You Can't Ask for What You're Worth

You chronically undercharge for your work. You don't negotiate salaries. You feel physically uncomfortable asking for raises or setting prices that reflect your value. You might even feel anger or resentment toward others who do charge appropriately. The idea of stating your worth and asking to be compensated for it feels impossible—greedy, demanding, or shameful.

This difficulty often stems from worthiness wounds—deep beliefs that you don't deserve to be paid well, that asking for money is demanding or selfish, or that your value is tied to self-sacrifice. It might also reflect trauma around receiving: perhaps in your family, receiving came with strings attached, or accepting help meant being controlled or indebted. Your nervous system learned that receiving is dangerous, so it blocks you from asking.

6. You Earn Money But Can't Keep It

You work hard. You make decent money. But somehow, it disappears. You get a raise or a bonus, and within weeks it's gone—spent on things you don't even remember buying, or given away to others, or absorbed by sudden 'emergencies.' You find yourself back at zero, or worse, further in debt. The cycle repeats: earn, spend, deplete. Earn, spend, deplete.

This pattern often stems from unconscious beliefs about your worthiness to have money, safety around abundance, or what money means. For some, having money feels dangerous—it might trigger guilt, fear of loss, or anxiety about becoming like someone who hurt you. For others, spending everything maintains a familiar state of scarcity that feels safer than the unknown territory of stability. Your nervous system might be engineered for survival mode, not for holding onto resources.

7. You Repeat Your Parents' Money Patterns Despite Trying Not To

You swore you'd never handle money like your parents did. Maybe they were chaotic spenders and you vowed to be responsible—but now you find yourself making the same impulsive purchases. Or maybe they were miserly and anxious, and despite your intentions to be different, you hoard every penny and panic about spending. You see the pattern, you consciously resist it, but you keep ending up in the same place.

Generational patterns run deep. These aren't just learned behaviors—they're nervous system responses encoded in childhood. Your body learned what money means and how to respond to it before you had language. Changing these patterns requires more than willpower or different strategies; it requires working with your nervous system to create new templates for what money means and how to be safe around it.

8. Financial Decisions Freeze You Completely

When faced with a financial decision—even a relatively small one—you can't move forward. You research endlessly, ask for advice repeatedly, but never actually decide. Or you avoid the decision entirely, letting opportunities pass or problems worsen. It's not that you don't care; it's that you're paralyzed. The stakes feel impossibly high. Every option feels wrong. So you freeze.

This is another manifestation of the freeze trauma response. For many people, financial decisions feel life-or-death because, at some point in their history, they were. Maybe one wrong decision in your family of origin meant eviction, going hungry, or explosive conflict. Your nervous system remembers that, and now every financial decision triggers that same alarm. You're not indecisive—you're in survival mode.

9. You Sabotage Financial Opportunities

Just as things are about to improve—you're about to get a promotion, receive an inheritance, start a promising business—you do something that undermines it. You quit the job before the promotion comes through. You make a reckless purchase that depletes the inheritance. You stop showing up for the business. It's not conscious, and it baffles you afterward, but the pattern repeats: opportunity, self-sabotage, loss.

Self-sabotage is often a protective mechanism. If success feels unfamiliar or unsafe—if it threatens your sense of identity, triggers guilt, or puts you in territory where you feel exposed—your nervous system might engineer failure to return you to familiar ground. It's not that you don't want success; it's that your system doesn't know how to be safe with it. The known suffering feels safer than unknown success.

10. Traditional Budgeting Advice Makes You Feel Worse

You've tried the budgets, the apps, the advice from financial gurus. You know intellectually what you 'should' do. But when you try to follow the advice, you feel worse—more ashamed, more anxious, more defeated. The strategies don't stick, or they trigger such intense emotional responses that you abandon them. You start to believe you're the problem: that you're uniquely incapable, broken, or lacking willpower.

Here's the truth: if trauma is driving your money behaviors, conventional financial advice won't work because it's addressing the wrong problem. It's like trying to use a map of Paris to navigate Tokyo—the tool is fine, but it's for the wrong situation. You don't need better budgeting tips; you need to heal the trauma that's hijacking your financial decisions. Once that healing happens, the practical strategies become much more accessible.

What This Means for You

If you recognized yourself in several of these signs, please know: this isn't a character flaw. You're not broken, lazy, or bad with money. You're experiencing trauma responses—and trauma responses can be healed.

Financial trauma therapy doesn't start with budgets or financial plans. It starts with understanding what money means to your nervous system, where those meanings came from, and how they're keeping you stuck. It involves creating safety around money, healing the wounds that drive your patterns, and building new capacity to engage with finances from a place of grounded presence rather than fear or shame.

 This work is possible. Your relationship with money can change. The patterns that feel immovable right now can soften and shift when we address their roots. You can build a financial life that feels stable, sustainable, and aligned with who you are—not just who you think you 'should' be.

Ready to Explore Financial Therapy?

I offer specialized therapy for people healing their relationship with money. As a licensed trauma therapist certified in the Trauma of Money™ approach, I work with clients in Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida.

If what you've read here resonates, I invite you to schedule a free 15-minute consultation. We can talk about what you're experiencing, whether financial therapy might be a good fit, and what the work would look like.

This isn't about fixing you—you're not broken. It's about understanding your story and helping your nervous system find a new way forward

Frequently Asked Questions About Financial Therapy

Is financial therapy covered by insurance?

Financial therapy is a specialized form of psychotherapy, and many insurance plans do cover therapy services. Coverage depends on your specific plan, diagnosis, and out-of-network-benefits. I'm happy to discuss this during our consultation and can provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement if applicable.

How is financial therapy different from seeing a financial planner?

A financial planner helps you manage money—creating budgets, planning investments, developing strategies for wealth building. That's valuable work, but it assumes you can execute those strategies. Financial therapy addresses why you can't execute them. I work with the emotional, psychological, and trauma-based roots of your money patterns. Once we heal those, working with a financial planner becomes much more effective. Many of my clients eventually work with both—a therapist to heal the trauma, and a planner to build the strategy.

How long does financial therapy take?

This varies significantly based on your specific situation, the depth of the trauma, and your goals. Some clients work with me for a few months to address a specific pattern; others engage in longer-term work to heal complex generational trauma. We'll discuss your goals and what timeline might be realistic during our initial consultation. The important thing is that this is deep work—it's not a quick fix, but it creates lasting change.

Do I need to be in crisis to benefit from financial therapy?

Not at all. While some people come to financial therapy because they're in financial crisis, many come because they recognize patterns that are limiting them even though they're 'getting by.' Maybe you're financially stable but can't enjoy your money. Maybe you're successful but can't stop the anxiety. Maybe you're ready to break a generational pattern before it continues. You don't need to hit bottom to deserve support in healing your relationship with money.

 Ready to Begin Financial Therapy in the metro Washington, DC area?

If you’re ready to take back your life from financial trauma I’d be honored to work with you to help you reclaim your life.  You don’t have to do this alone.

Learn more about therapy with me and the cost of sessions at my Washington, DC area therapy practice. Then, let’s set up a free 15-minute consultation call where I can answer all your questions and we can get started on your healing journey.

Other Services at Lisa Zimmerman Therapy

I know that challenges with finances often co-exist with a variety of other emotional issues . This is why I also offer therapy for codependency, trauma therapy, and anxiety. Let’s get started working through your struggles so you can live your life fully.