Financial Therapy
Where money meets identity, safety and healing
Why Financial Therapy:
Money is woven through everything, our sense of safety, our relationships, our cultural expectations, and the stories we inherit long before adulthood. For many of us, especially immigrants, first/second generation professionals, BIPOC communities, and other marginalized communities, money carries layers of meaning, especially if you grew up with financial instability.
Financial therapy helps you explore these patterns with compassion and clarity. Together, we look at how cultural messages, family roles, and emotional wounds shape your financial behaviors, so you can make choices rooted in empowerment rather than fear or survival.
My approach is grounded in trauma-informed care and honors the full context of your life: your nervous system, your history, your identities, and your values.
My Approach (IFS + EMDR+ Cultural Lens + Financial Therapy):
IFS (Internal Family Systems)
We explore the “parts” of you that worry, overspend, avoid, hustle, freeze, or carry guilt around money. Instead of shaming these parts, we understand the burdens they’re holding and help them feel safer.
EMDR
For clients with money-related trauma: scarcity, instability, financial betrayal, or being raised in survival mode, EMDR helps process these experiences so your body no longer reacts as if the past is still happening.
Cultural & Intergenerational Frameworks
As a first-generation daughter of immigrants, I understand the unspoken expectations many clients hold: obligation, success, providing for family, fear of surpassing loved ones, sending money home, achievement guilt, and cross-cultural pressure. These dynamics matter, and they’re honored here.
Financial Therapy Tools
We may gently look at real financial information together (bank statements, budgets, apps) when appropriate, supporting regulation so you can build agency without overwhelm or shame. In addition, we will examine the money scripts you may hold: Money Avoider, Money Worship, Money Status or Money Vigilance.
Ethics, Transparency, and Client-First Values:
While I do not give financial advice or act as a financial planner, the spirit of my work reflects several fiduciary-aligned values.
1. Clarity
We talk openly about money, including fees, boundaries, and expectations, without discomfort or judgment.
2. Integrity & Scope
I stay firmly within the scope of mental health treatment. When clients need financial planners or tax professionals, I help connect them with trauma-informed or culturally responsive partners.
3. Collaboration, Not Control
You remain the expert on your life. My role is to help you understand the emotional, cultural, and systemic forces shaping your choices, so you can decide what aligns with your values.
4. Safety Over Strategy
Financial behaviors aren’t “good” or “bad.” They’re adaptations to the environments you survived. We slow down enough for your nervous system to feel grounded before making decisions.
Do any of these themes sound familiar?
• Fear of “not enough,” even with external success
• Achievement guilt or family expectations
• Avoidance of financial tasks
• Relationship conflict around spending or saving
• Intergenerational pressure, obligation, or role reversal
• Shame around debt, spending, or asking for help
• Feeling behind or undeserving, despite accomplishments
• Immigration and cross-cultural financial stressors
You may find financial therapy helpful if you:
• Grew up in a home where money was tied to fear, silence, or pressure
• Have “arrived” professionally but still feel anxious or unsteady with money
• Carry old money scripts that no longer fit your life
• Feel guilt or obligation around family financial expectations
• Want a grounded, shame-free way to understand your financial patterns
• Are healing from financial abuse, instability, or trauma
What Sessions Look Like:
Together, we:
• Explore early money memories and cultural messages
• Notice how money triggers show up in your nervous system
• Work with parts of you that fear spending, saving, or success
• Process financial trauma using EMDR/IFS
• Develop a healthier, more grounded relationship with money
• Build emotional capacity for financial decisions
• Create space between inherited scripts and your current values
Sometimes this includes gently reviewing real numbers together, not as budgeting, but as a way to practice regulation, reduce avoidance, and build confidence.
