For Some Clients, Finances Improve When Attending Therapy
When you find a good therapist whose fit to take care of the issues that you face, you’ll start to see changes in other areas of your life including your finances. You may think that you’re just going in to session to talk about how your mother didn’t accept you and question you relationship with your best friend, but you are actually working on rewiring other parts of your brain that may be connected to your finances.
I’ve known many people who struggle with finances. Some people get resentful of their budget. It keeps them back. It won’t give them enough room to breathe. I find some of the purchases that people with resentment toward their budget are impulsive and sometimes puts them behind. For example, they’ll worry about a few cents on an item from the discount part of a store but then buy $500 phones or a $600 cat but not know how they’ll take the cat to the vet or buy food for it. It seems the people who are worried like this will feel that it’s time to spend money or that they deserve something nice even though it is not within their budget. Of course, people reading this might think that it’s obvious not to spend money like that but other people have complex issues surrounding money.
Other people I know talk about the bliss of paying their bills. Even though it may leave them with next to nothing in their account, they know that staying on top of bills is a form of self-care. They acknowledged they used the services provided so they pay what’s owed. These type of people will spend a $1 on a candy or something small that they will enjoy for a little bit. After college when I wasn’t making much money, I would buy myself pens with different colored ink for my journal writing that I did every morning. I ran into a friend at the store while on a trip to get many things including pens and told him that I was treating myself. He reveled in the idea that even a pen would be a nice treat for me or anyone for that matter. It wasn’t about spending big for luxury items. I was making it a luxury item for me based on where I was financially and mentally. Some people pay their bills and know that it will leave them with only a couple of dollars in their account but they feel comfortable with this.
Some people see their values in money shift after they have gone to therapy for a couple of sessions. There’s no doubt that therapy is tough for people. The first few sessions may leave a person in tears or exhausted. But this is all the work on healing past wounds that a person is doing in those sessions. Then, sessions get easier and the weeks between sessions become easier. Then, different values form and then people can see the difference. The difference might even be in their bank account.
If you or someone you know has anxiety around finances, feel free to contact me at 203-300-7193 or VanessaLoveLPC@gmail.com.