Sep 23, 2026
Money is often discussed as though it is purely practical: earn, spend, save, budget. Psychologically, however, money is rarely neutral. Money can represent safety, freedom, control, status, generosity, independence, pleasure, belonging, or fear (and I'm sure other things I just haven't thought of!). Our relationship with it develops through family experiences, culture, socioeconomic circumstances, relationships, and periods of financial security or instability.
As a result, financial behaviour is not always best understood by looking at the numbers alone. A more useful question may be:
What has money come to represent for me?
Most people develop beliefs about money long before they have money of their own. Children observe whether finances are discussed openly or avoided, whether bills create tension, who controls spending, what happens when money is scarce, and whether spending is associated with pleasure, guilt, conflict, or security. These experiences can form an internal financial template that persists into adulthood.
Our circumstances may change while our emotional responses to money remain rooted in earlier experiences. This is one reason financial behaviour cannot always be changed through budgeting strategies alone.
"Money" comes up a lot in therapy; whether it is couples, families or individuals, it is often a third party in our experience as humans (especially in a modern capital based world). Although no one on our team is a financial advisor, giving financial advice, or an accountant, in therapy, it can be useful to identify recurring patterns (or what we often refer to as money archetypes) that influence financial behaviour. These are not diagnoses, nor are they inherently problematic. They are frameworks for understanding the function money serves. Once the function is identified, then a new relationship can be built.
For some people, money is closely associated with safety and predictability: Saving, planning, and monitoring finances can be adaptive. However, these behaviours can become driven by anxiety rather than present financial circumstances. A person may have sufficient resources yet experience significant distress when spending, repeatedly monitor accounts, or struggle to feel financially secure regardless of how much they save.
The underlying belief may be:
If I lose control of the money, I will not be safe.
The therapeutic question is not whether someone should save less, but whether current financial decisions reflect present circumstances or an older experience of insecurity.
Money can also become connected to comfort, reward, and emotional regulation: Spending after a difficult week, celebrating success with a purchase, or occasionally buying something simply for pleasure is not inherently concerning. The relevant question is: what function the behaviour serves?
When spending becomes a primary way of managing stress, deprivation, boredom, sadness, or self-worth, the purchase may be meeting an emotional need temporarily. Instead of simply asking, “Do I need this?”, it may be more useful to ask:
What am I needing right now, and what am I hoping this purchase will provide?
For others, financial stress produces avoidance: Bills remain unopened, account balances go unchecked, taxes are postponed, and conversations about money are delayed. This can appear irresponsible from the outside, but avoidance often functions as short-term anxiety management. Not looking provides temporary relief; unfortunately, the underlying financial issue remains and often becomes more stressful.
The work, therefore, is not simply becoming “more responsible.” It may involve developing greater tolerance for the discomfort of knowing, planning, and making financial decisions.
How we use money often reflects what we value: One person prioritizes savings because they value security, another spends on travel because they value experiences. Someone may prioritize generosity, while another places significant value on financial independence. To be clear: there is no universally correct hierarchy.
However, difficulty can arise when financial behaviour becomes disconnected from the values it is intended to serve.
- Someone who values family may work excessively to create financial security while having increasingly little time with their family.
- Someone who values generosity may repeatedly give beyond their means because setting financial boundaries creates guilt.
- Someone who values freedom may resist budgeting because it feels restrictive, while accumulating debt ultimately limits that freedom.
Financial self-awareness therefore involves asking:
Is the way I use money actually supporting what matters to me?
Money becomes particularly complex within relationships. Partners do not simply combine incomes and expenses, they bring together different financial histories, values, expectations, and definitions of safety and responsibility.
One partner's careful saving may feel restrictive to the other.
One person's spontaneous spending may feel threatening to someone with a history of financial instability.
A desire to closely monitor finances may feel responsible to one person and controlling to another.
Consequently, arguments about money are often about much more than the transaction itself. They may reflect questions of trust, autonomy, fairness, security, power, and shared priorities.
A difficult relationship with money is not defined by spending too much or saving too much in isolation. Concern arises when financial patterns consistently interfere with well-being, relationships, autonomy, safety, or functioning. This may include compulsive spending followed by shame, persistent financial avoidance, extreme restriction despite adequate resources, financial secrecy, or allowing financial anxiety to dictate major life decisions.
Within relationships, money can also become a mechanism of control. There is a meaningful difference between mutually agreed financial boundaries and one partner using money to monitor, restrict, punish, or control another person's choices.
Financial health is therefore not only about how much money exists, it is also about how decisions are made, how power is distributed, and whether each person retains meaningful financial agency.
Therapy is not financial planning, and therapists do not replace accountants or financial professionals. Therapy can, however, help people understand the emotional, relational, and values-based dimensions of money.
Useful questions may include:
• What did money represent in my family growing up?
• What emotions arise when I spend, save, or discuss money?
• What makes me feel financially safe?
• Do I use money to manage stress, reward myself, or avoid discomfort?
• Which financial conversations do I avoid?
• What do my financial choices communicate about my values?
• In my relationships, are we disagreeing about money—or about what money represents?
The goal is not financial perfection or the elimination of emotion from financial decisions. It is greater awareness of the beliefs and relational patterns influencing those decisions, so that money becomes a resource used intentionally rather than an unexamined source of fear, control, conflict, or self-worth.
At VOX Mental Health, therapy can provide space to explore financial anxiety, scarcity, avoidance, spending patterns, family-of-origin experiences, relationship conflict, boundaries, and the ways money intersects with safety and control. The purpose is not to provide financial advice, but rather, to better understand what money means to you: where those meanings developed, and whether your current relationship with money reflects the values and relationships you want to build.
