Money, Marriage, and Mental Health: Financial Therapy for Couples and Individuals

When Money Gets Messy, Emotions Run Deep

When money becomes a source of tension, silence, or shame, it can slowly erode even the strongest relationship. Financial struggles are rarely just about dollars—they’re about values, security, power, fear, and identity. At Insights Counseling Center, we specialize in helping individuals and couples understand their money stories and rewrite them together.

Whether you find yourself avoiding financial conversations or locked in recurring money fights, our approach to financial therapy goes beyond budgeting. We help you explore the beliefs, experiences, and relational patterns that shape how you handle money—and how money handles you.

Who This Is For

Financial therapy isn’t just for people with massive debt or serious financial crises. It’s for anyone who feels stuck, scared, or at odds when it comes to money. If you recognize yourself or your relationship in any of the descriptions below, financial therapy may offer the clarity and healing you need:

• Couples who keep circling the same arguments about spending, saving, or earning

• Individuals who feel anxious, ashamed, or out of control with money

• Partners struggling with financial infidelity, control, or secrecy

• Adults facing the fallout of growing up in financially traumatic or chaotic homes

• Anyone curious about the emotional roots of their financial behaviors

Take The First Step Toward Connection

What We Address in Financial Therapy

In financial therapy, we look beyond the spreadsheets. We help you understand what’s driving your relationship with money and how it connects to the people and patterns in your life. Topics often explored include:

• Money scripts and inherited beliefs from family or culture

• Financial power struggles in relationships

• Monetized rage and unspoken resentment

• Spending, saving, and debt cycles that feel compulsive or divisive

• Personal values, security needs, and identity themes

• How trauma, addiction, or betrayal intersect with financial decisions

These issues often overlap with other concerns we address in therapy. We integrate this work with couples therapy, sex addiction recovery, betrayal trauma, and even family therapy when intergenerational money patterns are present.

What Makes Our Approach Different

We’re not financial advisors. We’re licensed therapists trained in the emotional and relational dimensions of financial health. Our co-founder, Teresa Prince, LPC, is a Certified Multiple Addiction Therapist in Financial Disorders. She works alongside a team of IITAP-trained sex therapists and clinicians with expertise in trauma and compulsive behaviors, including Tal Prince and David Tucker, who specialize in multiple addictions and the interplay between relational, sexual, and financial patterns.

We approach financial therapy collaboratively—often staffing or consulting with other members of our team to ensure comprehensive support. This means you’re not just getting one perspective; you’re benefiting from a coordinated, relationally attuned treatment team.

Using tools from Coupleship Inc. and the field of financial psychology, we help you:

• Bring clarity to unspoken financial assumptions

• Communicate about money without escalation or shame

• Identify underlying emotions that drive harmful money behaviors

• Develop a shared plan that honors each partner’s history and needs

We believe financial therapy is emotional work. And it’s relational work. It’s about repairing trust, renegotiating power, and finding new ways to relate to both money—and each other.

Inside Our Financial Therapy Tools and Resources

You’ll find a wealth of downloadable exercises and psychoeducational tools available in our [Financial Therapy Resource Library], including:

• The Money Pyramid: A framework for values-based financial planning

• Money Script Worksheets: Uncover the hidden beliefs that shape your financial habits

• Personal Financial Health Plan: A guided roadmap for creating healthier patterns

• Monetized Rage and Power Inventory: Tools to explore resentment and control

• Behavioral Bias Worksheets: Insight into psychological blind spots around money

We use these tools in session and encourage clients to revisit them between sessions for deeper insight and growth. They can be especially helpful in couples therapy where one or both partners feel misunderstood or misaligned around financial decisions.

“We didn’t realize how much was really behind the discomfort we’d felt
around money for years. We thought we just had to agree to disagree—but
now we have a shared purpose
that actually feels good for both of us.
We’ve gone from gridlock to growth.”

— Couple in financial therapy

How We Support Financial Healing

Money issues don’t resolve with logic alone. They require emotional safety, relational honesty, and space to explore how past experiences shaped your current financial behaviors. Whether you're navigating resentment over hidden debt, recovering from financial betrayal, or simply feeling exhausted by financial stress, we can help.

In therapy, we create a safe space for:

• Naming your money story without shame

• Recognizing when financial habits are protecting deeper emotional wounds

• Creating collaborative plans that strengthen the relationship instead of tearing it down

• Rebuilding trust in the wake of secrecy, control, or betrayal

Want deeper insight into your money dynamics?

We also offer the [Money and Work Adaptive Styles Index (MAWASI®)], a powerful assessment developed by Bonnie DenDooven. Based in attachment theory, neuromarketing, and behavioral economics, the MAWASI helps clients understand how their early experiences and adaptive behaviors influence money and work today. With 12 subscales, this tool gives couples a rich starting point for conversations about identity, power, and stress. It’s especially helpful in couples therapy when financial strain has become a relational pattern.

Recent Posts