Money and emotions - what's the link?
Understanding the emotions behind financial stress - and how self-compassion can change your relationship with money
November 17, 2025
By Aviva Boxer, Registered Psychotherapist
When my clients are open to talking about their relationship with money, I get excited because it’s one of my favourite topics both inside and outside of sessions. When I’m working with clients and we’re exploring money in therapy, here are the questions I ask: How was money talked about in your family growing up? What did your earliest memories of money feel like to you? Was money seen as something bad, something scarce, or something joyful?
“ More often than not, money brings up feelings of anxiety, shame, guilt, or avoidance.”
Most people I’ve worked with do not associate positive emotions with money. And just like my clients, even with all the learning I’ve done over the last few years, the topic can still fill me with dread, fear, and shame at times. What I’ve come to realize - especially as a student of professor, author, and researcher Brené Brown - is that so much of our emotional experience with money comes down to vulnerability. Brené Brown defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”
If that definition doesn’t have the word “money” written all over it, I don’t know what does.
Money touches all three: we fear it when we have it and when we don’t. It can feel risky to spend it or to save it, to have it and to fear losing it. Talking about money can make us feel deeply exposed, whether we have a lot or very little. The entire topic is incredibly charged.
How often do you voluntarily bring up the topic of money? Do you enjoy keeping track of your bills, watching your investments grow, or staying on top of debt repayment and future savings? Or does even thinking about money leave you feeling stressed?
Anxiety, shame, guilt, and avoidance
More often than not, money brings up feelings of anxiety, shame, guilt, or avoidance. Anxiety might come up if you’re living paycheque to paycheque (as so many Canadians are), trying to juggle bills, plan for future expenses, or brace yourself for the next surprise cost.
Shame can show up when we feel like a failure for struggling to pay bills or because of how much debt we carry. Maybe we’re using a credit card or line of credit to cover basic expenses — something we don’t want to talk about or even admit to ourselves.
Guilt might arise when we spend money on things we don’t technically need but simply want. We knew we shouldn’t have ordered that thing from Amazon, but we clicked “buy now” before the practical part of us could intervene.
And avoidance — well, avoidance threads through all of this. Not looking at our finances, spending beyond our means, feeling too overwhelmed or too ashamed to even begin untangling the numbers. We keep going on the outside, but inside we’re hurting.
At this point, our bodies often get louder. Anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and irritability can all surface when we ignore our emotional responses to money. Financial stress can lead us to withdraw socially, create tension in relationships, and push us toward unhealthy coping strategies just to manage the feelings.
Financial self-compassion
Financial self-compassion means approaching your money story with the same gentleness, patience, and clarity that you extend to others. Instead of criticizing yourself for what you “should have” done, you meet your financial reality with curiosity rather than judgment. This form of emotional care is essential to overall mental health.
Small habits can help — checking your balance without self-blame, noticing your emotional responses to spending, or pausing before making a financial decision. These small acts build a sense of safety rather than overwhelm. They teach you to support yourself through moments that once felt triggering and to replace patterns of avoidance or panic with kindness and informed choices. When we cultivate compassion toward our financial lives, we strengthen our agency, confidence, and sense of self-worth.
Therapeutic approaches
Several therapeutic approaches can ease money-related anxiety and help you build a more grounded relationship with your finances. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can help identify and challenge unhelpful thinking patterns — catastrophizing, perfectionism, or equating financial struggle with personal failure — and replace them with more balanced thoughts. Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) helps uncover the deeper emotional roots of money stress, often tied to safety, stability, or early family dynamics.
Mindfulness-based strategies can regulate the nervous system during moments of financial overwhelm, allowing you to make decisions from a place of calm rather than fear. And self-compassion practices support you in shifting away from shame, which is one of the biggest barriers to financial well-being. Together or individually, these approaches create space to reduce distress, build emotional insight, and develop healthier, more empowered financial habits.
Learning to navigate the emotions tied to money is a powerful step in strengthening both our mental well-being and our financial health. When we approach finances with compassion, curiosity, and skill, we shift from feeling controlled by our fears to feeling empowered in our choices. Over time, this inner resilience not only reduces anxiety but also cultivates a more grounded, confident relationship with money — one that supports our goals, honours our values, and becomes an essential part of our overall self-care.
If your finances are causing you to feel stress, guilt or shame, you are not alone and we are here to help! Reach out to us for a free consultation and you will be matched with a therapist who will help you untangle your feelings about and relationship with money.