Help! My therapist is awkward about money.
A new series on a secret burden in therapy.
Business and money are often treated as taboo words in therapy. We can hate on capitalism all we like, but this is untenable. Like any other professional, therapists deserve dignified livelihoods. And yet, far too many of them struggle to get fair compensation for their labour and build their business with confidence. Why does this happen? What tools do they need to break free? What are the best practices that therapists themselves have devised to change the script? I hope to ask these questions and offer up some answers over the course of this series.
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"When I first started out, I made the mistake of letting my caretaker impulse overcome me and charging a certain client who was in crisis a lower fee for several sessions. When she didn't pay even that fee and later let it drop that she had gone on an extravagant vacation, I felt like a fool."
– Lynne Stevens, psychotherapist
Couple of months back, both my therapist and I needed to tend to pressing matters and ended up missing a bunch of sessions. Later, when it was time to calculate the month's fees, it led to a mutual conundrum ripe with the kind of analytical meaning that makes therapy nerds salivate. But first, some backstory.
My therapist hates talking about money. When I started seeing her six years ago, she was attached to a clinic. It was the clinic that communicated the fee and collected it at the end of the month, so the 'dirty' matter of cash never came up between the two of us. Then she started her independent practice and we continued with the same fee which must have been at the lower end of her sliding scale, a generosity I often told her I was grateful for considering my financial instability. Each time, she graciously pfft-ed away my thanks.
Last year, she finally increased the fee by a small amount. She apologised profusely, even though I told her a revision was long overdue and assured her that it wasn't a problem. Together, we laughed at her awkwardness, and she vowed we'd never talk about it again.
