How Your Relationship With Money Shows Up On Your Website
If you’re like me and many therapists I know, you didn’t become a psychotherapist for the money. You pursued this career path because, first and foremost, you care about others and you want to help people change their lives.
What you may have realized, however, is that in order to keep helping people and fulfilling your calling, you need to get paid. Somewhere along the way, we helpers picked up some pretty dysfunctional beliefs about money, and as a result, therapists are among the lowest-paid mid-level healthcare professionals.
And when therapists are underpaid and undervalued, burnout rates skyrocket.
In order to keep changing lives and creating a positive impact, it’s crucial that therapists evaluate their relationship with money and heal what needs healing.
To begin healing, it can be helpful to identify your attachment style with money.
Similar to interpersonal relationships, your relationship with money can be categorized according to the four attachment styles:
Secure Attachment
Anxious Attachment
Avoidant Attachment
Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
Your money attachment style affects everything from your earning potential to your mental health and wellbeing, and the manifestation of your attachment style isn’t isolated to your bank accounts. It seeps into all aspects of your business, including your website.
As your virtual “home base” for your private practice, your website can either call in your most aligned clients, or it can turn them away. If you have an unchecked insecure attachment with money, that could be showing up on your website, undermining your goals, and exacerbating burnout.
In this post, I’ll help you identify which attachment style you have with money, and I’ll give you action steps for improving your website, according to your attachment style.
Secure Attachment
If you have a secure attachment with money, you trust money to support you and you trust yourself to manage it well.
Just as a secure attachment between parent and child means that the child can rely on the parent to offer support, care, and meet their needs while allowing the freedom to explore and learn on their own, a secure attachment to money is categorized by trust.
On your website, a secure attachment with money looks like:
Displaying your session fee(s) prominently
Using clear language to describe your insurance policy
Notifying website visitors when you’re fully booked
Having a website that provides a seamless user experience
Having a website that clearly communicates your personality and connects with your niche
A website rooted in a secure attachment with money can help you call in aligned clients and scale beyond 1:1 work. However, as I mentioned, it’s extremely common for therapists to have insecure attachments with money, so if you’re not quite at the “secure” level yet, keep reading.
Anxious Attachment
If you have an anxious attachment with money, you may worry about not having enough clients, or feel anxious paying your bills. You may feel inclined to save as much as possible, and big purchases tend to bring up lots of fear and hesitation.
On your website, an anxious attachment with money looks like:
Using confusing language to describe your fee and insurance policies
A huge list of specialty areas and refusing to clarify a niche
Continuing to accept new client appointments, even when you’re full
Investing in the cheapest possible website, even if it provides a bad user experience
Action steps to improve your website:
Clarify the language you use to describe your session fee and insurance policy.
Recognize your tendency to over-explain and trust that most people looking at your website just want to see the numbers. When they can clearly locate your session fee, they’ll make a decision for themselves. While your fee may not work for everyone, that’s okay. You’re not meant to be everything to everyone.
Identify a niche.
I know that it seems like casting a “wide net” and generalizing will allow you to see more clients, but it rarely works (unless you have a group practice with several therapists with individual specialties). If you need help identifying a niche, read this post.
Invest in a better website.
A cheap website doesn’t always equal a good website. Focusing on providing a seamless, enjoyable experience to your website visitors will ensure that you’re calling in aligned clients who are ready to pay your fee so that you can pay your bills with confidence. Upgrade your website with my most cost-effective website option for therapists:
Avoidant Attachment
If you have an avoidant attachment with money, you tend to distance yourself from it. On some level, money feels gross or “bad” to you, and you might find yourself saying, “I’m not in it for the money.”
On your website, an avoidant attachment with money looks like:
Not displaying your session fee(s) or hiding it
Undercharging or offering a sliding scale, even though you need full-fee clients
A difficult booking process
Continuing to use a website that makes you cringe
Refusing to launch a website you’ve been working on because it’s not “perfect”
Action steps to improve your website:
Display your session fee(s) prominently.
You’re a licensed healthcare professional. There’s nothing wrong with getting paid for the service you’re highly qualified to provide. People on your website just want to see the numbers so that they can make an informed decision.
Streamline your booking process.
Having a clunky booking process for new clients is a great way to add unnecessary barriers to care and distance yourself from money. Explore your reasons for using your current booking system, then read this post for more ideas.
Invest in an aligned website.
You value authenticity and you never want to come off as “salesy” or “fake” on your website, which is probably why you’ve spent so much time perfecting it. But at a certain point, perfectionism can get in the way of you doing the work you’re called to do (and getting paid for it). Consider hiring a designer to take the design decisions off of your plate and help you capture your essence.
Fearful-Avoidant Attachment
If you have a fearful-avoidant attachment, you may tend to take big risks with money, resulting in some big windfalls, but also some big mistakes.
On your website, a fearful-avoidant attachment with money looks like:
Confusing or chaotic branding (using clashing fonts, colors, and photos)
A difficult or nonexistent booking process
Redesigning your website frequently
Action steps to improve your website:
Establish a consistent visual brand identity.
Using consistent fonts, colors, graphics, and photo styles across your website and social media builds trust. Using inconsistent visuals makes it difficult to know what to expect from you, and ultimately erodes trust. Start by establishing a color palette, then identify your brand fonts, and use them across all platforms.
Streamline your booking process.
Having a clunky booking process for new clients is a great way to add unnecessary barriers to care and distance yourself from money. Explore your reasons for using your current booking system, then read this post for more ideas.
Stop redesigning your website.
If you’ve rebranded more than once this year, it’s time to let it rest. A trustworthy brand takes time to build, so changing things up too often could undermine your goals.
Healing starts with awareness
For most of my life, my relationship with money fell somewhere between Anxious and Avoidant, so when I chose to start a business, all of my dysfunctional beliefs about money appeared, front and center. I thought money was synonymous with greed, so I undercharged for my services. I lived paycheck to paycheck, so I took on more work than I had time for.
Eventually, I got tired of struggling and started to heal my relationship with money. If you’re in a similar situation, just know that it’s possible to let go of the dysfunctional money beliefs we learn as therapists, to form a secure relationship with money, and to build a sustainable private practice that supports you financially and helps people change their lives.
I want to acknowledge that just as interpersonal attachment styles are nuanced, complex, and impacted by trauma and other factors outside of our control, so are relationships with money. Healing and forming a more secure relationship with money takes time, but it starts with awareness.
And lastly, a small disclaimer: the parallels that I drew in this post were of my opinion only. I’m not an expert in Attachment Theory or personal/business finance. If you need help healing your relationship with money, hire a financial therapist. My friend Lindsay at Mind Money Balance would love to help you out.
