Spiral Tending

Therapists & Money: The Thing We’re Apparently Not Supposed to Talk About

Okay, therapists. Let’s talk about money.

Because somehow we’ve collectively decided that we can talk about trauma + money. 

In this episode, Rachen Duncan and I get into the complicated, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes hilarious relationship therapists have with money.

What does it mean to make good money doing work that is rooted in care? Can we charge what we actually need to charge without feeling like we’ve betrayed our values? Why does making more money sometimes bring up guilt, shame, scarcity, or the fear that we’re becoming a capitalist monster in a cardigan?

We talk about worth, pricing, sustainability, the stories therapists carry about what it means to be “good,” and what happens when we stop pretending that our businesses exist outside of the economic systems we’re living in.

Because you are allowed to care deeply about your clients and want to make a living.

You are allowed to want more money.

You are allowed to build a business that supports your actual life.

And maybe you don’t have to choose between being a good therapist and being financially okay.

Come spiral with us. 🌀

Here's where you can find Rachel:

Get Rachel's free mindful spending course: https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/challenge 

In this episode, I’m joined by Catherine LaSota for a conversation about presence, creativity, and finding our way through challenging times and small business. We talk about what it means to stay connected to ourselves when the world feels overwhelming, and how creativity can offer a pathway back to curiosity, aliveness, and possibility. This is a conversation about slowing down, paying attention, and allowing creativity to become a practice of being present, even when things feel hard.

Catherine LaSota helps people build and sustain creative practices that work for them, via 1:1 coaching and group programs and retreats. She is the host of Feed the Art, a podcast about nourishing your creative practice. Catherine holds MFAs in sculpture and creative nonfiction and is a certified advanced SCUBA diver. She lives with her husband and two kids in New York City. Find out more at catherinelasota.com.

Andie introduces Spiral Tending Podcast and invites healers into the Spiral Collective, a community to move away from performance pressure, “bullshit professionalism,” and small business isolation while discussing themes like money, restructuring in late-stage capitalism, and mutual support. Andie interviews Heather Bax of Small Business Rodeo, who helps small business owners “wrangle their work and find their flow” through strategy and systems so they can reduce overwhelm and run confident experiments. Heather shares a circuitous path—dog training, web development, and opening a North Carolina gift shop in 2019 that survived COVID through an online store, gift certificate sales, and hiring staff—amid her father’s sudden death and ongoing stress. She reflects on grief as clarifying and creativity-opening, the myth of “arriving” after burnout, and critiques one-size-fits-all online business coaching. Her key advice is that clarity is a prerequisite for discernment. Heather directs listeners to smallbusiness.rodeo and a free tech stack guide.

What happens to therapists when medicaid gets gutted?