Private Practice Therapist: Talking about money was such a strong taboo, she and her therapist colleagues simply avoided it.

Szifra Birke is an experienced psychotherapist who transitioned to coaching and has had a private practice in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She found it easier to talk about sexual abuse, affairs, alcohol and drug addiction than to ask about the role of money in a client’s life. She discovered her therapist colleagues also shared this reluctance. It took years to realize that in the area of money, as in other areas, understanding ourselves is an essential key to helping others make changes. That relationship with money was so interesting to her that she actually developed a specialty of focusing on financial behavior with her coaching clients and as a consultant to businesses.

Outcomes

Using Money Habitudes with clients and businesses, Szifra Birke has been able to:

• Help therapists, coaches and financial professionals discover their own biases and understand how their own relationship with money may play out in their interactions with clients.
• Connect the dots between their relationship with money and their self-esteem, relationships and career.
• Working with clients from all wealth levels, it’s enabled successful financial conversations that clients previously avoided or found very awkward or challenging.
• Explore how their relationship with money may affect how they charge (or undercharge) for their services. Many, after only one session with the cards, have been able to raise their fees without losing clients.

How She Uses Money Habitudes

• As a conversation starter during client sessions.
• As an assignment or activity when consulting with dental offices, banks, financial professionals and other businesses.
• As a resource and tool when consulting with projects relating to youth in her community.