What We Talk About When We (Don’t) Talk About Money

Vessy Tasheva on the theory and practice of financial therapy (and why your profession shouldn’t be your whole identity)

Author: Svetoslav Todorov, October 1, 2025

The original article in Bulgarian is published by VIJ Magazine here

Photography: Stefan Suchev

Translated: Vessy Tasheva, October 8th, 2025

“It’s somehow easier for me to explain what financial therapy is not than what it actually is. It’s definitely not about learning how to make more money through some course that claims to reveal all the financial secrets, nor about promising profits like some crypto bros,” says Vessy Tasheva from her home in Dublin, where she has lived for eleven years.

In recent years, Tasheva has been developing her practice as a therapist after a professional background in marketing, advertising, product management, business coaching, and diversity and belonging consulting.

Her interest in these topics started early—as a counterpoint to the environment she grew up in. Her father, artist Atanas Tashev, helped her notice how art was art, but money was treated as something separate, distant, disconnected.

Her decision to devote herself to financial therapy as a discipline arose from the daily challenges she noticed in her own and others’ professional lives.

“In work environments, people often talk about business, business, business—but when it comes to making an actual decision, like pricing a service they provide, suddenly people start explaining their choices through deeply personal stories—family difficulties, emotions, memories. Coaching conversations were becoming more like therapy—so much so that after four sessions, I sometimes still didn’t understand what their business model was” Tasheva says.

She holds a Masters in Science in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Trinity College Dublin, where her dissertation explored how early childhood shapes our capacity for trust.

Meanwhile, Tasheva joined the Financial Therapy Association, founded in 2008—the year of the global financial crisis. Some members come from a background in finance and business; others come from a therapy background.

“I don’t teach people how to budget or invest,” she adds.

Drama with a Money Script

According to Tasheva, Financial Therapy examines the ways we think about money and how our cultural conditioning shapes those thoughts—whether our emotional relationship with money helps us or gets in the way.

“For example, if a parent lost their job or someone close died tragically during your childhood, that will always shape how you relate to money and stability.”

Who is financial therapy for?
“There’s a tendency for wealthier people to seek therapy more often as a form of help, so I do work mostly with professionals from the business world. But a person can have money one moment and not have it the next. Someone might have only a few bucks in their pocket but still feel the need to wear expensive clothes and have a maxed-out credit card.”

Tasheva outlines four ‘money scripts’—recurring psychological patterns that often overlap:

1. Money Avoidance – People who avoid both money and those who have it, seeing wealth as inherently suspicious or morally compromised.

2. Money Worship – People who believe money can solve all problems and bring power or happiness, yet they never feel it’s enough and may alienate others. “Money and love always run in parallel,” Tasheva says. “If someone avoids talking about money, they’ll also avoid other important issues—like relationship conflicts. On the other hand, worshipping money can create narcissistic traits beyond a healthy ego.”

3. Money Status – Equating self-worth with net worth, a person’s worth depends on earnings or professional success. “It’s one thing to ask, ‘Am I handling this situation well?’ and another to ask, ‘Am I good enough as a person?’” she says, noting how identity crises often emerge when professionals lose their jobs.

4. Money Vigilance – Excessive frugality and secrecy about income. Tasheva gives Ireland as an example of a culture where saving is almost moralized: “It’s not about lacking money—it’s about not spending anything unnecessary, regardless of one’s salary.”

Credit of Trust Toward Yourself

How do financial habits differ between Ireland and Bulgaria? Tasheva looks into history for clues about why one culture tends to over-save and the other to overspend.

“In Bulgaria, there’s a huge emphasis on how you look—what car you drive, what clothes you wear, and whether the brand name is visible for others to see. In Ireland, there’s a money trauma: when the English took their land, they pushed people to the rocky western coast, where food was hard to grow. In Bulgaria, even under Ottoman rule, we didn’t have that kind of mass displacement. So, we don’t have the same obsession with owning land. In Ireland, land ownership remains the highest value.”

She cites Eurostat data: about 85–86% of Bulgarians own property (90% live in their own homes, per the National Statistics Institute), compared to only 66% of Irish households. High rents and taxes in Ireland also reinforce frugality.

“In Ireland, wealth is discreet. No one with money stands out. I’ve never seen the kinds of cars people drive in Bulgaria. When you compliment someone —‘That’s lovely, where did you get it?’—they’ll tell you they bought it with a discount or at Penney’s. In Bulgaria, the story would be retold as a success.”

Success as a Second Skin

Tasheva notes that in Bulgaria, insecurity and financial stress remain constant undercurrents—shaped by deprivation under communism, the “mutri and mutresi” (mafia-like nouveau riche) of the 1990s, 1996 hyperinflation, recessions, recent inflation, and now the anxiety surrounding Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro in January 2026.

“Often, when people earn enough, they assume they’re living well. But sometimes they don’t know what to do with their money—and if they can’t allow any changes, maybe they’re also not allowing themselves other experiences. People ask me, ‘I have the money—why don’t I feel fulfilled?’”

A central modern issue, she says, is the belief that one’s job is their identity. When that identity collapses after failure, people experience a deep crisis instead of normalizing life’s ups and downs.

“On the other hand, work might be thriving, but your personal life could be neglected. Some people internalize the idea that if they have money, they have friends, love, sex—and if they don’t, they don’t deserve those things. These patterns begin much earlier, when, for example, as a child you were only shown love after achieving something—and never learned whether love existed unconditionally without performance.”

For Tasheva, money, trust, and the body (skin) are parallel boundaries—ways people define who they are and where they end and others begin.

“Your clothes, your appearance—these become a kind of ‘second skin,’ a way of preserving a constructed self from falling apart. But under no circumstances should your bank account determine your worth.”

Learn more about Vessy Tasheva’s practice at vessy.com.