Wealth Whisperers: Meet wealth psychologists who help the ultra-rich deal with money-related stress

Praveen Saanker, an Indianorigin, Dubai-based family office advisor and life coach, remembers the day he sat down with Ramesh Sandhu (name changed). An Indian tech entrepreneur, Sandhu laid out his deepest fears before Saanker. He had sold 70% of his stake in his ₹8,000 crore global software firm.

After the exit, the 56-year-old experienced panic attacks, rage, insomnia and dissociation. He asked Saanker to help him find a way out, to help him find an equilibrium.

Saanker, who is a management graduate with specialisation in finance and has a PhD in clinical, counselling and allied psychology from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, identified the problem as a mix of burnout, identity loss, unmanaged ADHD and attachment trauma. For the past 25 years, Sandhu’s self-worth had been tied entirely to his company’s performance. Saanker worked with Sandhu for over six months—until he created a new routine, repaired family bonds and rediscovered purpose beyond achievement. In the end, Sandhu told Saanker: “I spent 25 years thinking the exit would set me free. But freedom isn’t financial, it’s internal. It is being okay with yourself when you are not achieving anything.”

The case of Sandhu is not an isolated one, says Saanker, who works out of India as well as UAE: “Across boardrooms in Mumbai, Dubai and Singapore, I have watched individuals with ₹5,000-25,000 crore fortune struggle with sleepless nights, fractured families and gnawing emptiness.” At this point, they turn to a new niche of professionals like Saanker.

They are popularly called wealth psychologists.
MANAGING MIND OVER MONEY
Across the globe, wealth psychologists are emerging as the new confidants of the rich. A wealth psychologist sits at the intersection of psychology and finance, but they are not offering investment advice. They work on something more intimate: the emotional meaning of money. Wealth, after all, is linked with identity, family history, pride and guilt Dr Carolina Raeburn, a US-based neuropsychologist who advises highnet-worth individuals on the emotional complexities of affluence, says, “If someone feels guilt or anxiety around wealth, it is often tied to an internal narrative, sometimes inherited, sometimes unexamined. The first step is bringing those thoughts into awareness. Then we evaluate whether they are grounded in reality or shaped by expectation.”In such cases, a specialised wealth psychologist can offer more targeted insight. While a traditional therapist may focus on managing symptoms, wealth-focused work explores the deeper question of why wealth triggers certain emotions and how to move forward with clarity.

A second-generation inheritor, for instance, may feel chronic guilt about wealth they didn’t “earn”, leading to avoidance or underperformance. In typical therapy, the focus may be on treating anxiety. In a wealth psychology session, the conversation becomes more targeted: mapping money memories, speaking about emotional meaning attached to wealth, asking questions about what money means to them.

Delhi-based psychologist Nishul Gupta sees wealth not just as a financial reality but as an emotional one, shaping identity, relationships and one’s sense of meaning. “Specialised attention from a trained wealth psychologist can bring a sharper focus to the unique anxieties and challenges associated with money. However, any therapist who is sensitive to a client’s context can explore how their relationship with money shapes them.”

A second-generation heir once confessed to Dr Donna Hillier, a Florida-based wealth psychologist who works with ultra-high-net-worth families, that he is afraid he is living someone else’s dream, and doesn’t know where his begins. “His wealth gave him freedom, but also paralysis. Every choice felt weighted with legacy and expectation,” says Hillier.

THE RICH & THE RESTLESS
India’s new rich are multiplying faster than their emotional coping tools. According to the latest Knight Frank Wealth Report, the country had 191 billionaires in 2024, up 12% from 2023, with 26 new entrants, a sharp climb from just 7 in 2019. India also has 85,698 people worth over $10 million, ranking fourth globally.

Saanker describes his work as helping India’s ultra-rich unlearn the survival mindset that built their empires. India’s new wealthy, mostly first-generation and often self-made, carry emotional legacies of scarcity into abundance. They have built in a generation what others built in three. But emotionally, they are still catching up. “The very qualities that helped them build wealth—relentless drive, control, suspicion—are destroying their peace,” he says.

For first-generation tycoons, the passion that created wealth rarely switches off. “Even with ₹1,000 crore in liquid reserves, they cannot stop working,” says Saanker. He recalls how a 72-yearold patriarch, with a ₹4,000 crore textile empire, was unable to relinquish control. “Being a founder was his identity. To him, retirement felt like death,” says Saanker. His very capable, 45-year-old son was asking his permission even for minor decisions. The business stagnated because the son never truly led, and the father resented that “he didn’t appreciate what I built”. This needed intervention: separating identity from role, finding meaning beyond work and trusting the next generation. And that’s what Saanker worked on.

CAN’T SPELL MONEY WITHOUT ME
When a Delhi-based entrepreneur sold his company for ₹10,000 crore, he expected peace. Instead, he found panic. Six months later, he was sleepless and restless, says Saanker, adding: “He told me, ‘I have achieved everything I set out to do. Now what?’ It was about unresolved fears, unchecked ego, inability to trust, lack of grounding. They had won the external game but were losing the internal one.”

Across continents, psychologists echo this. Hillier says: “In my practice, the most common emotional challenges include guilt, isolation, performance pressure and identity confusion, particularly when self-worth becomes intertwined with achievement or financial success.” Agrees Raeburn: “For those who inherit wealth, it is common to carry quiet burdens like guilt, shame, or the pressure to uphold a legacy. The work begins with identifying which beliefs are inherited and which are chosen.”

Many psychologists note that second-generation clients often grapple with another problem: they are raised in abundance but are deprived of selfefficacy, the belief in one’s ability to achieve a goal. Having never needed to struggle for resources, they are unsure whether their choices carry weight. One of Hillier’s clients, who inherited vast wealth in her 20s, once confessed: “I cannot talk about my pain. It sounds ungrateful.” Hillier says this captures a central paradox of financial privilege: the more one has, the less emotional permission one feels to struggle.

Saanker’s clients voice similar dissonance, but in India it comes laced with cultural weight. “Many grew up hearing ‘money is maya’ (illusion), but they have built empires,” he says. “They don’t know how to reconcile material success with a moral tradition that treats detachment as virtue.”

Saanker says Indian women often seek wealth psychologists to come to terms with the unfairness in inheritance. “In Indian family businesses, the daughter is often the most capable person in the room but the least empowered,” he says. He shares the case involving a ₹7,500 crore pharmaceutical empire. It was assumed that the daughter—an MBA with 15 years at McKinsey—would be at the helm. She was more qualified and experienced than her brothers. Instead, she was offered a cash settlement. “The emotional cost was enormous,” says Saanker There is another aspect as well. “Many women in wealthy families become shock absorbers,” says Saanker. “They manage the household’s harmony, hold secrets and absorb conflict. But they rarely have a space of their own.” That also drives them to wealth psychologists.

POOR LITTLE RICH
Another issue that wealth psychologists come across is loneliness. “Extreme wealth often builds invisible walls between partners, generations, even within oneself. Over time, many high-net-worth individuals start to edit their vulnerability, sharing less, trusting less,” says Hillier. “The cost is loneliness behind a facade of abundance.”

Raeburn says loneliness often manifests as “guardedness, limited disclosure, or social interactions that feel performative rather than sincere”. She sees it most in relationships where affection becomes entangled with expectation: “Many find it difficult to discern who genuinely cares versus who is drawn to their status. The inner dialogue moves from ‘Do I have enough?’ to ‘Who can I trust?’” In Indian families, the question of trust takes on cultural layers. “A client told me that his relatives want money and friends want favours. And he can’t trust even his children’s spouses,” says Saanker. “This paranoia isn’t irrational. It’s often born of real experiences. But it creates profound loneliness.”

Economic and organisational sociologist Dr Oleg Komlik calls it “abundance without belonging”. Komlik, who heads an undergraduate programme in behavioural sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon LeZion, Israel, says, “Affluence isolates as much as it empowers. When economic or business success becomes the primary marker of worth, the rich can find themselves surrounded by transactions rather than relationships.”

NEW MORAL ECONOMY
Komlik says, “The emergence of ‘wealth psychologists’ is part of a broader shift. Emotional life has become managed, optimised and professionalised. In earlier eras, religion or community provided moral narratives to justify wealth; now, psychology fills that role.” In his view, therapy for the rich is not indulgence but infrastructure. It is “…a new mechanism of moral repair for the elite”. He adds, “The rich are told they ‘deserve’ their success, yet they live amid visible deprivation. That contradiction produces guilt, anxiety and a need to seek reassurance, sometimes through philanthropy.”

Raeburn notes that for many, philanthropy becomes a pathway toward meaning and legacy, particularly when guided by personal values rather than performance. Komlik says, “The rise of wealth psychology tells us something profound about the emotional and moral limits of material progress. Societies that define success purely in financial terms eventually confront the question: success for what?” For now, wealth psychologists are here to help the rich pick purpose over profit