Golden Handcuffs: What It Costs to Be a High Earner When No One Believes the Struggle Is Real
A woman may have a number in her bank account most people would call a solution to everything. She may have also practiced, in her head, exactly how to phrase asking for help so it doesn't sound like she's complaining about a life other people would trade for in a second. Not every golden handcuff comes with a company name attached; sometimes the income itself is the trap.
Written and clinically reviewed by Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, Psy.D., founder of Alafiora. Licensed Psychologist, New Mexico, PSY-2026-0031, issued April 2026. Licensed Psychologist, Indiana, 20044074A, issued March 2026. Credentialed Health Service Psychologist, National Register, #69571, issued 21 April 2026. In supervised clinical practice since 2020, licensed independently since 2026. Doctor of Psychology, Alliant University, San Diego, an APA-accredited program in clinical psychology, 2024. APA-accredited clinical internship, New Mexico State University Counseling Center. Postdoctoral fellowship, 2024 to 2025, spanning clinical, multicultural, and AI-informed practice, with a postdoctoral caseload of more than ninety clients. Practice scope: love obsession and love addiction, compulsive sexual behavior and sex addiction, and sexual trauma, treated as one connected system.
Published 21 August 2026. Last updated 21 August 2026.
This article is the second installment in the Golden Handcuffs series. The first covers working at a prestigious company or institution. This one is about something related but distinct: being a high earner in one's own right, mid six figures, seven figures, whatever the specific number is, independent of any employer's name. It is written for the individual reading this who has real means and access, and who has started to notice that the money is making some things easier and some specific things harder in ways that are easy to miss from the outside.
Every personal account described on this page is fiction. Dr. Lapite-Garrett writes them from her own clinical knowledge and expertise. An AI tool drafts a starting version of the text, which she then edits and gives final approval to. The individuals, the histories, and the sequences of events here, including those written as he or she and including any pattern shown escalating over time, are not drawn from any current or former client of this practice, and no client information of any kind was used to make them. No one's trajectory appears on this page. What appears is what these psychological phenomena may look like when they occur.
Quick Answer
Why Being a High Earner Can Be a Golden Handcuff on Its Own
Financial means change how a person moves through the world in a lot of genuinely good ways, and this article isn't arguing otherwise. They also change, specifically, how three things play out: love obsession, compulsive sexual behavior, and sexual trauma. Money can make a love object respond more warmly, which feels good and also makes it harder to know whether the warmth is real. Money can remove nearly every point of friction that would otherwise slow a compulsive pattern down, which means the pattern can escalate faster and further than it would for someone without the means to fund it. And money can pay for excellent physical care after a trauma while doing nothing at all for what happened on the inside, all while other people assume that someone with real financial resources has no legitimate reason to still be struggling. Having money is not something to feel guilty about. What is worth taking seriously is that money solves some problems and simply does not touch others.
How I Know This
What's Documented, and What's Clinical Judgment Stated Plainly as Such
The disbelief high earners face when they struggle is documented, even if the research base is thinner than it is for lower-income populations, since most stigma research understandably centers on populations facing the opposite problem: a lack of resources rather than a surplus of them. A 2026 clinical whitepaper on mental health in high-net-worth households, reviewing available survey data including the 2021 National Health Interview Survey, found that serious psychological distress is less common at the top of the income distribution but far from absent, and that the binding barrier for this population tends to be confidentiality and the guilt of struggling while appearing to have everything, not cost or access. That is a clinical whitepaper, not a peer-reviewed study, and it is labeled as such here rather than dressed up as more rigorous than it is. Separately, sociologist Rachel Sherman's research on affluent Americans, published as Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, documented wealthy individuals going to real lengths to minimize or hide their financial position specifically to avoid judgment, which supports the same basic pattern from a different angle.
How this specifically plays out across love obsession, compulsive sexual behavior, and sexual trauma is Dr. Lapite-Garrett's own clinical observation, drawn from her work with high earners directly. That is a description of clinical judgment, not a citation, and it is named as such here. The licensure numbers above are checkable directly through the state boards and the National Register's own consumer directory.
What This Article Covers
- What changes when the money is someone's own, not an employer's
- Why sympathy gets harder to find
- When it intersects with love obsession
- When it intersects with compulsive sexual behavior
- When it intersects with sexual trauma
- What this practice isn't asking anyone to give up
- How Alafiora is structured
- Questions people ask about this
- Citations
What Changes When the Money Is Someone's Own, Not an Employer's
A Different Kind of Prestige
Being a high earner is its own category of prestige, separate from whatever company or institution someone might also be affiliated with.
A person may not work anywhere particularly notable at all, and may still find that a high income changes how people read her: less friction accessing almost anything, more time and money available to invest in the version of herself she presents to the world, a nicer home, a nicer car, fewer visible strains on daily life. That version of prestige comes from the number itself, not an employer's name on a badge, and it carries its own specific weight. It does nothing on its own, though, to protect anyone from love obsession, compulsive sexual behavior, or the isolation sexual trauma can create; if anything, as the sections below cover, it can make each one harder to see coming.
Why Sympathy Gets Harder to Find
The Cost of Being Believed When the Means Are Real
For someone with real financial means, getting a struggle taken seriously, by friends, by strangers, sometimes by a clinician, can be its own uphill climb.
A man may bring something genuinely painful into a conversation and watch the other person's face shift the moment his income comes up, from concern to something closer to skepticism, as though the money itself disqualifies the pain. He may have absorbed that skepticism so thoroughly that he says it to himself before anyone else gets the chance: he has no reason to be struggling with this. And yet he is, and the gap between what he is supposed to feel and what he actually feels becomes its own separate weight, on top of whatever the original struggle already was. That same disbelief can be what keeps him from naming compulsive sexual behavior, love obsession, or the effects of a trauma directly, since bringing any of them into a room first requires believing the struggle is real enough to say out loud.
When It Intersects With Love Obsession
When Generosity Makes It Impossible to Know What's Real
For an individual carrying love obsession or relational dependency, real financial means can intensify the pattern in a specific way: it becomes very easy to make a love object respond warmly, and very hard to trust what that warmth actually means.
A woman may find she can fund trips, gifts, and experiences for the person she is fixated on in a way that reliably produces a positive response, since it is easy for most people to warm toward someone with real means, whether or not that warmth has anything to do with genuine affection. She may notice she has begun reading every interaction for proof either way, unable to fully trust a smile or a thank-you as evidence of real feeling, and may also be genuinely afraid of the other side of that same coin: using her financial position to hold someone's attention rather than earning it, which is its own kind of exploitation she does not want to be part of. A man carrying the same pattern may notice himself timing generosity strategically, a gift right when contact has gone quiet, and may recognize, uncomfortably, that this is not generosity anymore so much as a lever.
When It Intersects With Compulsive Sexual Behavior
When Money Removes Every Point of Friction
This section needs one distinction stated up front, matching its companion installment: Alafiora is sex-work affirming. An adult choosing sex work is a person making a decision about their own labor, and that decision is never treated here as a symptom or something to be talked out of.
What this section is actually about is different: an individual carrying compulsive sexual behavior, where real financial means can remove nearly all of the friction that would otherwise naturally slow an escalating pattern down.
A man may find that cost is never the obstacle: an escort, a discreet massage, a sugar baby, all reachable without effort, all arranged without the ordinary friction of screening, waiting, or persuasion most people navigate. He may notice the pattern escalating specifically because nothing is stopping it, more people involved at once, encounters with people he has never met before that day. He may notice something else too, worth sitting with rather than rushing past: his financial position has started to function as leverage over someone else's hesitation, so that a person who would ordinarily decline a specific request says yes once money is clearly part of the offer, a genuine risk rather than a compliment to his own appeal. That is a real question about whether the other person's yes is actually free, not evidence of anything about him, and a man who notices that question and takes it seriously, rather than looking away from it, is already doing meaningful work.
A woman in the same financial position may notice the same access working differently. Money can still remove friction, but paying for sex or arranging casual encounters through her own resources carries a steeper social cost if it becomes known, so instead of encounters multiplying openly, the pattern can escalate more privately, hidden even from people close to her, which makes it easier for the compulsion to go unexamined for longer.
This practice takes a preventionist approach here specifically: as leverage over someone else's consent enters the picture, whether as a passing thought or an already repeated pattern, it becomes an explicit part of the clinical work in its own right, through closer, direct conversation about the specific dynamic each time it resurfaces, rather than folded into the broader conversation about escalation. Where this reflects an established, ongoing pattern rather than an early or occasional concern, Dr. Lapite-Garrett names that directly with the client and talks through what level of care or outside resource the situation actually calls for; that conversation carries no guarantee of a specific outcome, and it happens either way. The goal throughout is interrupting this dynamic, including this exact one, before it causes harm to anyone, himself included.
When It Intersects With Sexual Trauma
What Money Can Pay For, and What It Can't
For a survivor with real financial means, care itself is rarely the obstacle. The obstacle is what happens on the inside, which no amount of money reaches directly.
A woman may have every physical resource available to her after an assault, the best medical care, the ability to relocate, the ability to take time off without financial consequence, and may still be carrying real internal pain that none of that access resolves. She may encounter people, sometimes well-meaning ones, who respond to her disclosure with some version of "at least she has the means to handle it," a sentiment that flattens the actual injury into a logistics problem money should have already solved. She may find herself repeating that same sentiment to herself: she has no reason to still be affected by this. And yet she is, and having to argue herself out of her own reality, on top of the original injury, is its own demoralizing weight.
A man in the same financial position may run into a related but different wall. The same resources that let him access nearly anything he needs can also make the people around him assume he is already fine, since visible success reads as proof of resilience, not as something separate from whether an assault happened or how it landed. Fewer people ask him directly whether he is actually struggling, because his position seems to argue he could not be.
Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, if reading this has taken you somewhere hard. It answers calls and texts around the clock, and you do not have to be in immediate danger to use it. If you or someone with you is in immediate physical danger, call 911. A fuller list of lines and services is on Alafiora's crisis resources page. Reading something like this at the wrong hour is a real thing, and stepping away from it is always available.
What This Practice Isn't Asking Anyone to Give Up
Not About Quitting, Not About Giving It Away
Dr. Lapite-Garrett has worked directly with high earners, directors, C-suite executives, industry names, people for whom a six, seven, or eight-figure income is simply part of everyday life, and none of that work has ever been about convincing anyone to walk away from their money or their success.
This work is about helping someone make decisions from clarity rather than from what the money has made comfortable to avoid, and about noticing when money, which once opened real doors, has become the unexamined reason a hard conversation keeps not happening. A therapist working this territory is watching for exactly that: the decision someone keeps deferring, the relationship they can't quite tell is real, the year they told themselves they'd deal with it once things settled down. Nobody here is told to quit a job, give away a fortune, or disregard the genuine benefits their means provide. Reputation, career standing, and the life someone has built stay theirs to protect throughout; the goal is making the decision that is actually right for them, with enough clarity and stability to know the difference between what the money is solving and what it never could.
How Alafiora Is Structured
A Solo, Private-Pay Practice in Three Connected Areas
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is the licensed psychologist who founded Alafiora and the only clinician in it. She holds licenses in New Mexico and Indiana. Both licenses are regular and active, and a license in each state is what allows a session with a resident of that state to happen at all.
The practice treats three areas as one connected system: love obsession and love addiction, including limerence and obsessive attachment; compulsive sexual behavior and sex addiction; and sexual trauma, including developmental trauma, complex trauma, and betrayal trauma. Every client works with Dr. Lapite-Garrett directly, throughout care, with no rotating associates and no case handoffs.
Sessions run in four formats: a clinical intake of eighty minutes, a standard session of fifty minutes, an extended session of a hundred and ten minutes for material that does not fit inside an hour, and a twenty-five-minute clarity session. Care is delivered by video on a HIPAA-compliant platform covered by a signed business associate agreement, on location, and through walk and talk sessions where that format suits the work. Full session formats and current rates are detailed on the practice's fee page.
The practice is private pay, sometimes called direct pay, cash pay, or out-of-pocket. No diagnosis reaches any insurer or third party unless authorized or requested by the client through an applicable release of information, and no insurer is billed by default. A superbill for potential out-of-network reimbursement is available on request.
Questions People Ask About This
Is It Okay to Say I'm Struggling When I Have Every Resource Available to Me?
Yes, and needing to justify that before feeling allowed to say it is itself worth examining. Financial means and genuine psychological distress are not mutually exclusive, and one does not cancel the other out.
Will I Be Told to Give Away My Money or Change My Lifestyle?
That is not how this works: it is about understanding what money is and is not actually solving, not about convincing anyone to walk away from anything they have built.
I've Started Wondering Whether My Financial Position Pressures People Into Saying Yes to Me. Is That a Sign Something's Wrong?
Noticing that question and taking it seriously is a meaningfully good sign, not evidence of having already done harm. That kind of self-awareness is exactly where this work can start.
Does Alafiora Actually Work With People at This Income Level?
Yes, and specifically at this level: Dr. Lapite-Garrett has worked directly with high earners, executives, and prominent professional figures, and understands both the real benefits and the specific binds that come with that level of financial means.
Why Would Anyone Need Therapy If Money Can Buy Almost Anything Else?
Care itself is rarely the obstacle for someone with real financial means; the internal experience underneath a struggle is what money does not reach, and that is exactly the territory this work is for.
Citations
Cerevity. (2026). The wealth and wellbeing report: Mental health in high-net-worth households [Clinical whitepaper]. https://cerevity.com/wealth-and-wellbeing-report/
Sherman, R. (2017). Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence. Princeton University Press.
Cite this article. Lapite-Garrett, E. (2026). Golden handcuffs: What it costs to be a high earner when no one believes the struggle is real. Alafiora LLC. https://www.alafiora.com/golden-handcuffs-high-earner
Report a correction. Alafiora corrects errors of fact on this site. Anything inaccurate on this page can be reported through the compliance contact form, and corrections are made to the page itself with the change noted.
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett, Psy.D., licensed psychologist, and read again each year as part of Alafiora's annual copy review.
Related reading on this site. The companion installment in this series covers a related but distinct version of this same pattern: working at a prestigious company or institution. What commercial sex compulsion looks like on its own terms is covered on commercial sex compulsion. Why harm from a depended-upon person suppresses recognition of it is the subject of betrayal trauma. How this practice protects a client's privacy structurally is covered on who finds out someone is in therapy.
Begin a Confidential Conversation
None of this has to be sorted out alone, including whether the money is helping or getting in the way. Working with someone privately, in a setting built around real confidentiality rather than around a company directory or a shared circle, is what makes it possible to say the parts that have been going unsaid. A first conversation is held in confidence, within the legal and professional limits of confidentiality any licensed psychologist explains before clinical work begins. The consultation is a brief conversation, by video or phone, where a prospective client can ask whatever they need to, and Dr. Lapite-Garrett explains how the practice runs. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session.
For anyone not ready to reach out today, the companion installment in this series is a useful next stop. This article can always be bookmarked, or the QR code in the footer scanned, to keep this practice's information close until the timing feels right.
© Alafiora LLC 2026
Every session at Alafiora is held by one licensed psychologist
Dr. Esther Lapite-Garrett is the founder and sole practitioner of Alafiora. There are no associates, no rotating providers, and no case handoffs: the person who reads a client's history in the first session is the same person still holding it two years later. She is licensed in New Mexico and Indiana. Both licenses are regular and active, and additional state licensure is underway.
Her training is doctoral-level, which typically extends several years beyond a master's-level license in assessment, diagnosis, and the treatment of complex, overlapping presentations. She keeps a deliberately small caseload so that depth is possible, participates in ongoing peer consultation and clinical training, and maintains her own personal therapy.
Whatever brought someone to this page today is never put on trial here
A consultation is a brief conversation with no obligation attached. Those already certain they are ready are equally welcome to begin directly with a first session.