The Internet’s Favorite Therapist With Kati Morton

Long gone are the days when going to therapy was something we hid from our friends, family, and even our spouses because of the fear that “they might think something is wrong with us.” These days, we share our learnings from therapy proudly, and wear good mental health like a badge of honor. And at HerMoney, we love to see women talking about things that used to be taboo (like mental health and money!) because it makes it easier for all of us to learn from one another. Kati Morton, YouTube creator, and licensed marriage and family therapist, couldn’t agree more — and is on a mission to ensure more couples start talking about their relationship, ASAP. 

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That’s because couples therapy still — even in 2024 — manages to carry a stigma. Many believe it’s only reserved for couples who are dealing with serious relationship issues like infidelity, abuse, dishonesty, or other toxic behaviors. Yet Kati Morton knows that there’s no harm in acknowledging that something isn’t clicking in our relationship, and saying that we want to do everything we can to make it work. That’s why she’s using her platform to help couples understand that seeking out therapy doesn’t need to feel so weighty. 

“I understand it’s tricky,” Morton says, “But at the very least go in for a couple of months and think of it as almost like a checkup. We do physicals to take care of our physical body. We should be doing couples counseling to kind of get a read on our relationship.” Kati says that because a neutral third party is in the room, the biggest benefit of couples therapy is that it gives each person the chance to speak and ensure they’re being heard. 

Morton created her YouTube channel in 2011 after her husband encouraged her to start sharing her knowledge with a broader audience, and it’s steadily grown from there. Eventually, it grew so much that she decided to stop seeing patients in her private practice because she wanted to be able to share more with the world. “The tricky thing about being a YouTube creator when you still are seeing clients is you’re putting yourself online in a way that could alter the way they view you. As a therapist, you want therapy to be a clean slate,” Morton says “I don’t want them to have any assumptions about me. I want them to feel free to talk about whatever they need to talk about.”

Morton encourages anyone who’s on the fence about going to couples therapy (or to solo therapy) to give it a try, because we all have long-held beliefs about ourselves and our families that are beneficial to work out. “I’ve been in therapy since I was 15 and growing up my parents didn’t argue in front of us,” Morton says, “We should see people, our parents especially, have a disagreement, talk about it, and then come back together. Because I didn’t grow up with that. When I had friendships, and then romantic relationships in my life, my whole goal was to not have conflict. That meant that they didn’t really know who I was, and I was just going along with it until inevitably I’d be like, ‘They don’t know me anymore,’ and I’d break up with them. Therapy can really help you make these connections in your life.”

Listen to the How She Does It podcast for more insight into the benefits of therapy ahead of Valentine’s Day, and the patterns Kati Morton notices that make her optimistic that a couples can make it through conflicts and stay together, if that’s their goal. 

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• HerMoney Podcast Episode 357: How Couples Can Fight Fairly About Money
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• Planning To File For Divorce This Year? Here’s How To Prepare

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