She made $142,000 a year.
And she was drowning.

The first time Maya booked a call with me, she almost cancelled twice. She told me that she sat in her car outside a grocery store with her thumb hovering over the reschedule button, feeling that familiar hot shame crawl up the back of her neck. She made more money than her parents ever had. And she was about to tell a stranger that she should return the new shoes in her trunk.

When we finally spoke, Maya said the sentence I hear almost every week, in some form or another:

"I don't understand how this is my life."

On paper, her life looked beautiful. A two-bedroom apartment in a good neighborhood. A closet of clothes that fit the version of her the office expected. A gym membership she used twice a month. A car she'd leased because everyone at her level had one. Dinners with friends who ordered the second-cheapest bottle of wine and split it evenly.

And underneath it all: seventeen thousand dollars in credit card debt. A savings account with $312 in it. And a tightness in her chest every time she thought about money, which was nearly every waking hour.

"I earn six figures. I have nothing to show for it. And I can't tell anyone. Who would I even tell?"

Here is what Maya had been telling herself for years: I just need to try harder.

She'd downloaded the apps. She'd read the books with the confident titles. She'd made a spreadsheet, then another. She would watch her spending for about two weeks, before something she hadn't planned for knocked the whole thing off the tracks. And every time it fell apart, Maya added one more piece of evidence to the quiet, cruel file in her head: I'm bad at this. Something is wrong with me. I should know this by now.