Are We In a Loop? How Thoughts, Feelings, and Money Habits Feed Each Other

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Hi everyone, welcome to Personal Finance with Molly, where we talk about all things personal finance.
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I am your host, Molly Ford Coates.
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Let's dig in.
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All right, we are going to jump right in today.
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Have you ever checked your bank account, seen a number that made your stomach drop, and then immediately opened a shopping app?
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Or maybe you avoided looking at your account altogether, just didn't open the app for three weeks because ignorance felt better than the alternative?
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If you just nodded, possibly while looking over your shoulder, welcome.
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You are in the right place, and you are absolutely not alone.
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Today we are getting into one of my absolute favorite topics, the CBT Money Cycle.
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CBT, which stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
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And before you think, wait, is this a therapy podcast now?
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Stay with me.
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We're not doing therapy today, but we are borrowing one of the most powerful frameworks in psychology to understand why you keep doing the money things you swore you'd stop doing.
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And by the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly how your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors are feeding each other, and you'll have real usable tools to interrupt that loop.
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Let's dig in.
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So let's start with a quick foundation.
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Cognitive behavioral therapy was developed by psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the 1960s, and he is widely considered the father of CBT.
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And the core idea is simple, is beautifully simple.
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Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not separate things happening independently.
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They are in a loop.
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They influence each other constantly.
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So here's the classic CBT triangle.
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Picture it with me.
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At the top, you have thoughts, which is what you tell yourself about a situation.
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At the bottom left of the triangle, you have feelings, the emotions those thoughts generate.
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And the bottom right is behaviors, the actions you take based on those feelings.
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So thoughts, feelings, behavior in a triangle.
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And here's the kicker, guys.
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The arrow goes both ways.
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Your behavior affects your feelings, your feelings shape your thoughts, your thoughts drive your behavior.
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It's a cycle.
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Sometimes it's a beautiful, virtuous cycle, and sometimes a really gnarly, self-defeating one.
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CBT therapists work with clients to identify where the cycle is going sideways.
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Usually it's at the thought level, and then create new, more helpful patterns.
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Now, financial therapists and behavioral finance researchers have taken this framework and applied it directly to money.
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And honestly, it is illuminating.
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In the money context, it looks like this.
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You have a thought, like, I'm terrible with money, I always mess up.
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And then you have a feeling, maybe it's shame or helplessness or anxiety.
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And then you have the behavior, which is maybe looky avoid looking at your budget or impulse spend to feel better or procrastinate on the 401k enrollment.
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And then you have a new thought.
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See, I messed up again.
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I knew I couldn't do this.
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And the cycle continues.
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Friends, do you know notice what's happening there?
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The behavior doesn't start from nowhere.
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It's a downstream of a feeling, which is a downstream of a thought.
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And that initial thought, often, friends, it's not even accurate.
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But it feels like truth, and that's what makes it so sticky.
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Here's something I really want you to sit with.
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The cycle can start anywhere.
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For different people, and even for the same person in different situations, the trigger might be a thought, a feeling, or even a behavior.
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So let's walk through each of these.
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Let's do the first example, the entry point number one, the thought trigger, right?
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So for a lot of people, the cycle kicks off with a thought, often an automatic thought.
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Researchers call these automatic negative thoughts or ANTs.
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And yes, that's intentional, and you should picture ants, ANTs, the automatic negative thoughts.
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These are the little mental whispers that fire before you've even consciously registered them.
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In money life, common ANTs sound like, I'll never be good with money.
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Or rich people are just lucky.
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That's not for people like me.
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Or there's no point in saving, something always comes up.
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Or I deserve this.
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I work so hard and I never treat myself.
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That last one is sneaky because it sounds positive, right?
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But notice where it leads.
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It rationalizes a behavior that may not actually align with what you want.
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That thought is part of the cycle.
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So entry point number one could be the thought trigger.
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Maybe we have entry point number two, which is the feeling trigger.
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Sometimes the entry point is just purely emotional.
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You're stressed from work, or you're lonely, or you're bored on a Tuesday night.
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The feeling comes first, and then your brain reaches for a familiar behavior, which then generates a thought.
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This is what we often call emotional spending.
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And it's worth naming clearly.
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Emotional spending isn't weakness, it is your nervous system seeking regulation.
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The problem isn't that you feel things, it's that the brain has learned to route discomfort straight to spend as your solution.
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But, friends, we can reroute that.
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Or maybe you have entry point number three, which is the behavior trigger.
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And this one surprises people.
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Sometimes the cycle starts with a behavior, and then the thoughts and feelings follow.
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So for example, you impulsively put something on a credit card.
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Then you feel a rush, followed by guilt.
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Then the thought, I ruined everything, I have no self-control.
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Which creates shame, which makes you less likely to look at your finances, which leads to more avoidance behaviors.
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See, friends, in that situation, the behavior came first, and then the story came after.
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But the story feels just as real.
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So, what is your entry point?
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I'm going to invite you to actually think about this.
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Maybe even pause this episode and journal on it.
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When your money cycle goes sideways, where does it typically start?
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With a thought, a feeling, or a behavior?
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That's your leverage point.
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That's where your work is.
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Alright, so right now I want to zoom in on the thought part of the cycle for a moment because this is where so much of both the magic and the mischief lives.
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In behavioral finance, we talk a lot about cognitive distortions, the systematic errors in thinking that lead us astray.
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And money?
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Money is basically a playground for cognitive distortions.
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So I want to talk about four of the cognitive distortions that are messing with your wallet.
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First, the all or nothing thinking.
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And this is in no particular order.
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The all or nothing thinking.
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So for example, a quote: I already went over budget this month, so the month is basically ruined.
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Might as well keep spending.
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Right?
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That's the all or nothing.
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Does that sound familiar?
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This is total black and white thinking.
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If it's not perfect, it's total failure.
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So what's the fix?
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Friends, it's progress, not perfection.
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A dented budget is still a budget.
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Another cognitive distortion, number two, mind reading.
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So if I tell my partner how much debt I have, they'll leave me.
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Or my friends will think I'm cheap if I say I can't afford the chip, the trip.
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Do you see what you're doing there?
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You're predicting what others will think and feel.
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You're doing a mind reading thing, and you're letting that prediction drive your financial decisions.
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The data almost always tells a different story when people actually have the conversation.
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A third cognitive distortion that's messing with your wallet.
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Fortune telling.
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Or I'll never be able to retire anyway, so why bother?
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If you're treating a fear-based prediction as a fact, then you are fortune telling.
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Meanwhile, someone who started investing in 1990 and ignored this particular ANT, this particular ant, is now sitting pretty, right?
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Or number four, the fourth cognitive distortion that could be messing with your wallet: emotional reasoning.
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So a quote for under this category would be something like, I feel broke, so I must be bad with money.
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This one, friends, is so common and so sneaky.
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Feelings are real, feelings are valid.
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Feelings are not always accurate data about external reality.
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Feeling broke doesn't mean you're objectively bad with money.
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It might mean you're stressed or overwhelmed or haven't looked at the full picture yet.
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So these four distortions, the all or nothing, the mind reading, the fortune telling, the emotional reasoning, these four are the stories running in the background of your financial life.
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And here's the thing: you didn't make these stories up maliciously.
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They were wired in.
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Early experiences with money, with family messages, with cultural narratives, all of it gets baked into your automatic money thoughts.
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The good news awareness is the first step to rewriting them.
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And we're going to do that right now.
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Let's break the cycle, right?
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Let's get practical.
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You know the cycle, you know the distortions.
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Now let's talk about how to actually interrupt this thing.
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So you know, friends, I've got tools for you, right?
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I've got four tools for you today.
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These come directly from CBT practice, adapted for the money space.
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Use one, use all four, or experiment and find what find what works for your brain.
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So here's tool one, the thought record.
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This is the OG in the CBT technique.
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When you notice a money spiral starting, whether it's anxiety before opening your banking app or shame after an impulse purchase, pause and ask these five questions.
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What just happened?
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Right?
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We want to know the situation.
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What just happened?
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What thought popped up automatically?
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What emotion did that create?
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And how intense is it on a scale of one to ten?
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What's the evidence for this thought?
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And what's the evidence against this thought?
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And number five, what's a more balanced, realistic thought that I could hold instead?
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Notice I'm not asking you to think positive.
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I'm asking you to think accurately.
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There's a big difference.
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I'm terrible with money and hopeless because I've made some decisions I would do differently, and I have the ability to learn and adjust.
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That's not toxic positivity, that's precision.
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Tool number two, behavioral activation.
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So we're gonna schedule the thing you're avoiding.
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Avoidance is the cycle's best friend.
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When we avoid like not looking at our accounts or not opening the credit card statement or not starting the budget, the anxiety actually grows.
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The unknown is almost always more frightening than the known.
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Behavioral activation is the practice of doing the thing anyway, before you feel ready.
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Not because you fixed your feelings first, but because action changes feelings.
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So here's a micro version.
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Schedule a 15-minute money date with yourself this week.
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Make it cozy, like your favorite drink, a comfortable spot, maybe even a little playlist.
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Open the account, look at the numbers.
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That's it.
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Don't try to fix everything, just look.
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You'll find that the act of looking repeatedly reduces the anxiety significantly over time.
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Here's tool three: the pause and name protocol.
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This one is incredibly simple and incredibly powerful.
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The next time you feel a money impulse, whether it's the urge to buy something or the urge to avoid something or the urge to justify something, pause.
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Take one breath and say out loud or in your head, I notice I'm feeling blank.
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Whatever the emotion is, put the emotion in that blank.
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I notice I'm feeling blank.
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That's it.
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Naming an emotion activates the prefrontal cortex, that reasoning part of your brain.
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And it creates just enough space between stimulus and response that you can make a choice instead of just reacting.
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So I notice I'm feeling anxious.
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I notice I'm feeling like I deserve a reward.
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I notice I'm feeling kind of numb and avoidant right now.
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That pause, that pause is where your agency lives.
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And here's tool four: values-based spending anchors.
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This is the proactive piece.
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Not just interrupting the bad cycle, but building a better one.
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Get clear on your top three financial values.
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Not I should save more.
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I want your actual values, adventure, security, creativity, family, freedom, whatever genuinely lights you up.
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Then, before any non-essential purchase, ask, does this align with what I actually value?
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Not is this perfect?
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Not will this make me happy forever.
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Just does this connect to something real in me?
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When spending is anchored to values, it feels different.
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It just does, friends.
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Less reactive, more intentional, and the post-persh purchase shame loop that goes on, well, that shows up a lot less often.
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So those are the four tools.
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The thought record, the behavioral action, excuse me, activation, which is scheduling the thing you're avoiding.
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Tool three, the pause and name protocol.
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And tool four, your values-based spending anchors.
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Here's what I want you to take away from today.
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We're gonna build the new cycle.
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Here's the takeaway.
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The goal isn't to eliminate the cycle.
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The cycle is just how humans work, right?
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Thoughts, feelings, behaviors, all connected and influencing each other constantly.
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The goal is to build a better cycle, a virtuous one instead of a vicious one.
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So imagine this version.
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Thought.
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Feeling.
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Curiosity, a little pride, calm determination.
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Behavior.
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Open the banking app with your coffee.
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Spend 10 minutes on your budget, transfer$50 to savings.
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New thought.
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Hey, I did the thing.
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I am doing this.
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Same structure, thought, feeling, behavior, but a completely different outcome.
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And friends, that cycle is available to you.
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It starts with one small shift, usually at the thought level, and then it compounds from there.
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And that is the power of this work.
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All right, that's a wrap on today's episode, but let me leave you with your three action items for the week.
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First, identify your entry point.
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When does your money cycle go sideways?
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Does it typically start with a thought, a feeling, or a behavior?
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Friends, just name it.
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Two, try a thought record on one money-related belief this week.
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Five questions, five minutes.
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What's the evidence?
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And what's more accurate?
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And three, schedule your money date.
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15 minutes.
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Favorite drink, just look.
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You got this, friends.
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Hey, thanks for listening to Personal Finance with Molly.
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If this episode landed for you, I would love it if you would share it with one person in your life.
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A friend, a partner, a sibling, someone who might need to hear that their money behaviors make complete sense, and there's a way through.
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If you are finding value in this podcast all about where your money, your mindset, and your behavior intersect, please follow the show, write a review, leave me a direct message, there's a link in the show notes to do that.
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And until next time, your thoughts are not facts, your feelings are not final, and your financial story is still being written.
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Until next time!