What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Take our Your Mental Health Today Test

Find a therapist who practices CBT

Impulse shopping that relieves momentary pressure slowly drains your future finances.

Apply CBT to your money management to create discipline, not to mention savings.

The more solid your plan and modest your lifestyle, the less you’ll struggle and panic.

Two universal truths: Humans have automatic thoughts that we can prove to be a little (or a lot) irrational. Second, people stress over money no matter their balances. Using cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), the former can mitigate the latter.

Events don’t influence our behavior as much as perception does. Take losing your job, landing you hurt, shocked, and scared. How is it that one person facing this may close the shades and swing open the liquor cabinet to douse feelings, while another sits at a computer, turning contacts into a network with a sharpened resumé?

Perception or self-talk makes a huge difference. How much evidence truly exists to support your beliefs?

Focus on what you can control. Ruminate less on what you cannot. This constitutes a cognitive reframe—unhelpful thoughts turned into positives.

“Money touches every part of our lives, yet most of us were never taught how to think about it with clarity or confidence,” says Ryan Coulter, CFP, in Stop Following the Rules: The Real-World Guide to Building Financial Security.1

CBT helps you connect your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to interrupt the process that leads to impulsive, emotional spending, reports Deborah Beck Busis, LCSW, Director of the Beck Institute Cognitive Behavioral Wellness Coaching Program.2

Twisted Financial Thinking

Pick up any CBT-based book to learn about distorted thinking. Here’s a primer presented through finance:

All or nothing thinking: You think you’re either rich or broke, you must save hundreds of dollars, or it makes no........

© Psychology Today