Spending, Hoarding, Panicking: It’s All the Same Nervous System
What financial chaos says about your brain, and how to re-write your money scripts.
What financial chaos says about your brain—and how to rewrite your money scripts.
If you’ve been laid off or blindsided by financial stress, and now find yourself hoarding beans, impulse-buying online courses, or quietly ignoring your bank account—this post is for you.
What you’re experiencing isn’t just poor planning or bad habits. It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was wired to do when it senses threat. The erratic behavior—the spending, the hoarding, the shutdown—is not irrational. It’s biological. And it’s probably rooted in an old money story you didn’t even know you were still living out.
In this piece, you’ll learn:
Why job loss triggers survival behavior (not just budgeting chaos).
The five most common unconscious money scripts—and how they show up when life implodes.
How to interrupt those patterns without shame, guilt, or spreadsheets you’ll never open.
A simple, no-judgment tool to help you reset your money behavior and your nervous system at the same time.
By the end, you’ll understand that your reaction isn’t a failure—it’s a script.
And scripts can be rewritten.
First, if you’re spending erratically after a job loss—congratulations, your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. That layoff didn’t just hit your income. It hit your sense of safety.
Your brain doesn’t distinguish between a missing paycheck and a predator in the woods. It just registers danger—and pulls the emergency lever. Hoard, overspend, freeze, fantasize—these aren’t bad decisions. They’re survival responses.
Neuroscientists call it amygdala hijack—when your thinking brain goes offline, and your body takes the wheel. What looks irrational on your bank statement is often just biology trying to keep you afloat.
(If you want more on the science, I broke it down in my last post.)
Spending behaviors under deeply embedded ideas about money
Most people think job loss triggers a money problem. It doesn’t.
It kicks the hornet’s nest of an identity narrative around money—one you probably wrote when you were eight years old and didn’t know you were writing it. Financial psychologist Brad Klontz coined the term for this phenomenon: money scripts. The unconscious beliefs that dictate how we react to money, especially under financial stress. A deep dive into this great series from the Hidden Brain podcast.
We carry around these scripts about money embedded in old stuff—childhood chaos, family patterns, generational scarcity, or the silence around what “success” was supposed to look like. Out scripts are passed down like family furniture. Only instead of a coffee table did we have a belief system about scarcity, worth, and what it means to deserve comfort.
Here is how the money scripts interact with your nervous system:
You just internalized the story.
Your nervous system stores stories.
Scarcity warps your thinking.
And when safety feels uncertain, your money behavior becomes an old play on a new stage.
The 5 Most Common Money Scripts (and how they show up after a layoff):
1. “Money is safety. Hoard everything.”
You stop spending—even on groceries. You cancel joy. You clutch every dime like it’s oxygen.
But this isn’t prudence—it’s panic in a mask.
2. “Money disappears anyway. Spend while you can.”
You binge on Amazon, self-help courses, or wellness gear. You tell yourself it’s “investing in yourself.”
It’s actually damage control disguised as growth.
3. “If I just buy the right thing, I’ll feel in control again.”
Planners, courses, productivity tech—anything to restore order.
But you’re not planning. You’re self-soothing.
4. “If I don’t work, I don’t deserve comfort.”
You punish yourself with deprivation. No joy spending, no takeout, no help.
This isn’t budgeting—it’s self-denial as penance.
5. “Someone else will rescue me eventually.”
You ghost your bills. Avoid your account. Wait for a miracle.
Avoidance isn’t laziness—it’s shutdown.
So how do you rewrite the script?
Regulate before tackling anything with money. No one makes smart decisions when wound up. Move your body, breathe cold air, walk, punch a pillow—whatever grounds your system first. Do the one-minute strategic pause exercise.
Name your script. Ask yourself and if you can journal about it. Pick an item to buy. Say a meal at a restaurant you love. When you think about that bill, you will get at the end of the meal, what do you feel? Do you deserve the indulgence? Do you not want to worry about it? Do you feel guilty for that meal? I'm not saying going out for a meal was a good idea or not, just more. What is your dialogue about it? Take a money script test here.
Interrupt the pattern once...Then do it again. If you hoard money, buy one small thing you enjoy. Even gum. If you overspend, empty the online cart and pause for 24 hours. Micro-defiance rewires the script. Not perfection—just interruption. Reinforce the idea that change starts not with budgeting, but with recognizing what emotional need your behavior is serving. Remember the nervous system doesn't recognize English, only patterns. This needs to be repeated.
Replace the autopilot around money with a map. You don’t need a 12-tab spreadsheet, that is for later when your thinking brain is fully online - this is about getting out of panic mode. You need rhythm. Structure. Keep it simple.
One daily grounding habit.
One weekly financial check-in.
Again, keep it simple. YES YOU A-TYPE DC FOLK. Keep it simple so you will do it and repeat the action to teach your nervous system your thinking brain is in charge and you can make better informed decisions around money.
🗺 Free Tool: Your Money Map Template Below:
If your brain’s fogged and your fingers are twitching over a panic purchase…use this money map instead.
Simple. Non-shaming. Just clarity on paper.
Because the goal isn’t to “fix your finances” right now. It’s to stop letting fear run your operating system.
I know this stuff isn’t easy. But being full in charge of the script is the first act of power. If anything resonated, I’d love to hear from you—what you’ve noticed, what you’ve questioned, what small step you’re trying. Even sharing one little shift helps someone else feel less alone in the mess of it all.
I repeat my theory of 'relativity', "As bad as it sucks now, it could always suck more. You've survived worse and you'll survive this." For the times that it was/is truly the worst thing that I had ever dealt with, the 'new' relativity becomes, "Well, you're not dead yet. You'll survive this too, but you've just moved the bar. Recognize that, now unfuck yourself." While it sounds trite, these simple statements have helped my 'reclaim' the narrative of my life and reduce the turbulence that could impact my family.
"...being full in charge of the script is the first act of power." It's taken me a lot of time to recognize the many forms fear takes. Noticing it in the undertangles of my mess has been the first step of being charge.