About Our Guest
Deanna Cooney helps smart, capable leaders and high performers find their voice when the pressure is on. With 30 years as a professional performer and over a decade of teaching and coaching, she understands fear from the inside out. Her body-first approach builds nervous system capacity alongside practical speaking skill – going well beyond surface-level confidence. Working across corporate, creative, and leadership environments, Deanna translates performance tools from stage and screen into real-world communication that holds up when it counts.
How Deanna Cooney Rewrote Her Money Story and Reclaimed Her Power
In this episode, Deanna Cooney takes us through a pivotal moment that changed everything: her marriage ending. What followed wasn’t just financial chaos, it was a complete nervous system breakdown. With $50,000 in debt, no financial literacy, and two young children depending on her, Deanna found herself terrified, unable to eat, and convinced everything would fall apart.
Instead of thinking her way through fear, Deanna shares how she discovered something more powerful: the wisdom of her body. By combining practical steps, like picking up ‘The Barefoot Investor’ and creating simple financial structures, with nervous system regulation techniques she’d learned as an actor and athlete, she started feeling safe and building competence. That competence led to confidence. Confidence led to recognising the old money stories she’d inherited and choosing to write new ones.
Deanna moved from feeling helpless to discovering her own fierce capability. She learned that safety comes first, that asking for help isn’t weakness, and that small, consistent actions have the power to lead to lasting transformation.
Deanna’s Tips
Body first. Always.
Any time you’re trying to intellectualise your way through something and it’s not working, that’s the cue. Sometimes thinking does get us through — but if it’s not helping, stop trying and go to your body. Your body knows things. It runs things. It has wisdom. If you’re not accessing it, you’re missing out.Ask for help.
Ask without getting caught in your ego. And if the person you ask can’t help, ask someone else. Keep going. Find the people who will actually support you.Do shit scared.
It’s exhilarating. You feel immensely capable and satisfied. Feeling brave and courageous is incredible…but it comes after. You don’t get to feel brave until you do the scary thing.
Deanna’s Contact Details
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deannacooney/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deannacooney
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannacooney/
Website: //speak.authenticallyspeaking.com.au/video
Deanna’s References
The Barefoot Investor, Scott Pape: https://www.barefootinvestor.com/books
Scroll up to listen to this episode on Substack.
You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music and Audible.
Time Stamps
00:00 The Moment That Changed Everything
01:39 Facing Financial Illiteracy
06:08 The Fear of Loss and Judgment
10:29 Rewriting Money Stories
14:34 Finding Internal Strength
17:33 The Importance of Support
20:58 Breaking Free from the Feedback Loop
25:44 The Role of Support in Shifting Beliefs
29:11 Creating Internal Safety for Growth
33:58 Managing the Nervous System for Change
37:49 Building a Future Self through Safety
42:29 Lessons from Fear and Self-Trust
45:48 It’s A Wrap
If anything in this episode resonated with you and if you feel like you could use a little extra support, please consider reaching out to trusted local support services in your area. You don’t have to go through it alone.
We’d Love to Hear Your Thoughts
Follow What’s Fear Got to Do With It on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Email us: info@whatsfear.com
