the.com/vicious circle

means A situation in which one problem causes a second problem that in turn makes the first problem worse, trapping everything in a self-feeding loop.

from From logic, where a 'vicious circle' originally meant a circular argument — one that tries to prove a claim using the claim itself as evidence, chasing its own tail instead of going anywhere. 'Vicious' here doesn't mean cruel; it's from Latin vitiosus, 'faulty, corrupt,' describing a flawed structure rather than a nasty temperament. By the 1800s the phrase had escaped philosophy classrooms and started describing real-world messes — economic, medical, emotional — where each bad effect loops back around to become its own cause.