Q & A ~ How To Stop Mental Looping

The question is,

Looking for practical feedback for when you feel really hopeless and depressed and the mind is looping.

Okay,

Well the first thing to recognize,

And we could go on and on here,

So I'll do my best to keep this a little more concise,

Is there's a correlation between the mind and the emotions.

We have a thought and the thought will conjure an emotion.

So let's say I have a thought,

And this is actually something many of us do often.

I know that when I get into a funk,

This is something I catch myself.

I'm like,

Oh,

I'm doing it again.

But I have the thought,

I don't feel good.

It might just be,

You know,

Maybe it's a physical thing.

Maybe I have some physical pain.

I'm like,

Oh,

My hip really,

Really hurts.

Or maybe it's just a generalized depressed feeling.

Oh,

I just feel so awful.

Or maybe it's an emotional feeling and I'm just like,

Oh,

I just don't feel good.

The more I focus on the thought,

Whatever it's connected to,

Of I don't feel good,

The more it is going to bring up the emotions that for me connect to that thought of I don't feel good.

So for some of us,

I don't feel good might bring emotional experiences of sadness,

Of despair.

It might bring up emotional responses of frustration or anger.

And then as that emotion arises,

Now I have this fuel to my thought.

So it actually propels even more thoughts that are related to the emotion because there's this natural tendency as an emotion arises,

There are different reasons as to why this happens.

So as the emotion arises and the mind might say,

Why do I feel this way?

And because the mind is so brilliant,

It makes up stories constantly.

Our minds are making up stories all day long.

Someone looked at me a certain way.

Oh,

They don't like me.

I just made up a total story in my mind.

Someone did this,

Someone did that.

We make up stories constantly without realizing that we are great authors,

Maybe not great all the time,

But we're all authors.

Yes,

We're all writers.

And we make up these stories,

Not questioning them.

We believe them.

And probably 90% of the time,

They're absolute nonsense,

But we don't question the thoughts.

This is the basis of Byron Katie's work,

If you're familiar with wonderful,

Wonderful,

Wonderful Byron Katie.

So there's this loop that occurs.

The mind says,

Well,

Why do I feel this way?

Why do I feel this despair?

I don't feel good today.

It condors up the despair,

And then I say,

Well,

Why do I feel this despair?

And the mind does what it does.

It will look for a plausible reason.

All right,

Well,

I must be feeling this despair because I'm all alone.

I must be feeling this despair because my boyfriend broke up with me.

I must be feeling this despair because I don't like my job.

The mind will grab onto thoughts that seem to make sense and connect them to the emotion and giving us the reason as to why we feel upset.

But it's not usually the case.

That's where it's tricky.

It's not usually accurate.

What do I mean by that?

I mean,

My mind says,

Let's see if I can think of a personal example.

So this last year has been a really deep internal year of just purging for me,

Just a lot of deep feels and dark nights of the soul and all that wonderful goodness.

It's been intense.

And there was a period,

There have been different periods over the last year,

I moved and I didn't really have a community developed.

And I would go through these feelings of whatever it might have been,

Some kind of pain or despair or depression.

And my mind again and again would grab onto the story that I was feeling that way because I felt alone or because I felt I didn't have community.

Now,

Although there is some reality to that,

It wasn't actually the root cause.

It was just a thought that helped my mind accept or felt like it was more in control because it could understand why I might be feeling that way.

But it didn't make me feel any better.

Who here has noticed that when your mind goes into the analyzation mode of why do I feel this way,

It comes up with a story.

Rarely does that story make you feel good.

If anything,

It makes you think of more reasons why you should feel miserable.

So we've got to get out of the loop.

And one of the first things to do is to consider that it might not be true and that it's probably not true.

It's probably not true.

Whatever story we're telling ourselves,

It's probably not true.

And in Byron Katie's work,

We could kind of say it's almost,

It's really not true,

Period,

Because it's all perception.

Now just because something may or may not be true in the mind doesn't mean that what we're feeling doesn't feel very real,

Right?

It doesn't mean that,

Okay,

Well,

Maybe my story about hating my job isn't the reason I'm actually feeling this way.

And just to give a little more backstory here or a little more,

A different perspective,

All emotional experiences are within us.

I can't put joy in you.

I can't put peace in you.

I can't put rage in you.

That is within you.

That's a feeling within you that gets triggered by something outside.

It was already in you.

Someone doesn't make you mad.

Someone shows you the anger you already have inside.

Someone doesn't make you sad.

Someone shows you the sadness that is already in you.

And that doesn't mean that sometimes people are jerks or not jerks or whatever.

It doesn't mean that we don't have room to grow,

But it's the awareness that the emotion is here.

It's not because of someone else.

And within that,

We can also recognize that many of our emotional responses are rooted in very old things,

Childhood wounding,

Different experiences that we've had throughout our lives that we haven't found a completion with of healing.

And so that emotion,

That emotional response,

That emotional trigger is just kind of ready and waiting.

So let's say,

And forgive me,

I guess I'm going really on the full tangent with this one because it's not a simple topic.

It's a very broad topic,

And I just want to catch at least the main bullet points here.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with our childhood wounding,

And it has nothing to do with what someone did.

And our emotional response is because we ate too much sugar or we stayed up too late or our hormones are doing something in our bodies.

Sometimes our emotional responses are just about what's happening in our physiology and how we're taking care of ourselves.

There are so many reasons.

So again,

Coming all the way full circle,

Start to question the stories you're telling yourself,

Or at least become aware,

Ah,

I'm telling myself a story right now.

I think I know why I'm feeling this way,

But it might not be true.

And when I think about this,

It actually makes me feel worse.

Analyzing this doesn't actually feel like it's helping me.

It's actually spiraling me out a little more.

Sometimes it's very helpful to have an intellectual understanding of why we're experiencing something or why we think we are.

It can help us in the healing process,

But quite often it just gets us caught in a loop.

So what do we do next?

Now we've addressed the mind and we've addressed the consideration of the mind.

And at the same time,

There's still something happening here.

There's still something happening inside.

There's an experience.

So what do we do?

What do we do?

Okay,

Maybe the story is nonsense,

Maybe it's not,

But I'm caught in this loop and I'm in a lot of pain.

What do I do?

I see Liz is sharing self-compassion.

Jason shared pause,

Recognizing,

Oh,

I'm in this story and it might not be true at all.

And I recognize that thinking about this story and believing it is actually making me feel more upset.

That's kind of the first step that we're speaking to.

In general,

I would move into some self-compassion,

Self-soothing process.

And here's the important thing.

And Diane,

I see that you said acknowledge it and release and that's beautiful.

And at the same time,

I think every one of us knows that sometimes even if we meet ourselves with compassion or with presence,

Something doesn't feel like it releases right away,

Right?

Because we just have to sit with it.

We just have to sit with the pain.

We just have to sit with the discomfort rather than meeting it,

Trying to make it go away.

Because that's actually resistance.

Let's say here's this despair in me.

So let's say I come along and I'm like,

Oh,

There's despair.

And I'm like,

Oh,

I want to be self-compassion.

Oh,

I'm so compassionate.

Now get out of here.

That actually creates more resistance because the despair is like,

I'm here.

And the self-compassion in disguise is like,

Get out of here.

So that resistance you could say is one of the primary sources of our experience of suffering.

So when we meet that despair,

We hold it.

We cradle it.

And for some of us,

When we meet these feelings,

It's almost like we're disgusted.

We don't feel the ability to hold it lovingly,

But we can at the very least sit with it.

Meaning allow ourselves to feel it in the body.

And many of you have heard me say this a million times.

This is a great time to practice.

Feel the feelings,

Drop the story.

And for many of us,

This is our access out of the loop,

Off of the loop.

When we truly slow down enough to feel the pain without resisting it,

Judging it,

Wronging it,

Trying to get away with it.

When we really have the courage to feel it without feeding our minds the stories that keep it in a loop.

When we just feel it and maybe we cry or we scream or we clench our fists.

When we feel it from this thoughtful place,

That's when it's given permission.

That's when we are turning toward ourselves with true compassion,

Giving it the space to be released whenever that is.

Whether that is in five minutes because we sat with ourselves in kindness or maybe the next day it releases.

But remember two things.

In my very limited understanding of this cosmic nature that we are,

We experience our emotions in two primary ways.

One is biochemically,

Meaning emotional responses are actually releases from the brain that create different sensations in the body.

Biochemical is being released.

These are emotions in the physical body.

Then we also have an energetic experience of emotions,

Which we experience in the subtle anatomy,

Which are the energetic bodies around us.

So in the brain,

An emotional response,

Therefore in the body,

Only lasts 90 seconds.

Just get that.

You know,

For those of us who love to stir in our emotions,

An emotional response only lasts for 90 seconds.

Think about that.

That means that your mind is re-triggering that emotional response over and over and over and over,

Flooding your beautiful precious body with all of these different biochemicals and stress hormones.

And the mind isn't bad at all.

The mind is a beautiful thing.

But for most of us,

The mind is untrained essentially.

It's like a wild animal.

And so we train the mind to move in the direction that serves us best.

And that takes time and it's not always totally accessible,

But we work with it.

Just to kind of recap how to get out of the mental loop,

Question your mind,

Recognize that the story you're telling yourself may not be true and probably isn't,

Even though it might make sense or seem rational.

And regardless of whether or not the story you're telling yourself is true,

Recognize it's not making you feel any better or any more clear.

And as best as you can,

Bring your awareness into your body,

Feel where those emotions seem present.

Maybe there's tension or heaviness or tightness,

And breathe with those feelings.

Give yourself permission to feel.

And for anyone who's unfamiliar with it,

I have a meditation here on the app called the Self Soothing Practice.

And that's a guide to bring us into being able to really feel with this non-judgment and curiosity and just really truly though going into the feeling without dissociating in the mind.

And then we just feel,

We meet ourselves with presence and to the best of our ability,

Feel the feelings,

Drop the story again and again.

Feel the feelings,

Drop the story.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And relax for that.

You