Thought Loops

Yesterday, while reading the thread begun by Agni, "Conversation Between i's", I was suddenly arrested by this response by Hkoehli:

Hkoehli said:

Your inner conflict is still a reflection of this thought loop with no escape.

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It was the first time I've ever encountered the concept of "thought loops", and it helps so much in identifying a thought process that has so negatively affected me all of my life.

I'm really excited about this term because now that I have a name for what I am doing, I may be able to exert some mastery over a pattern that has caused me so much grief.

I searched the forum for information about thought loops. I am wondering if there is any thread dedicated to just this topic.

The most troubling aspect of thought loops seems to be the difficulty recognizing what is happening once one has stepped over the threshold and entered the loop.

Even in Agni's posts, which shows a conscious effort to observe his thoughts, it took Hikoehli to point out to him that he had entered a "thought loop".

Are there techniques or guides to use? I have several thought loops that I'd like to blast right out of my consciouness. I wish it were that simple.

The challenge seems to be that these thought loops are emeshed with strong emotions.

Do the emotions trigger the thought loops, or do the thought loops trigger the emotions?

Are there specific techniques that are successful in halting this endless repetitive cycle?

Hkoehli said:

Your inner conflict is still a reflection of this thought loop with no escape.

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This is something I have always suffered from in a very specific way, and didn't really know why untill reading your post and re-reading the thread about conversations's with different I's.

The way I am the most susceptible to get stuck inot one of these types of thought loops is if I am in a relationship and my partner rejects me/ splits up with me. I basically spend the next few months going over and over in my head why? How did that happen? What was it that I done wrong?

A good exmaple is the last relationship I was in, I had started a realtionship with one of my best friends who I loved and cared for deeply. At the time it felt like we were ment to be together, and both often talked about our once in lifetime connection and growing closeness over the years, our deep respect and love for each other for who and what we are and talked about our plans for the future together, settling down etc. We laughed at the fact that we had both been slowly falling in love with each other ata a distance at the same times and it seemed that we were perfectly mirroring each others thoughts about each other in occasions in the past, so I was coninvced I had met my soul mate. However after only being together for less than two months, my ex-partner told me she wanted to split up with me. I was told this because she was never really in love with me (depsite teling me this for months before we got together, as I was in abroad at the time) and I didn't live up to the fantasy she had of being toegther with me. All at once it seemed like I had lost one of my best friends and the only woman I had ever thought I could do the work with possibly share the rest of my life with. It's the worst heartbreak I have ever experienced in my life. I've never felt so betrayed and hurt by anyone before in my short life, and I was so un-happy with both myself and my life, and had so little self esteem after this, that I had honestly came close to just ending it all to stop the pain and had debated this day in and day out for some weeks.

The thing that I have noticed since this time, is that even after almost 6 months being apart, my mind sometimes still has trouble letting go and not thinking about my ex-partner and what I did wrong on a near daily basis. It is exactly like an old vinyl record that gets stuck and repeats the same thoughts over and over again, and still brings me down if I let myself focus on those thoughts instead of trying to block them out and take back control of my thought process.

I always used to think that when I had been dumped/split-up with by a partner, that it was natural and good for me to go through a period of mourning my loss and re-adjusting to being single and happy with myself again (as I usually need time to re-build my self-confidence after any failed relationship). Usually this process would take anything from 6 months to a year for me to get to a place where I'd be at least open to meeting someone with a view to a relationship or opening up to anyone again. But now I think that maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot, and getting stuck into these thought loops that hold me back from really moving on. I say this as my ex-partner (whom I have still, thankfully managed to stay friends with) has already moved on and is already in a new relationship with another guy soon after ours ended. I realise it is easier for someone to move on when they are not really in love, but I think I am spending to long in these negative thought lops that stop me from fully moving on.

I have always sufferd from this, but have never really seen it for what it is until now thanks to the work done on the forum recently. So a big thank you and kudos to all those "working" on the forum, you've helped me to learn about myself and potentially save myself from falling into a trap like that again.

I think the best way to get out of these thougt loops (that I've found works for myself) is to activley tell yourself that your done thinking about this topic, you've learned all you can and will yourself to focus or think about something else. In fact thinking about "the work", a recent book that I've read and what's going on in the world outside of my own life helps alot to break the cycle. :D

Webglider, Appollynon has given a pretty good method for breaking out of thought loops, I think. There's not much you can do about them while they're happening, especially after a situation like Appollynon shared which provokes an intense and global emotional reaction. For someone with an active and overexcitable emotional center, a break with a loved one is extremely painful, because we tend to value exclusive emotional bonds (e.g. one or two really close friends as opposed to many acquaintances), and it is felt as the deepest form of betrayal. It just reminds us that there is so little love in this world. It is fickle, temporary, and non-existent more often than not. It shatters our hopes that there is eternal and pure love. But these experiences also show us something about ourselves and what we value. They also show us that we have not been as discerning as possible, choosing partners with which we are not emotionally compatible, in this case. And the pain of that knowledge can inspire us to learn how not to repeat the same mistakes over, even if that means subjecting ourselves to the pain of foregoing imitations of love in the search of higher love.

So if you're thoughts are going in circles, you can let it run out, or perhaps stop it and focus on something else, if possible. When another 'higher' choice becomes available, then take it.

Apollynon said:

I think the best way to get out of these thougt loops (that I've found works for myself) is to activley tell yourself that your done thinking about this topic, you've learned all you can and will yourself to focus or think about something else. In fact thinking about "the work", a recent book that I've read and what's going on in the world outside of my own life helps alot to break the cycle.

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Thanks Apollynon. I've been telling myself that I've entered a "Thought Loop" and it seems helpful so far. I used to call the phemnomenon, "Stories in my head" but this term didn't adequately explain what I was experiencing. Stories end, but the thoughts in a thought loop seemed to gather more energy with each repetition of the loop.

Another thing I've noticed about Thought Loops is that they do not allow me to actually pay attention to what is going on around me. When I'm experiencing this, it feels like a possession of some sort. Being able to identify the process, is really is helping me cope with it

Apollynon said:

The thing that I have noticed since this time, is that even after almost 6 months being apart, my mind sometimes still has trouble letting go and not thinking about my ex-partner and what I did wrong on a near daily basis

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Apollynon said:

depsite teling me this for months before we got together, as I was in abroad at the time) and I didn't live up to the fantasy she had of being toegther with me

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How can anyone live up to a fantasy? I'm pointing this out just to give you some perspective. You didn't do anything wrong. She had a fantasy. How could you have possibly lived up to it? Maybe that will help alleviate the self-blame. I'm glad that this insight has been helpful to you too.

hkoehli said:

So if you're thoughts are going in circles, you can let it run out, or perhaps stop it and focus on something else, if possible. When another 'higher' choice becomes available, then take it.

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Hi hkoehli: Thanks so much for increasing my awareness!!!! I'm opting to learn how to stop this process before it runs out as I've found that it can go on forever.

I think one of the keys is, the less you do it, the less it happens. I kind of see it like a plant, the more I water it, the more it grows, maybe like ivy. But they less I water it, the more it starts to wither away, until one day its gone. Thats not to say its as easy as "not" doing something, since it takes conscious effort to first see it and then to stop it. I agree it does help to have something to hand when you feel it coming on, just to change the subject. If you just pick up ISOTM or something, it usually always falls open on an interesting page, which can give you a bit to think about :)

Webglider said:

Another thing I've noticed about Thought Loops is that they do not allow me to actually pay attention to what is going on around me. When I'm experiencing this, it feels like a possession of some sort. Being able to identify the process, is really is helping me cope with it

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This is an identical account of what happens to me when stuck in one of these thought loops. For example if I am at work, and suffering form one of these thought loops, I will think that I am working fine and concentrating enough to get my job done (drawing highways engineering designs using AutoCad). When I come to print out what I have done, I notice many, many mistakes that I have made, but whilst doing the work, my concentration has been taken over by the thought-loop and I’m not conscious of making the mistakes. Even when checking my work, I still don’t pick up all the mistakes and when I ask a colleague to check my work, they invariably find even more mistakes. I does feel somewhat like a possession of sorts, as when I’m in the midst of a thought loop such as I previously described, my thought’s seem to become somewhat erratic, neurotic, and scrambled compared to my usual controlled, calm and orderly thought processes.

Webglider said:

How can anyone live up to a fantasy? I'm pointing this out just to give you some perspective. You didn't do anything wrong. She had a fantasy. How could you have possibly lived up to it? Maybe that will help alleviate the self-blame.

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Your correct here, it would be hard for anyone to live up to someone’s fantasy of them, as a fantasy is just that, something that someone fantasises, which is identified to their own wants/needs and self interests. In fact that was the thing that hurt the most, as I had no disillusions about who I was getting into a relationship with as I had know her for so long before, yet I realised that she had never really seen me objectively for who I was, as I was, but instead saw me subjectively for who she fantasised and wanted me to be. That’s also why this thought loop was so out of character for me to suffer from, because I knew I had really done nothing wrong or to warrant some of the rather vindictive and viscous tirades I was subjected to for not living up to this fantasy. Thank you for your encouragement, but I don’t actually blame myself exclusively for what happened anymore now that that particularly negative thought-loop is gone, in fact this has taught me some valuable lessons about my ex-partner and friend that I could not have learnt whilst still viewing her through rose tinted glasses. And as a learning experience for me, I have managed to turn what I thought was an extremely negative experience, into one that has furthered my understanding of myself.

Russ said:

I kind of see it like a plant, the more I water it, the more it grows, maybe like ivy. But they less I water it, the more it starts to wither away, until one day its gone.

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This is a good analogy and one that seems to me to be spot on, in that if you give more and more energy to the thought-loop, the more it will grow and strangle your thoughts like Ivy. The key is in recognising the morose and contradictory predators mind when it starts these thought loops, and knowing in which ways we are the most susceptible to attack from them so as to guard against them. For me knowledge of what triggers them will help protect me from them and see them coming.

The C’s were definitely right, learning is fun :D

I just stumbled upon this thread. In the matter of negative thought loops, I have found very useful the idea of dissociation to explain them.

I recently read a book on the subject and it explains that what the human mind seeks the most is order. One way to achieve a sense of order out of a chaotic and frightening world is to dissociate, which can happen in many ways, some pretty obvious (like tv or music) and others not so obvious. The book argues that many forms of mental illness - if not all - are extreme forms of dissociation. For example, obsessive compulsive disorder, in which the mind dissociates from reality by occupying itself with obsessive order and tidiness.

Or paranoia, in which the mind, rather than facing the vast unknowns and dangers of reality, prefers to create, or focus and exaggerate a single manageable threat, even if it suffers while dissociating into this delusion.

Or bulimia and anorexia. The obsession of eating disorders is an attempt of the mind to have something to control as a way to dissociate from life. Some mental illnesses are specific to certain cultures because they relate to cultural taboos and fears, like bulimia. Another example: some Native Americans suffer from 'windigo', which is a form of mad cannibalism, because the cultural taboo against eating human flesh is very strong. So, paradoxically, the unconscious mind, rather than live under the constant pressure and fear of life, obsesses with a very strong taboo, until it decides to flee further into dissociation by becoming that which it fears the most. The mind would rather live in the 'controlled' (from an unconscious level) and predictable misery of such a delusion than face reality! The content of the delusion is actually secondary in importance for the unconscious mind; what it achieves in terms of dissociation is what fuels it.

Mental illnesses aside, I think this theory goes a long way in explaining many negative thought loops and obsessions, which we could say are mild forms of mental illness. When we are stuck into a negative thought loop that is only making us suffer and will not leave us alone, we are dissociating! Because the mind would rather have this sense of 'order' than face the complex, unpredictable, fearsome, threatening and largely unknown reality. How it manages to dissociate is just instrumental to the purpose of escaping from reality into a predictable and well known fantasy (or thought loop).

So in many cases, I think that negative thought loops will become more manageable, or perhaps go away completely, if we realize that the thought that is obsessing us is not important in itself, and that in reality our mind has simply found an excuse to dissociate - in a way that makes us miserable. Realize that if the mind needs dissociation, there are less destructive forms than negative thought loops.

[Edited for clarification]

Thanks for that Windmill Knight I found it very insightful. Can I ask what the book was you read??

This post may also be highly relevent in the Positive Dissociation thread.
For me I've noticed that the positive dissociation provided by the E-E program and pipe breathing has replaced many of my thought loops....infact if they start I start pipe breathing mostly. It is having that positive control that I think is most important.

I think you are on to something, Windmill Knight. I experienced a thought loop of extreme jealousy over an extra
relationship affair, now nearly two decades ago. Reliving the event over and over became disruptive to my mental health
and my family life. I became desperate to stop this intrusion into the mind. It seemed like a possession, over which I had
no control. One day, in despair, I stumbled onto a method which worked for ending the thought loop.

I actively stopped the though loop the moment it entered my head. It was essential to stop the thought immediately and actively place the attention on another topic or activity. If I entertained the thought for even a few seconds I dissociated
and the loop would possess me. This method ended the jealousy thought loop after a few weeks of constant attention. Interestingly, the jealously thought loop never returned in any context. It is not there. The mind is indeed a marvelous instrument with an unknown instruction manual. Metacognition and will to stop the thought instantly, stopped the dissociation process. I recall the experience of the jealously thought loop as having a quality of perverse pleasure, which may have allowed it to develop the power to require a solution born of necessity.

RedFox said:

Thanks for that Windmill Knight I found it very insightful. Can I ask what the book was you read??

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Oh, sorry. It's actually Schumaker's book "The Corruption of Reality", which Laura mentioned here. Although most of the book deals with the psychology of religion, his whole theory is based on dissociation and hypnosis, and he links it with psychopathology too. Very interesting arguments, but the book is worth reading if only for his explanation of the nature of dissociation, which as I said I found very helpful to understand some of my programs.

Wow, so glad I found this thread. Negative thought loops are something I've been struggling with for the past few months and it's nice to hear the feedback on different ways to release them.

Appollynon's account of his past relationship was identical to mine in many ways, and the resulting thought loops are an absolute burden.

So far I've taken the following notes as ways to practice and starve these thought loops:

Appollynon said:

I think the best way to get out of these thougt loops (that I've found works for myself) is to activley tell yourself that your done thinking about this topic, you've learned all you can and will yourself to focus or think about something else. In fact thinking about "the work", a recent book that I've read and what's going on in the world outside of my own life helps alot to break the cycle. :D

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Windmill knight said:

So in many cases, I think that negative thought loops will become more manageable, or perhaps go away completely, if we realize that the thought that is obsessing us is not important in itself, and that in reality our mind has simply found an excuse to dissociate - in a way that makes us miserable. Realize that if the mind needs dissociation, there are less destructive forms than negative thought loops.
[Edited for clarification]

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RedFox said:

For me I've noticed that the positive dissociation provided by the E-E program and pipe breathing has replaced many of my thought loops....infact if they start I start pipe breathing mostly. It is having that positive control that I think is most important.

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Most of my thought loops only show the good times in my past relationship, sort of like black and white thinking, so I've been introducing the negative aspects/memories once the thought loop has taken over, trying to see the past (and present) more objectively. But hopefully with this new knowledge I can starve them once and for all. Thanks ya'll.

Perhaps there are answers in the redirection and internal considering threads

I think a very common thought loop process is that of daydreaming.

which is a subject G. spoke about in ISOTM book, and his perspective on this is very clarifying. In his system he talks about the wrong use of the machine, and it's parts. The parts of the machine being the magnetic centers, he explains this process as a process carried out by the wrong use of the Intelectual Center and Emotional Centers mainly. Which makes a lot of sense if you consider the process of dreaming. Sometimes dreams also are a byproduct of such thinking habits. But dreams are too varied, there are many types of dreams.

In my case thought loops happen also with music. Negative music or music that has an emotional component that matches the emotional state. Too happy or too sad or too energetic.

I resolved the problem of music by limiting to just listen lyrics that have a message that makes sense so to say.

There is another exercise that may work for anyone who has noticed this in themselves, you take the daydream scene, or though loop, or dream, and either write it down in DETAIL or think it in mayor detail posible, and basically diagnose it, Observe the dream as if reading a book.

However I have found that meditation , and emotional release/work are the best to bring to light this aspects.

Immersion said:

Most of my thought loops only show the good times in my past relationship, sort of like black and white thinking, so I've been introducing the negative aspects/memories once the thought loop has taken over, trying to see the past (and present) more objectively. But hopefully with this new knowledge I can starve them once and for all.

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Notice that in the posts you quoted, the useful response was to one way or another consciously direct though / attention to other things, rather than allow it to mechanically continue down the same line. We have to choose to act consciously if we want not to suffer endless negative thought loops.

It’s really hard to grasp that these things can be purely mechanical, they just ‘happen’. Just as when driving a car it just ‘happens’ with very conscious input, centers can do things pretty much on their own, can think, speak, write. It thinks, it speaks, it writes, it daydreams.

Scary really, and that’s not to say I don’t ever struggle with same. We just have to learn and remember exactly what is happening in us so that the next time we can more quickly choose a way out of it, rather than loose too much time and energy indulging it. Sometimes I talk myself down as it were, if it’s a narrative, if it’s a musical loop you can change the tune, switch it to a instrumental piece perhaps. Or as Redfox suggested, try focusing on breathing for a while, but add the Prayer of the Soul to it as a way to consciously counteract the negative loop.

You can’t ‘think’ two things simultaneously, choose consciously to give the mechanical mind something else to do will help, choose something useful to your aim then all the better!

Thanks davey, I will check them out.

Thank you for the reminder Alada. Consciously directing the attention has been working well, the only times it can be tough is when one is in self-pity mode (lol), but something more physical like taking a walk or cooking a fat bomb helps with that. :)