Getting Unstuck

Goal

To break your mental loops and feel less stuck.

What is a Mental Loop?

Have you ever found yourself worrying or thinking about the same thing over and over again? Have you wanted to stop, but found your mind returning to it again and again despite your efforts to avoid the feeling or issue?You can think of this as a mental loop. Mental loops can focus on unresolved issues or feelings from the past. This is called rumination. Or, they can focus on fears or concerns about the future. This is called worry.

Why Do We Ruminate & Worry?

We ruminate on unresolved issues from our past, because we haven’t yet made sense of them. We are uncomfortable with things that have happened. Also, we are uncomfortable with how we feel about how those things have happened. It is like our brain is trying to make sense of it by thinking about it over and over again. It’s as though we’re unconsciously trying to feel better. The problem is that this strategy often doesn’t really work.

The reason it doesn’t work is because it doesn’t help us move past the issue or the negative feeling. The process of rumination keeps us stuck. We are kind of like a hamster on a wheel. We feel like we are making progress, but we are really just running in place. Here are some examples of ruminative thoughts:

• “Why am I such a loser?”
• “I’m in such a bad mood”
• “I just don’t feel like doing anything”

A similar process happens with worry. Rumination is about the past or present. Worry is about the future. We typically worry about the future because we are afraid that something bad is going to happen, such as with our health or finances. Worry refers to the thoughts, images, and emotions (i.e., anxiety) that you have when trying to avoid potential threats. Worry can also be thought of as a response to a challenge for which you have insufficient skills to cope.

Like with rumination, we mistakenly believe that worrying about threatsand challenges helps us get past them. It feels productive-much like the hamster running on the wheel feels productive-but it doesn’t actually help overcome our fears. It is estimated that up to 80% of the things people worry about will likely never happen.

What Can We Do About It?

Rumination and worry are both mental loops. To open them up and walk past them, follow these 4 steps:

Step 1: Realize that life is often emotionally painful.

Advertisements suggest that life should be easy and problem free. Our friends in real life or on Facebook highlight all of their positive experiences, so we get this sense that life is easy for them. This is false. Life is hard. Life is hard for everyone. Nobody has an easy life. If you are having a hard life, then you are doing it right. Indeed, this is considered a timeless truth that has only recently been hidden. All of the major world religions spend a great deal of time talking about the struggles, challenges, trials, and tribulations of life. Buddhism, for example, has as a central tenant that life is suffering.

The first step is to realize that life is hard and that it should be.

Step 2: Determine if the problem causing you pain is an external or internal problem.

When we experience pain in the external world, we often take steps to reduce that pain. If you are cold, then you can put a coat on. If it is raining, you can go inside. If you are in a cramped spot, you can get up and walk around. We can usually resolve problems in the outside world by identifying them and then implementing steps to solve them.

Language or words helps us to identify and solve problems. You can often see this process in young children. They talk out loud about what they are doing. As they get older, that same talking process occurs, but it has moved inside. The child no longer needs to say it out loud. Language helps us better understand our world.

Internal problems like negative thoughts, painful memories, sadness, depression, or anxiety, however, are not solved in the same manner as external problems. Getting rid of pain in the outside world is usually a straightforward process. Getting rid of pain in the inside world is not straightforward. You need a different strategy to work through internal pain.

Step 3: Realize that controlling or trying to get rid of emotional pain doesn’t work.

The process of avoiding emotional pain actually gets you further entangled with the pain that you are trying to avoid. You can imagine pain like a giant beach ball that is following you. You have glue on your fingers. When you try to push the beach ball away, it actually gets stuck to your fingers. The harder you push, the stronger it gets stuck to you.

Another metaphor for this is quicksand. Struggling is a great way to further sink into quicksand. Relaxing, leaning back, and gradually moving out through backstroke like motions is the best strategy but is likely the last thing that comes to mind. Freaking out is likely the natural response. Similarly, when we feel emotional pain, we can often feel frantic to get away from it. Unfortunately, the more we struggle, the more we magnify the emotional pain.

The main point is that the struggle to avoid pain is what makes you further entangled in the pain. Paradoxically, opening to the pain is what allows you to move past it. With the beach ball metaphor, if you open to the pain, then the beach ball will simply bounce off of you. It’ll likely come back and bump into you again, but it won’t stick to you if you do not try to avoid it or control it.

Step 4: Recognize that emotional pain is tolerable (even though it feels like it isn’t!).

The process of trying to control or get rid of the pain is what makes it so bad. If you open to it and accept it, then you’ll feel the discomfort and it’ll pass. Feelings are meant to be felt. Once they are experienced they tend to move on like a cloud passing through the sky.

Once you begin to open to the emotional pain, you’ll have extra energy and time to spend on things that you really value. You’ll no longer be eating up time doing things to avoid or control the pain. This will free you up. This doesn’t mean that the pain will go away, but it’ll no longer be front and center. You’ll now be free to live in a way that is consistent with your values.

Next Step

Here are a few helpful videos about emotional pain and how to respond to it. They are well worth watching!

The Unwelcome Party Guest:

Demons on the Boat:

Passengers on the Bus: