Loops, Part II

So, you say the problem is not that you have your own loop, but that Someone Else is in a loop? And it’s a continuous, repetitive, unproductive loop? And you’ve been listening to it for hour weeks months years? And it’s driving you absolutely batty? And you have no idea how to change the channel? Is that what’s bothering you, Bunky? If so, here’s another list.

Top 10 Ways to Get Somebody Else Out of a Continuous Loop

10. Smile (I can hear your face creaking), and write it down. Really look at what you’ve been hearing. Riff on it, dwell in the possibilities of it, evolve it, write a screenplay about it on which some editor will scribble “this could never happen in real life.” Laugh out loud at it, a deep belly laugh.
9. Utter the Serenity Prayer (oh wait, if you don’t pray, leave the “Lord” part out, but remember that drawing strength from somewhere outside of yourself is sometimes all you’ve got): Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
8. If you are both in the loop--on a “why-why-why-cycle built for two--” sometimes you can lead the way out by using the same techniques that work for your own individual loops – identification of the loop to begin with, distractions, inquiry into the validity of your thinking.
7. See the Serenity Prayer again, and consider the serenity part. Slow down and listen very carefully. What can you hear that you haven’t heard in this loop before? How can you hear it in a new way? In my father’s last days, I visited him in the hospital and slowly, slowly peeled an orange and handed him one segment at a time. In those brief moments I was there, in the now, no loops, only acceptance.
6. Hum along, and eventually learn the words. My son works in a restaurant that plays a sound track over and over again featuring Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison.” He can quit his job, or he can learn the words. Sometimes it makes sense to sing along.
5. Walk away from the loop. If a loop runs continuously in the forest where nobody hears, is it still a loop?
4. Change the subject—repeatedly--since a really good loopster knows a hundred ways to get back on the loop.
3. Shine a light on the loop. Be careful though; if you do this with judgment or anger you end up in your own loop. But I know that when my ever-patient partner finally, finally calls me on a loop of mine, I am probably in the mother of all loops and I try hard to take a detour.
2. Consider what it will be like in the absence of the loop and the person in it, and be grateful as hell that you are still hearing that voice which someday you may never hear again. Gratitude heals. Make a list of everything you are grateful for.
1. And the number one way to escape somebody else’s loop: stop focusing on somebody else’s loop and focus on breaking out of your own. Help yourself.

Comments welcome--any other ideas for breaking out of loops?

Loops

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about loops—defined particularly as circular repetitive thoughts in my head that cause anguish and prevent joy. In my case it is a loop-the-loop, really. The two loops are: 1) how can I keep the people I love happy and 2) how can I keep the people I love safe (read: alive). Yes, these are both noble thoughts in moderation, but the loop-the-loop comes in when I obsess on them. These people I love—they are all grownups now, so it is primarily (or solely) their job to keep themselves happy and safe. By the ways, sometimes the happy/safe goals are in conflict; just ask my 21-year-old rock-climbing devil-may-care son if you don’t understand this.

And so, I spend a lot of time in the loop-the-loop coming up with new schemes for keeping the people I love happy and safe. And many of these schemes are irrelevant, impractical, invasive, inconvenient, impossible, idiotic, irrational, ill-advised, or some other word beginning with “i.” So…here are the top ten ways to get out of an unproductive mental loop, or for the really unfortunate, a loop-the-loop:

Top 10 Ways to Escape a Loop

10. Switch to another line of thinking or get a new perspective. Change the subject. This is the basic principle behind “The Work” and “Feeling Good” or CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) – see previous blogs on this. However, make sure the new line of thinking is not another loop.
9. Argue with the loop. Counter the loop. Find the flaws. Another principle behind “The Work” and “CBT” – but be sure the argument does not itself become a new, even more obsessive loop.
8. Do something physically demanding that requires effort and concentration to stop the loop. Clean out the fridge. Dig up the dandelions.
7. Write the loop down, and keep writing about it until the pain of writer’s cramp distracts you from the loop and you start to see beyond it.
6. Do something mentally demanding that requires enough concentration to stop the loop. A timed game of Scrabble is one example – have I mentioned Scrabulous lately?
5. Have a conversation with someone else (but not about your loop!). Really listen to them, even if it is about their loop, for a while. But don’t try to fix them or their loop, especially if that tendency is part of your loop.
4. Read a really good book (for example, murder mysteries and the Harry Potter books work well for me).
3. See a really good movie, preferably one in which people are not dwelling unproductively on their loops (perhaps the latest Indiana Jones movie – Roger Ebert loved it).
2. Perform a random act of kindness for a stranger. Pay it forward.
1. And the number one way you can get out of your loop – be aware that you are in a loop to begin with (this is the hardest part). Hint: if people are telling you that you are in a loop or mentioning concepts like broken records when in conversation with you, this is a strong indication that you are in a loop.

Comments? What is your loop? What is your last act of random kindness? (If you can’t remember, it’s been too long.)

The Voice in the Head

I have been thinking a lot about a concept covered in Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” – the voice in the head. He tells the story of being on the subway on his way to work and observing a woman having a loud and angry conversation with a voice in her head. The woman is very agitated and upset, and looks down and off to the side into empty space as she continues a conversation along the lines of: “And then she said to me…so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of…when you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted you and you betrayed my trust…”

Tolle mentions that later, as he is standing in the men’s room at work washing his hands, he thinks to himself, “I hope I don’t end up like her.” A man standing next to him looks briefly in his direction, and he realizes he has said these words out loud, he is already like her, that his mind is just as “incessantly active as hers,” and that really if she is mad, so are we all to some degree. Tolle says:

For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from thinking to awareness…at that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied Buddha. ‘Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.’ That’s what the laughter seemed to be saying. But it was only a glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind. I had to get close to suicide before awareness returned, and then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive thinking and of the false, mind-made I. … Thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that we are.

This might have been part of what Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows is talking about in the song, “Perfect Blue Buildings,” repeating the phrase,

How am I gonna keep myself away from me
Keep myself away
How am I gonna keep myself away from me
Keep myself away...

It's an idea that many of the books I’ve been reading express in one way or another; the AA groups refer to it as “stinking thinking.” The meditation books describe techniques for cessation of thinking, for emptying the mind. My skill is slowly increasing at stepping outside of myself, noticing my thinking, and more importantly countering it when it is causing anxiety, grief, or my personal favorite: guilt.

A Passage to India

I had a surreal computing experience a few mornings ago. My Norton Internet Security software was having the same trouble it had once before where the “Live Update” feature automatically downloads all the appropriate updates including the latest virus definitions, but then can’t seem to recognize that it's done this, and insists on starting the process over and over again - while annoyingly warning me that I am “unprotected.”

Oh, yes, those of you have Macs are laughing smugly right now since you didn’t spent your Saturday morning trying to fix this problem (or another one I still have and am too lazy to fix where Micro$oft’s Auto Update keeps trying over and over again to update .Net on my PC each time I shut it down (all the more enfuriating when, as far as I can tell, I have no earthly need for .Net anyway).

I laugh out loud at Apples “Mac and PC” commercials on TV, where the Bill Gates look-alike is repeatedly embarrassed in front of the young and perplexed Mac character. A recent one has Bill in the cobra position on a yoga mat, working off his “stressful year with Vista” aided by a young and lovely yoga instructor who is gently banging a gong at each salient point, while “Mac” observes bemusedly on the sidelines. “Breathe out and expel all that Vista bad energy…”

Eventually the once serene yoga instructor becomes distraught over Vista’s negative impact on her Yoga studio billing software and bangs the gong so hard that it falls over in a loud clatter. Then she rises gracefully, as yoga instructors are able to do, and stomps off while Mac looks on, shaking his head. The PC bashing is well deserved – but I have a PC at work and I don’t really want to switch back and forth between two different operating systems each day. Anyway, I digress.

To solve the more pressing anti-virus software problem I went to Symantic’s website seeking help, and decided to try the real-time 7x24 tech support chat and PC Rescue feature. It wasn’t long before I was in chat mode with “Saravanan,” who I am 99% sure was working from India at what would have been about 10:00 pm local time there. After downloading some “PC Rescue” software, Saravanan took control of my PC with my queasily extended permission, and soon the mouse pointer was moving by itself in ghostly fashion on my screen, working to fix the problem. A reboot was required and then some registry magic, the running of an auto fix program and the restarting of a certain Windows service that had mysteriously been stopped – at which point the problem seemed to be fixed (and has not returned since). Saravanan said that if the problem recurred I should contact them and get an upgrade to the 2008 version.

This was the global economy in action for sure – somebody on the other side of the world fixed my PC. And somebody on the other side of the world is earning a good living doing that. There are many ways in which the Internet is a bane and a curse – but there are also many ways in which the Internet brings miracles into people’s lives. It’s a love-hate thing.