Shattering the Doom Loop
In his monthly column, our resident therapist & coach James Jackson, helps break free from the cycle of rumination after a sudden breakup. He explores how to process emotions without getting stuck, reframing painful thoughts and shift dwelling on loss to embrace change.
Dear James,
I recently got out of a long-term relationship that ended abruptly. It’s been over three months, and I can see now that it was for the best, and I want to move on. But there hasn’t been much emotional closure, and I often find myself ruminating about all the things I wanted to say. It feels like a broken record, and I really want to direct that energy towards building my life moving forward.
How can I stop the doom loop that my brain is in and start letting go of my hurt feelings without dismissing them, so I can start living my life again?
Thanks,
Elias
Dear Elias
I often say to my clients, “Feel your feelings until they no longer need to be felt.” I also say, “Feelings are verbs, not nouns—we must do them, not get rid of them.”
In certain cases, it can feel like we’ve been “doing them” for so long that their intensity is not reducing but quite the contrary. It possibly feels like you’re trapped in the tower of a castle, and the feelings are circling overhead like giant raptors, keeping you locked in the tower’s chamber. In the case of a brutal, unexpected ending, there’s also the trauma that adds a layer of complex and often misdirected introspection.
The breath of air in all break-ups comes when one relinquishes one’s entrapment in the cognitive triangle of thoughts-feelings-behaviours. If we were in therapy together, that’s what we’d concentrate on. We’d work on getting you to a point of conclusion, where you’d be able to divine an inkling of a positive reframe. Let’s break your question down into three chunks:
Living Life Again
The time dimension in healing is fundamental—past, present, future. It’s easier for us to conceptualise a gruesome past as something that we must archive and forget in order to move on and to believe that until we achieve such a feat, our life is not being lived and will remain in some way “on pause” or broken… STOP!
You are not only living your life right now; you are healing your life, and you’re doing a great job. If you weren’t truly ready to conquer this, you wouldn’t have written to me. The feelings of hope and faith that you will once again feel alive, empowered, and energised are closer than you think. Try to imagine that this experience is not something you will one day bury and forget in order to move on but rather something you will transform into something quite different.
Think about your past. Look at your scars—really take a moment to look at them. How do they make you feel, weak or strong? If you could opt to erase all your physical and emotional scars from your life, would you? Probably not, because you know that your scars are not only a testament to your unshakable capacity to survive but also to your ability to thrive and grow.
The pain of separation is often measured with vocabulary around loss and grief. Try to visualise the discomfort as change rather than loss. It might sound like semantics, but for your brain, these two words have very different meanings. Change evokes solution and movement, it depicts a horizon and feels actionable. Loss, on the other hand, reinforces the inner feeling of scarcity and worthlessness. In the time dimension, loss looks back, but change is forward-facing, and what is important right now is that you look forward.
Letting go of hurt feelings without dismissing them
Feelings don’t get hurt, egos and expectations do. What you are in the process of feeling is a complex timeline, ranging from surprise, confusion, disappointment, anger, and, last but not least, sadness. These are like stops on a train ride between two locations: Hell Island and Heaven Island.
The last two stops—anger and sadness—might feel like where your train has stopped on a dark platform and is no longer moving. These are the feelings that need to be felt. They are complicated emotions to process, as they have ways of shapeshifting and triggering deeper past memories of similar emotional states.
Talk to them. Ask them why they are still showing up. Ask these two feelings what they are trying to show you. It might not feel like it, but you’re getting close to your destination. If the feelings cannot provide a response, then maybe they no longer need to be felt—maybe they’re ready to be replaced with other feelings? Ask them. Say, “Hey Anger, hey Sadness, if you are not here to show me something, are you ready to be replaced by other feelings? If so, which ones?”
I’d make a safe bet that anger would like to be replaced by calmness and that sadness would like to be replaced by gratitude and excitement.
The Doom Loop
So very often, we confuse thoughts with feelings. We entangle them in a prism of vicious cycles, which results in maladaptive behaviours, catastrophising, or other cognitive distortions. The first job is to separate out the thoughts from the feelings. I have some great tools to help you with this. Please email me directly, and I will provide you with a few.
What you describe as the Doom Loop is a wonderful example of how emotive wording can help reinforce the intimate link between thoughts and feelings. Until you’ve received the tools from me, you can action the following steps right away:
1. Let’s rebrand the “Doom Loop” and call it the “Leftovers Loop.” This is literally the doggy bag of your relationship. You left the restaurant with the idea that these thoughts would further nourish you in some way. Nine times out of ten, they don’t. They are just excess weight—a cold, soggy mess that smells vaguely like something you once enjoyed and is now seeping through a creased brown paper bag. Do you really want these leftovers, or do you want to prepare something new, fresh, wholesome, and soul-igniting?
2. As we’ve talked about feelings above, let’s think of the Leftovers Loop as 100% thoughts. The wonderful news is that thoughts, when observed, called out, and looked at face-on, relinquish all their power and quickly lose all their function and meaning. But we have to be able to mindfully look at them perfectly disentangled from the feelings. Do this for a week—note down the recurring heavy ones in a journal or WhatsApp them to yourself. At the end of the week, you’ll see a pattern start to form—a logic that needs to be understood in order to be disarmed.
3. Remind yourself every day that you’ll have good days and bad days but that every day your feelings are being processed. Be patient with yourself, and by patience, I mean kindness.
You are doing a great job, Elias. I hope this small piece of information helps.
See you on Planet Heaven!
James
Do you have a question or concern that you’d like to share with James? Please submit it by email to askjames@brainmindandbody.com
Any advice provided in ‘Ask James’ is intended for informational and general guidance purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or legal services. Readers are encouraged to consult a licensed professional for personalised advice or treatment specific to their situation. All letters are anonymised to protect privacy unless explicit consent is provided to include identifiable details. By submitting a question, you agree to its potential publication in anonymised form, unless you explicitly request otherwise. Advice is offered within the scope of James’ expertise, and all health-related claims are verified with credible sources to ensure accuracy. If your submission is selected for publication, you will be notified by email before it is published. Due to the volume of submissions, we cannot guarantee a response to every letter. However, priority will be given to topics that resonate with a broad audience of readers.
