Today’s topic looks at some ways of thinking that we may find in ourselves throughout our grief journeys. We will also look at what we might do to change or affect those thoughts and the patterns they create if they happen to us and if we choose to. 

Looping:

I call it looping when thoughts repeat and repeat in my mind and I can’t seem to break free of them. I call it looping when I go around and around on the same idea or the same internal conversation without resolution and often with little or no control. You may have come up with your own name for the same idea that is more comfortable for you to use and that’s fine.

As with most things, not everyone experiences looping or is bothered by it if they do. If we do experience something like looping, early in our grieving, looping can be fairly out of our control and we may just have to experience it as it happens for a while. Later on, as things calm down, just like with inertia, we may want to learn some skills to begin to put our looping aside or find ways to work through it and resolve it if we want to.

No matter what we call it, however, looping is something we all do from time to time, not only in our grief but throughout our lives. No matter the name we use, in grief, loops can be strongly related to the mental/emotional inertia we may experience in our grieving. With time, loops can also create “habits of grief” that we repeat and carry forward. 

Recriminations are types of loops that we can have that are accusations, in this sense by ourselves to ourselves, for actions or thoughts or lack thereof in our past. Perhaps we might find ourselves looping real or imagined blame for something we did or didn’t do or said or didn’t say along the way. Perhaps we may loop about and blame ourselves for things we wish we might have done differently or better in the past.

There may be “good loops” too. (there may also be fruit loops..lol) Remembering a wonderful moment again and again (or a great bowl of cereal) to recapture the good feelings it brought us is something we can also do. 

Loops can happen at any time but in our grief, they often seem to come at night while we are trying to get to sleep or while we are trying to return to sleep if we wake during the night.

But again, no matter what they contain or when they happen, what I call loops are mostly out of control, repetitive thoughts or internal conversations we may not easily be able to stop from repeating. 

What’s in a loop:

Loops can contain almost anything, but unfortunately, during our grief, things we feel strongly about from our past can and often do, disproportionately find their way into those loops. Those thoughts often seem to be about things that happened, were done or were said in the past. Especially, things we may regret or wish could have gone differently or things we wish we had said or not said or that our loved ones had said or not said, can become loops of thoughts that we replay time and time again.

Loops may contain what if’s, they may be one sided conversations we would like to have or wish we would have or could have had. Imaginary conversations with our loved ones or with people in our lives now can become loops as we try to resolve things that now may be outside of our control. Because of that, if we begin to loop them in our minds, the thoughts and conversations can repeat over and over without us being able to reach an end, or a conclusion, or a solution. 

Loops can also contain negative or diminishing thoughts, comments or statements we repeat over and over. Things like “I hate my life, or “you don’t know how hard it is” or “this is all so overwhelming”, or “I’m not good enough or strong enough to…” or others, can become loops that are directly connected to the inertia in our grief that tends to build patterns that keep us from moving forward. They may also be connected to a loss of self-confidence that many people experience in their grief. 

In our grief, especially since we are unable to change events in the past, we may sometimes find ourselves mentally “beating ourselves up” with blame. We may loop as we try to find some answers that will relieve, alter, or fix a situation in the past. There can also be a guilt and/or anxiety component to our loops in those cases. 

What we loop about in our minds may actually be trying to tell us something we need to know as well. If we are looping about something, there may be a message to ourselves hidden or not so hidden in the loops. But somehow, if we aren’t able to find it, resolve it, or accept it if we do identify it, we can continue to go around and around on the same loops until we do.

If we allow ourselves to repeat these types of thoughts and loop them many times a day, we can find ourselves becoming locked into their patterns. We can build “habits of grief” and then what the loops contain may seem to become a part of us. If we build habits that lock us down and keep us from changing, growing or moving forward, we may feel like we are stuck in the past and maybe even feel like its “Groundhog Day” every day. 

It’s the resolution of what the loops contain, if we can find it, that contains the most healing.

Acceptance:

When what we loop is about something from the past, I believe that it is important for us, when we are ready to do so, to learn to develop ways to find acceptance of what the loops contain and what they are trying to tell us.  As we can, it is important for us to learn to accept that if they are about the past, they are not changeable and when we are ready, for us to learn to let them go. We may be best served in the long run by learning to stop trying to resolve the unresolvable. It might not be as easy as maybe I make it sound!

Forgiveness:

In the end, for many of the things we loop about in our grief and grieving, we may well need to find and receive forgiveness! For the types of mental/emotional loops we are talking about and the thoughts within them, especially those connected to our past with our loved ones, it may help to learn to apologize, in our minds, to ourselves and/or to our loved ones, for what we perceive as our failings in the past. It may help to learn to believe that our loved ones can and will accept our apologies now. It may help to learn to accept their apologies and forgive them for things that they perhaps did or said that we can’t let go of. We may just need to say I’m sorry or let them say I’m sorry, forgive them and let it be.

Since we can’t change the way our loved ones were in the past, can we forgive those things and occasions where they weren’t as we wanted them to be if we are looping about them? Can we learn to accept that they were who they were and we can’t change it now but know that we do have the ability to forgive and not loop about unchangeable past actions or behaviors?

It may help to find ways to let our apologies and our forgiveness encompass most things in the past that we may wish had gone differently. It may help to learn to accept and let go of those things we regret or wish we or they would have done or said differently. Maybe forgiveness can be a path to being able to let those things go and to allow us to break out of the loops they create.

Change:

In our grieving, I think it is also helpful to accept that change is part of and may be necessary during our healing journeys and that it may also be a good thing that can help us find healing. 

In response to asking for and receiving forgiveness, especially for things we may be looping about, can we change ourselves if we need to? Can we change and learn and grow so that we deserve that forgiveness? If we don’t or won’t change or even learn something about ourselves and we keep repeating the behaviors we are asking forgiveness for and looping about, what are we really doing? Do we really deserve forgiveness? Will we truly find resolution if we don’t change in some way? Will the loops really end?

Since we can’t change what or how we were in the past, can we learn to change ourselves now? Can we perhaps become open to becoming more like what our loved ones would have liked us to have been, especially in places where we were at odds, perhaps in places where we now see that they might have been right or known better that we resisted before. Can change help us to break out of any loops we might create thinking about those types of things?

Can we change things about ourselves now that we loop about that we may have become in response to our lives with our loved ones? Can we change things about ourselves that we might have become in response to some type of pressure from our loved ones or from the lives we lived with them? Is it ok to change things now that we didn’t like about who we were or who we had to be that were part of how we needed to be in that part of our lives? Can we do that and not feel guilty? Can we change and let that stop the loops?

Can we change now, because we want to and because it seems like a good thing, or the right thing to do? Can we change in the unresolved places where our loops take us and perhaps resolve things that way? Once we identify them, can we and will we then do the hard work to make the changes happen and actualize them?

Can we change things about ourselves now that we might regret having been in the past as a gift to our loved ones? Can we do, or say, or be now, what we couldn’t then? Can we change and use our forgiveness to help us move forward, to help us to break out of the loops, and to help us build healing and wellness?

Can we find healing through the process of examining and understanding the loops we create and the thoughts we think? Is there healing in recognizing and letting go of the repetitive patterns we develop if they are not productive and positive in our lives now and they don’t help us to move forward? Can change be a part of the healing process that can help us to move into wellness and the next part of our lives?

Ideas to help stop the loops:

So how do we stop the looping? How do we break into the cycles? How do we let our minds and emotions move on to other things? Here are some ideas that people have shared over the years that we might try. Let’s add to the list if you have other things that have worked for you that you can share and we can talk about.

• Try to understand what the loops contain. 
• Recognize that they are loops but realize that we can also take control of them.
• Remind ourselves that they are loops when we recognize ourselves doing them and break the cycle by doing that.
• Do the hard work of stopping or breaking out of our loops, whatever that looks like and whatever that takes. (It’s something I worked on for years!)
• Break the circle by using mantras each time a loop begins. [ ie. I said what I said and I did what I did and there’s nothing I can do to change it…It happened but its not happening right now!… It’s in the future and I can’t really know what that will look like.
• If we need to, apologize to ourselves and/or others for things within what we are looping.
• Verbalize what we think and our apology if we have one. 
• If we need to, find forgiveness for and acceptance of what the loops contain. 
• Forgive ourselves with self-compassion.
• Be kind to ourselves as we try to find resolution.
• Know that we did the best we could at the time. And perhaps we can learn to be better now.
• Work on what we are looping about in a journal or on paper or on a computer or tablet.

• Perhaps we can turn on a book on tape or a movie and let it take us out of the loop temporarily.
• Talk to close friends and family who might offer suggestions on how to break into or out of a looped thought.
• Share what we are looping and ask for suggestions at a Support Group meeting.
• Seek professional counseling. 
• If it applies to your situation, find professional counseling to discuss the possibilities of using EMDR to help with processing and resolving loops caused by traumatic situations.

• Being present (mindfulness) and learning to not dwell on or live in the past or the future.
• ***Understand that the past is like a novel, it’s in a book on a shelf and can’t be changed anymore. The past has been captured in the book so parts of it can no longer be removed or altered.
• *** Recognize that every time you repeat a mantra-like thought, you make it stronger and every time you don’t repeat it or you change it to a related positive thought, you diminish it’s hold on you. 
• Do something tangible and physical where you can be one-pointed and that you can finish and see through to completion.
• Hope that with time, the loops will just fade away on their own…

• Just do it! Stop doing or saying any destructive thoughts you have gotten into the habit of repeating.
• Focus on one behavior at a time and take the time and find the energy it takes to unravel it and change it, maybe in small increments.
• Find ways to see how thoughts we are looping are parts of our grief or the inertia within it and then by identifying them, make the effort to change them.

• Others?

Questions:

• ****What other techniques have you found that can help stop the loops?
• Do you find yourself looping thoughts?
• What do you call them when they happen to you?
• What types of things do you get stuck thinking in circles about?
• Do the loops create the ideas within them or do the ideas create the loops as we try to resolve them?
• Have you found any ways to stop the loops and perhaps resolve the issues you are thinking about? Would writing about them help you to identify and change things in your loops?
• Have you figured out ways to break the cycles and end the loops in your own thoughts? What have you learned that you can share?
• How might you deal with thoughts or emotions of things that you regret from the past?
• Have you begun to find forgiveness in your thoughts and emotions?
• Can you find ways to forgive yourself for not being what you might have been, done or said in the past?
• What does forgiveness look like when we have to do it for, by and to ourselves?
• Are you willing to change?