Spiraling? Here's how to redirect a negative brain loop

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When my mental health is in shambles, I often joke that I’m in “brain jail,” a phrase I made up to describe feeling like a prisoner to my own thoughts.

Turns out, many people experience a similar feeling.

It can start with a minor inconvenience or a simple, solitary thought. And before long, a negative spiral consumes your mind. You’re stuck in a negative feedback loop.

It can lead to self-doubt or even a feeling of worthlessness.

Before you fall down that rabbit hole, here’s a bit of good news: There are ways to interrupt — or at least redirect — these dark brain loops.

The key is understanding how the loop begins, said Greg Walton, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of the book, "Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts."

Here & Now’s Scott Tong recently spoke with Walton about how negative thought spirals start and what can help tilt them toward the positive.

Here are some highlights from the conversation, edited for length and clarity:

What’s going on in the brain during a negative feedback loop?

“ I think the first thing is that you're walking into a situation in which you're asking a question, and it might be a question about, ‘Am I going to fit in this job?' or 'Are people going to respect me? Are they going to value me? Am I going to be able to do this job well?’ And that question is kind of sitting in the back of your mind, and it almost functions like a lens through which you look at experiences.

 And then sometimes, it gets much bigger than it actually is. Is that what you mean?

“Yeah. It gets bigger in a couple of ways. One is it gets bigger in your head. You are asking a question like, ‘Do they even want me here?’ And then there's some ambiguous event, like your boss is a little snarky, and then you think, ‘They don't want me here.’

“And that's the first kind of bigger. And then the second kind of bigger is that it kind of comes out of that psychological system just inside of you, and it comes into the world. So it starts to affect how you interact, how you engage with coworkers, how maybe you engage with that boss, your actual ability to perform well on the job, and that's now become a matter of, kind of objective reality.”

How can one take that moment and shift into a positive moment?

“So one of the words that I really like is ‘tifbit’ — a tiny fact, big theory. And this word comes about from a story my brother told me many years ago. He was living in New York. He was dating a woman. The relationship seemed to be going pretty well, and then they have this breakup event, and the woman is explaining why she can't be with him, why they can never be. And by way of explaining, she says, ‘Do you remember that time we went to Macy's?’ And he remembers a completely uneventful trip to Macy's. And she said, ‘Well, I had to tell you to tuck your shirt in. I can't be with you.’

"My brother and I laughed at this. Like, what was it that the untucked shirt meant? How did that define for her, like, who he was and who she was and why they could never be together?

“We never found the answer to that question, but I think it's a really revealing story. And I don't want to tell it by way of sort of making fun of the woman, but rather by way of helping all of us notice these situations where we have a really big meaning in response to a small event.

“So a tifbit is a tiny fact that you have a big theory about. So your boss has some offhand remark that's a little snarky, and suddenly you think, ‘They don't want me here.’ And when you have that thought, if you can observe it and notice it, you can start to learn, what are the questions that are driving your experience of that setting? Where might those questions come from, and what might be a better way to think about that?”

You can read more highlights from this interview here, including common thought spiral triggers.

This story is part of Here & Now’s Building Better Mental Health series, where we talk to experts about grief, loneliness, depression, anxiety and much more. Scroll below for five more stories from the series: