Interrupting feedback loops
We know the dangers of echo chambers—the spaces, often online, where our opinions are confirmed or “echoed” back to us.
“The biggest issue is simple,” said Harvard Law School Professor Cass R. Sunstein. “It’s group polarization, which means that if you listen to people like you, you’ll probably get more extreme and more confident too.”
What about the echo chamber of our own brain? The idea of a positive thought breeding more positivity is nice. But less ideal if the accumulation of negative thoughts creates a downward spiral. You polarize your own experience.
Let’s say my morning gets a rough start because an unsavory dream left me unprepared for my alarm. Then I realize I forgot to put out the trash last night as I watch the truck go by. Then I drop my electric toothbrush—the batteries scatter, and the bristles collect all kinds of nonsense. Then I’m in a mood for the rest of the day, no matter how many deep breaths I take.
Never mind the fact that lovely things also existed in that mix—a picturesque sunrise, a delicious cup of coffee, a cozy sweater, an interesting tidbit in my morning newsletter. Once my mind latched onto the negative pattern, it got stuck in its echo chamber. Its negative confirmation bias missed the forest for the trees.
Even more annoying is when an echo chamber creates a feedback loop. When I’m certain things are bad, and then they get worse by the minute. (In scientific contexts, this is a ‘positive’ feedback loop, which exacerbates or self-reinforces. But for my purposes here, I’m using positive as happy thoughts and negative as annoying or dreary ones.)
I had a bad day at work. Then a friend who’s staying with me didn’t offer to make dinner or clean up. Though they expressed appreciation for the food, my brain decided that’s not a worthy trade for the money I spent at the store and the time I spent in the kitchen. My brain also decided this is just one example of a larger behavioral pattern of obliviousness. Then that devolved into entitlement. Then everything this poor visitor did only reinforced the negative things I made up about them. Then I got annoyed over things that ordinarily wouldn’t bug me because I’ve progressed so far from the original offense.
Pages and pages of my journals have been filled with this kind of feedback loop, in which I convince myself that things are truly worse than they appear. And there are just as many pages where I deconstruct a big negative experience to find the actual thing that bothers me is quite easy to address—and can be done without attacking someone’s character or questioning my relationships.
Some days are certainly better than others. When I’m in a contented mood, I don’t get so easily worked up, and minor offenses don’t have the power to spark a feedback loop.
But on the days that are already tender and ripe for worsening, I’ve found a few things that help interrupt the feedback loop:
Identify the loop. Sometimes all I need to do to stop it is recognize it’s happening.
Distance myself. Stepping away from the situation or person before it has a chance to royally piss me off.
Get back to what is good. If distance isn’t an option, I pivot the conversation or experience to something I enjoy.
Return to me. If I didn’t opt-in to this experience, but I can’t opt-out (maybe it’s work-related or a friend of a friend I have to put up with), I check in with myself. How am I feeling physically? What has been working well today? What can I be proud of?
Vent it out. Since I’m lucky enough to have willing soundboards in my life, I can often spew my vitriol toward a third party, who will allow me to process out loud.
Save time to heal. Sometimes I just gotta suck it up in the moment. Which rarely means letting it go, but rather letting it fester if I’m not intentional about processing or practicing self-care. Journaling is my catharsis. Moving my body, reading, taking a bath or shower, and getting good sleep round out my top 5 favorite things to do to feel whole again.
By no means are these practices foolproof, however. Though, as with so many things, I suspect practice helps.
When my friend didn’t offer to cook or clean, I identified the spiral—that didn’t work. I couldn’t distance myself, given they were a guest in my home. But I was able to pivot from the life-draining dishes to a soul-filling heart-to-heart, which helped me connect to the things I love about this person.
I tried to return to myself, but since I’d had a shitty day at work, I didn’t have too much to be proud of. I later vented. And journaled. And cycled through my other healing practices. Though I still agree with my brain that my friend’s lack of dinner support is annoying, I can separate that from complete character assassination.
Sometimes my feedback loops are merely a product of a series of unfortunate events. But often, they point me to some nugget of self-awareness, whether it’s informing boundaries for future experiences or revealing something special about me. Maybe my visitor isn’t super oblivious—maybe I’m considerate.
Let the positive spiral begin.
