Interrupt the Loop: Receive Love and choose something different

Relationships — with ourselves, others, Nature and Spirit — are full of loops.

Photo: Nathan Dawang | @natedawang

Patterns that repeat over and over and over again. 

Templates learned throughout lifetimes before us, compiled in our lived experience individually and collectively.

Some of the loops are benign. Some are Life-creating. 

And some, though key to our survival at one point, are now destructive, creating fragments instead of fractals. Splinters instead of spirals. Draining Life instead of creating it.

Those loops block us from Love.

The challenge is, most of the taxing loops lie just outside our awareness, just below our consciousness. Like being too close to a painting, we can’t see the broader picture so we don’t know we are looping. We go around and around, not realizing that we’ve been here before. We just know something doesn't feel good, so we cope like we always do just to get through, only to loop again. And again. And again.

It’s the strangest flavor of grace, the Coherence Among All Things offering us the same experience until we notice we’ve been here before and then come into relationship with the parts of us who keep us looping.

One of the sneakiest parts that keeping us looping is a critical one — the voice that insists we should know better by now, or that shames us for being here again. That criticism doesn’t interrupt the loop; it tightens it, keeping us reactive, braced, and stuck.

Until we sit with them and any other part present and really get where they’re coming from. Until we hear them. See them. Understand them and care for them.

It’s through relationship, we clear the way for Love. 

And, empowered by Love, we can choose something different.

Like taking a right where you’ve always gone left.

Or acting when you’ve always passed.

Or holding your tongue when you’ve always gone off.

Interrupting the loop is as wildly challenging — you’re literally exercising your neurology like you would exercise in a gym.

And, the Life it produces is worth it. 

One time I was trying to choose differently in one of my own life-draining loops, particularly with my partner. I find that destructive loops are particularly prevalent and challenging in romantic relationships. Something about the intimacy creates fertile ground for deepest lodged loops to be expressed and, ideally, discovered and used for our transformation. 

I noticed, in my marriage, a part of me has kept me stuck in a loop by saying what I think or feel in the moment without a single thought of how it might impact my partner. Classic unbridled self-expression.

When I owned the fact that I was co-creating the reality that felt so crappy, I slowed down and got curious about that part of me was present. I got to know her. Unearthed her intentions and concerns. Discovered the pain she was protecting me from. And through relationship I built trust and, importantly, I set boundaries — not just to protect her from the world but to protect the world, primarily in the form of my husband, from her.

After coming into a relationship with her, my husband and I were in a scrimmage and I was determined to do it differently and set a limit of out Love: 

“You can feel the way you feel — 100% valid. You may not take that feeling out on him in your words or actions.”

Have you ever set a loving limit with a three year old teetering on the edge of a tantrum? 

At that moment, I rode my emotions like a bucking bronco. I literally put my hand over my mouth to keep from saying anything. The energy that wanted so badly to spew out of my mouth rippled in waves throughout my body. I quaked. I balled my fists. I clenched my jaw. I let tears come out. 

I didn’t say unkind things to my husband. I made a new choice. I interrupted the harmful loop and did something different.

It was HARD. 

It is HARD being the adult holding limits for your own inner kids. Neurobiologically speaking, there is much going on that makes it so damn HARD. 

And it is worth the Life it produces. 

Because I did it differently, the outcome was different. Our loop was interrupted and instead of ending back up where we always did, we ended somewhere new. 

Not perfect. Not without challenge. But somewhere new with a little more Life and Love than what we had before. And Life begets Life — the generative kind of loop.

Pay attention to the loops in your life. Patterns point to potential. When we notice we’re in a life-draining loop, it’s our first opportunity to choose something different. When we end up back in the same place, there is a reason so when you’re struck with that feeling of, “Man, this keeps happening” or “I’ve been here before,” there is a forever invitation to slow down and get curious about you and yourself and your own inner world.

It can be so tempting to externalize it. "If they would just [insert judgment and agenda here], then things would be different." <-- This is just another life-draining loop.

But if we can choose to look inward and get curious about what's really there, that choice, in and of itself, interrupts. It reestablishes relationship with ourselves, clearing the way for Love in our inner world. And in receiving Love, we can choose something different.