Hack Your Negative Feedback Loops

Hack Your Negative Feedback Loops

Did you know that hacking your feedback loops is not as hard as it seems? You know the main problem? Most people are unaware of their feedback loops, and even if they are aware, they tinker with them the wrong way.

Here, I’ll show you how to find a feedback loop and how to successfully hack it. It’ll be different than what you think.

This is where we’ll start. Did you know that any stuck place in life is based on how you feel about it? Don’t get me wrong. Every situation is real. But each situation provides an unconscious emotional charge that usually started early. Like in childhood.

Now, I’m not going to get into your childhood. That’s for another time and day. But here’s what we’ll do. We’ll reverse engineer the issue through your emotional pathways, or in other words, your feedback loop.

Let’s say you’re having trouble getting started on something you know you need to do. That might be a creative endeavor or hobby. It might be exiting your job or speaking up to a boss. Heck, it might be one of those vaunted, determine the relationship talks.

Tell me, what do you feel?

Probably stuck. Trapped. Isolated. Could be confused. Or ashamed. Maybe even scared or anxious of the outcome. You might even feel hopeless about the outcome. You see no good things coming from this. You know you should have started on this…months ago. You don’t know what to do.

Here’s a next question. An odd one.

From here, what do you do? As in, instead of getting started on the issue at hand, what do you choose to do instead?

For most, this might seem inconsequential—because usually the answer is something that seems absolutely useless—but I assure you, this next piece is everything. When I work with clients, the answer to this nitty-gritty question spans the gamut.

It might be…scrolling through social media…ruminating in thoughts…watching porn…watching YouTube…texting random people…looking at your ex’s profile…reading news articles…swiping on a dating app…watching Netflix with a partner…grinding harder into the day job…getting take out and drinking…

These nitty-gritty actions seem inconsequential because they’re part of the daily routine. But here’s where we’re going.

Each action was preceded by a clusterbomb of unpleasant emotions. And you know the result of all these actions? When you complete the action, it completes the EMOTIONAL feedback loop. Here’s how. After the action, how do you feel?

Yes, feel. There’s that question again. Here’s a guess. You’re going to feel even more alone…isolated…ashamed…confused…afraid…numb…hopeless…trapped. The same emotional charge is still there. Actually, it grew.

So what do you need to do?

Are you down to do a thought experiment?

Imagine that you felt VICTORIOUS. That you felt ENERGETIC. That you felt FREE and INVINCIBLE. That you are experiencing COMPLETENESS and BOLDNESS. Do you think you’d waste your time doing any of those other activities? No way! But here’s the question…the money question…what do you do with this new emotional charge? What action do you take with these feelings?

Now, for most of you, with whatever the stuck point is in your life, you might not actually know the next step. And that’s okay. That’s perfect. But here’s the caveat. What is the smallest thing you could possibly do that you’ve been wanting to do with that feeling? Because as a therapist, all I’m looking for from a client is to feel empowered to make a slight shift in order to change up the feedback loop. It doesn’t matter whether I’m working with an individual or a couple…the goal is to rewrite the current feedback loop.

So it might look as simple as this.

Perhaps you’ve been wanting to get a small houseplant for the last year, but because you’re unsure about your job, this makes you unsure of your living situation, and make you unsure if you’re going to move. So the last thing you need is to buy a houseplant. Why? A houseplant represents that you’re going to be grounded. Planted. Rooted. And the worst thing is to try to move, let alone sell a houseplant on moving day, right? So you just recreate the shame cycle that it’s now a year and you still haven’t figured out your life situation.

Well, I see where you’re coming from but that houseplant might actually be preventing you from living your entire life. Worst case scenario, what happens? You sell your houseplant on OfferUp and you’re out $7?

Let’s imagine when you were feeling all those icky feelings, and you decided to do something different? You drove to a nursery, selected a houseplant and small pot for $25, then put it on your living room table. How would you feel? Perhaps more stable and secure? Open and inviting? Maybe you’d feel that you could breathe better?

Congratulations! You hacked your feedback loop.

Science dictates our environment affects our gene expression. Slowly, this will create different neural pathways. As you feel like you can breathe slightly easier and are more grounded, you might begin to view your relationships and career differently. Heck, maybe this causes you reassess your situation? Or maybe this snowballs into ten other seemingly small life changes, that are all creating new neural pathways towards larger changes. Who knows?