Thought Loops

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 30, 2017

I will do my best to explain.  My best will not be good enough.

Thought Loop: a hellish cycle of unending decision making which never really gets resolved. Here is what Psychonautwiki says about thought loops:
Thought loops can be described as the experience of becoming trapped within a chain of thoughts, actions and emotions which repeat themselves over and over again in a cyclic loop. They are most likely to occur during states of memory suppression and the failure of one’s short-term memory. This suggests that thought loops are the result of cognitive processes becoming unable to sustain themselves for appropriate lengths of time due to a lapse in short-term memory, resulting in the thought process attempting to restart from the beginning only to fall short once again in a perpetual cycle.  This component can be extremely disorientating and often triggers states of progressive anxiety within the people who may be unfamiliar with the experience. The most effective way to end a cycle of thought loops is to simply sit down and try to let go.
The more I think about the nature of the thought loop, the more it seems my actual issues are with control and trust.  Basically, a thought loop can be formed based on anything.  An idea, a behavior, a relationship.  It could be simple.  As simple as going to the movies.  And then it could be complex or a huge leap into something professionally or personally.  But let’s take the movies, because this is a pretty simple one.

The idea and/or plan is go to the movies after work before doing a gig.  This is a good idea because I love going to the movies, plus I have three hours to kill, and going back home to Astoria wasn’t exactly time savvy.  Counter argument: go to a cafe and write, you lazy, slacker, son-of-a-bitch, this is why you are not successful.  Okay, fine.  I’ll go to a Starbucks and think of jokes.  Defendant rise (I’m a great lawyer with my thoughts.  I can justify some of my shittiest behavior).  If we (yes, I’m now referring to myself in plural) go to a short movie, we can both see a film and sit in a Starbucks and write.  Indeed.  This is a good plan.  [Looks up showtimes] The movies I want to see are too long, and not playing at the right times to make the movie and the writing possible.  Now we have a loop.

A. GO TO THE MOVIES

B. GET SOME WORK DONE

Here’s where you make a pros and cons list, right?  Wrong.  I mean, that’s what I do, but it already extends this lengthy decision making process.  Over the next few hours, I will make a decision.  And then I will change my mind several more times.  You might be thinking to yourself, “Jesus, it’s not that hard just pick one.”  You are right.  But the problem here is that I will pick one and flip-flop a bunch of times, because one hour I will want to go to the movies, and the next, I’ll want to write.  This is why I’m an intolerable flake.  Because I probably won’t even know what I want until the moment right before, which may be different given my general mood.  This is a thought loop.  It can make you seem/feel like Jekyll and Hyde sometimes.

If that seems like an exhausting and shitty way to live, imagine the big thought loops, like the one about quitting comedy, which always exists, and that thought loop has spawned other thought loops, all connected, and ever changing.  And this is probably slowly giving me cancer.

I don’t know if I’m neurotic because of the thought loops, or the thought loops exist because I’m neurotic.  I have a lot of bad qualities, but one is not jealousy.  I don’t believe envy is a real emotion.  It’s just projecting your insecurities on other people.  Jealousy is self hatred wearing a mask.  But if honesty is one of my better qualities (and I wonder if honesty really is good quality) I have to admit I feel a twinge of envy of people who don’t need substances to fucking relax.  This mental inconstancy is probably a big reason I’m almost 28 and have failed to ever maintain a long term relationship.  This is not an excuse.  I’m a dipshit sometimes.  I want to be better.

There is a plus side to thought loops.  If you have thought loops, congratulations, you are an over-thinker.  A lot of people say overthinking is a bad thing, and to these people I would say, that’s because you’re under thinking it.  Just because over-thinkers are people who probably won’t be a happy person because the mind is perpetually trapped in a loops that causes stomach cramps from anxiety, doesn’t mean we’re wrong.  Over thinkers are usually the ones questioning every thing more, and digging for answers.  Unlike most the people who are fucking morons, pick a side, and then blindly follow whatever they say.  That’s lunacy to me.  Blindly following a religion you were raised to believe, only getting your news from a clearly biased source you already agree with, sticking out dead or dying relationships out of fear of being alone…  The thought loops forbid you from having your feet firmly planted, and that is in a lot of ways a very good thing.  It’s an advantage, in some way, especially as a comedian and a writer.  It’s a comedian’s job to over-analyze, find a way to look at something through a different/more humorous lens.  Writing is an exercise that has become some what of an addiction for me, as it temporarily suspends loops (and occasionally, solves them).

The hilarious part of the Psychonautwiki is it’s solution for a cure.  So you don’t have to scroll back up, it says, “The most effective way to end a cycle of thought loops is to simply sit down and try to let go.”  Actually, this is 100% true.  The funny part is that whoever wrote this added “simply.”  Because a spider web of thought loops is anything but simple.  I think some of my loops will persist my WHOLE FUCKING LIFE.  Sometimes my social awkwardness is a result of being mentally crippled by too many thought loops cycling at once, and like a gears moving too fast, my brain jams up, and honestly, it’s fine.  I’m used to being uncomfortable most of the time.

The point of this is pretty simple.  If I’m drinking heavily, leave me alone.  I’m trying and probably succeeding in quieting a thought loop.  Loops keep you awake at night, and paralyze you in the morning.  I don’t think any other animal besides the homosapian experiences thought loops.  Where the instinct of flight or fight become hard to distinguish.