Part 5: Breaking the Loop—12 Strategies to Shift Fear-Based Patterns

You can change your relationship with your thoughts

This is my final writing in a series of posts re: fear loops. Together, these 5 short pieces build a cohesive journey: 

Recognizing the loop → Understanding your biology → Clarifying the emotions → Reframing your thoughts → Practicing strategies

This last post will get to the strategies, that when practiced, can guide you from stepping out of the fear loop to nurturing resilience and reframing the pain into purpose. (*Go here if you would like to read the other 4 parts of this series.)

Circle back with me to the situation I opened this series with: The family crisis of my husband quitting his job unexpectedly. What if, when Jim came home early to announce he had resigned, I was already educated, aware and practiced at responding to the activation of my threat-based emotional response system with the understandings and tools I have since learned?

For someone wired like me, that type of reflection can easily slip into thoughts of waste, failure, defeat...(Uh oh, another loop trying to form?!) But also in my inner coding is the thing I can’t not do: encourage others and bring hope. Seen through that lens, I now recognize purpose in the pain: an opportunity to model our family values to our children regarding turning to our faith in God and trusting He has a good plan for us, will provide everything we need, and will work all things together for our good and His purposes. 

This in turn, can strengthen our resilience, individually and as a family, for future challenges; and increase our empathic response for supporting others during their challenges. This bigger-picture perspective helped reframe the setback, and countered the temptation to see only waste and harm in the trial we experienced as a family the day the garage door went up midday.

To quote Rick Warren, pastor and author of the globally successful book, The Purpose-driven Life:

There is no growth without change, no change without fear or loss, and no loss without pain.

Over the years, Jim and I have noticed a pattern in our journey – a recurring theme we summarize this way:

 If we had not been through that, we would not have been prepared for this.

 In other words, when we reflect on a season of trial, once on the other side of it, we can see that what we learned or how it changed us was a necessary capacity expansion in order to be equipped to meet what came next. This is a real-life example of one of the strategies I share later: visualizing a peaceful or purposeful outcome. In my worldview, that outcome is often a sense of growth and meaning – a way to find purpose in the pain.

As I immersed myself in the research for this article I came to the realization that no matter the type of intervention - therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment or Cognitive Behavioral or Somatic Experiencing, or the simple, everyday strategies shared at the end of this post –  two ingredients are essential: acceptance and commitment.

I can choose to let a car go by- not get in it!

For me, acceptance means internalizing how my mind will always produce some amount of negative thoughts. That is what the brain is designed to do. But treating thoughts simply as mental activity, and not facts, I can commit to changing my strategy from trying to eliminate unhelpful thoughts to instead, stripping them of power by releasing them rather than latching onto them. (i.e. Don’t get in the cars - let them drive on by.)

My hope is I have offered you a layperson’s understanding of the interplay of our distress emotions and the loops that can entangle us when we are not actively aware of them and intentionally countering the brain’s negativity bias.

To support your ongoing growth and resilience, I leave you with a set of practical strategies – and a few reflection questions - to engage both your mind and body in the process of breaking fear-based patterns.

Questions for exploring...

1.      What comes to mind from your own life when you read about my family crisis and the neurobiological responses that followed? Can you identify a time when you have experienced a similar cycle of  fear, worry, and anxiety?

2.      Have you experienced breaking through such a cycle? What helped you recognize what was happening in your mind and body, and interrupt the fear loop?

3.      What kind of support do you need to consistently practice regulating your distress emotions when a crisis arises?

4.      What is one step you could take this week towards building a more reliable response to or disruption of fear loops?

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12 Doable Strategies for Reducing Fear Loop Cycles and Their Effects

1. Practice Present-Moment Awareness

Gently redirect your attention from past regrets or future worries to what’s happening right now. This helps break the cycle of fear by grounding you in the only moment you can actually influence—the present.

2. Use the “5-4-3-2-1” Grounding Technique

This simple sensory exercise can be helpful in pulling you out of fear loops fast:

Name:

• 5 things you can see

• 4 things you can feel

• 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

3. Nurture Your Spiritual Core

Feed your inner life through prayer, medita0on, or reflec0on. For example, trus0ng in God’s love, care, and sovereignty over all 0me—past, present, and future—can ease the grip of fear and ins0ll peace.

4. Use Breath and Senses to Anchor Yourself

Engage in practices like deep breathing, grounding exercises, or mindful observation. These help regulate the nervous system and bring you back to your body and the moment at hand.

5. Reframe Thoughts as Mental Activity, Not Absolute Truth

Recognize that thoughts are not facts. Picture them like cars driving by on a road—some helpful, some not. You can’t stop the traffic, but you can choose not to get in the vehicles that lead to distress. Let unhelpful thoughts pass without climbing in.

6. Label the Fear

Simply naming what you're experiencing—“This is anxiety,” “This is fear”—can reduce its intensity. It gives your brain some distance and keeps you from going fully swept into the emo0onal wave.

7. Challenge Catastrophic Thinking

Ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could realistically happen?” and then, “What else might happen instead?” This technique, from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), helps disrupt irra0onal or exaggerated fear loops.

8. Create a Safety Ritual Design

A simple daily or situa0onal rou0ne that signals safety to your nervous system—a walk, a calming cup of tea, journaling, or repea0ng a grounding phrase like “I am safe right now.”

9. Move Your Body Gently

Fear is stored not just in the mind but in the body. Try walking, stretching, or yoga to discharge excess fear energy. Even light movement can help reset your system.

10. Limit Fear-Triggering Input

Reduce your exposure to fear-inducing content like doom-scrolling, sensa0onalized news, or social media that fuels comparison or anxiety.

11. Connect with Supportive People

Isolation feeds fear. Reach out to someone who listens without judgment. Even a brief conversa0on with a friend or mentor can rewire your sense of safety and reality.

12. Visualize a Peaceful Outcome

Instead of obsessing over what could go wrong, inten0onally imagine a scenario where things work out. This helps train your brain to expect hope—not disaster.

***************************************************************************************

 You now have tools to recognize, reframe, and release fear loops. The next step is yours: start small, practice often, and share your growth with others.

Reflect: 

Which strategy will you practice this week — and how will you know it’s helping?

Journaling Prompt: 

Choose one strategy and commit to practicing it daily for seven days. At the end of the week, write about what you noticed in your body, mind, and emotions.

**My offers of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about how you might develop your resilience through the struggle(s) you are currently facing.

**Or - If you are interested in having these 12 Strategies to Shift  Fear-Based Patterns as a download, contact me.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Part 4: Escaping the Happiness Trap—Shifting Thought Patterns

You can change your relationship w/ thoughts

This is Part 4 of a series on thought loops that can be formed from fear, worry and anxiety - how we can get trapped in them and how to break free from them. (If you want to read the first three in this blog series go here.)

In the previous post (Part 3), I covered the distinctions between the three distress emotions - fear, worry, and anxiety - how each contributes to a fear loop. I also defined ‘feedback loops’ and differentiated ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ feedback loops. I finished with an invitation to consider which distress emotion shows up most often in your story, and how it may keep you stuck in a loop.

Now I’m excited to share a valuable resource that was a gamechanger in my personal quest to transform how I relate to the thoughts that are at the core of these distress loops. Read on...

The Happiness Trap Impact: Recognize the Loop for What It Is

Many years ago a therapist introduced me to a life-changing book: The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. The book is about learning how to accept pain as a part of life and deal with it productively. The author advocates ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, for remaking your perspective on and response to painful feelings and thoughts.

I experienced numerous epiphanies over the course of multiple readings of the book, including a more rational way to look at thoughts: as mental activity not facts, accepting difficult thoughts rather than fighting them, and being more committed to aligning my life with my personal values and what that might look like in practice.

A couple of key insights I gained from the book, and have since intentionally focused on:

Psychological flexibility: the ability to stay present and take value-based action even in the face of emotional pain.

Another valuable, yet seemingly simple realization was:

 Avoidance of negative thoughts or feelings often makes suffering worse.

Thoughts are like cars, circling in your mind

But what proved to be the most impactful and applicable takeaway for me was Harris’s metaphor:

Cars endlessly circling — a vivid image that captured the cognitive shift I desired.

In this metaphor, the cars represent our thoughts, and we are hard-wired for more negative thoughts, (referred to as a negativity bias), out of the vigilance necessary to detect any possible threat to our survival. Hence, we are naturally inclined to produce self-protective, even suspicious, thoughts.

But just because a thought keeps circling in my head, does not mean it is or becomes reality or fact. The key is accepting that there will always be negative or foreboding thoughts circling; but I have a choice to ‘not get in the car’, to let it drive on by. In other words, I cannot stop the traffic, but I can choose not to get in the vehicles that lead to distress. Let unhelpful thoughts pass without climbing in.

Because of the simplicity of this visual of circling cars, I have found it a reliable go-to when I am in the moment of realizing my nervous system is being hijacked (or carjacked) by some thought that is trying to assert itself as a fact. It is really one kind of loop keeping me out of another kind of loop! 

As the neurobiology adage goes: practice makes permanent. By consistently applying this insight, I have gained something lasting: the recognition that thoughts are mental activity, not facts.  

I may not be able to stop negative thoughts from forming, but I can strip them of their power by changing how I relate to them. This has become a reliable tool in my ongoing effort to step out of – or stay out of - the fear feedback loop.

You can choose which car to get in

I hope you have been stirred to consider adopting the transformative truth that thoughts are not facts. And perhaps, like me, the simple image of circling cars will stick with you and prompt the choice we all have to not get in the cars that represent the unhelpful thoughts that can lead to being trapped in disabling fear loops.

Remember: Thoughts may keep circling, but you don’t have to get in every car that passes by. With practice, you can develop your ability to stay present and take value-based action (psychological flexibility) - even in moments of emotional pain - and choose to which thoughts you give your attention and energy; rather than feeling powerless to avoid the mental trap of the distress emotions that life's challenges can bring.

Coming up next: The last in this series, where I will share an important resource for taking what we have learned together about our distress emotions and turning it into action. Specifically, I will share: 12 Practical Strategies to Shift Fear-Based Patterns. These very doable techniques will load your toolbox for changing your relationship with thoughts; and in turn, empowering you to escape or avoid debilitating fear loops.

Meanwhile...For reflection:

Picture the cars circling in your mind...What thought keeps circling in your head — and how would it change your day if you let it drive by instead of climbing in?

Invitation to journal:

List three thoughts that circle most often. For each, write down what would happen if you simply observed it rather than acted on it.

**My offer of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about how you might develop your resilience through the struggle(s) you are currently facing.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Part 3: Fear, Worry, Anxiety and Stress—Untangling the Distress Web

This spooky web can be sticky to get out of!

I have been sharing my exploration into fear - its webs and loops, and generally speaking, its power to throw our emotions into dysregulation and our body systems out of the homeostasis for which we were made. My first two posts on the topic can be found here, if you would like to read them.

I used the personal story of our family handling the acute crisis of my husband resigning suddenly, to introduce the idea of fear loops as well as describe what goes on in our nervous systems in response to an acute threat. Then we covered the concept of homeostasis: a point of stability or balance that our nervous systems are designed to find and sustain or return to. I shared the steps the nervous system (parasympathetic, specifically), goes through to calm us down, and a few tools to help restore equilibrium.

Let’s do a deeper dive now, into fear loops - and specifically, fear feedback loops- that can become like a sticky web that ensnares both our thoughts and bodies.

How Can a Negative Feedback Loop Be Positive?

I have mentioned feedback loops, but have not yet defined the term. Early in my fear research, I sought out a clear and applicable definition, and actually found it outside the field of neurobiology. A highly regarded source that articulates the concept of  feedback loops, including both the positive and negative types, in the context of systems and biology is the landmark book: Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World  by MIT Standish Professor of Management and Director of the System Dynamics Group, John D. Sterman. According to Sterman:

 A feedback loop is a system where the output of a process is fed back into the system as input, either to regulate (stabilize or maintain balance) or to amplify the effects of the process.

As examples, feedback loops are common in biology, such as when describing body temperature regulation, and in psychology, when explaining how anxiety can feed more anxious thoughts.

There are two types of feedback loops, negative and positive. But the use of the words, negative and positive, can be misleading here. A negative feedback loop does not mean it is necessarily unhealthy or undesirable. Labeling it negative refers to the effect (or output) of counteracting the original input. Such is true in the example of stabilizing body temperature: In thermoregulation, the negative loop works to reverse the change and maintain homeostasis by keeping body temperature within a narrow, healthy range.

Whereas a positive feedback loop refers to the output of amplifying or increasing the original input, but it does not always mean the result is healthy or desirable. Referring to the psychology example, where anxiety feeds more anxious (unhealthy) thoughts, using the term positive feedback loop describes the amplification of the original input.  

A simple way I have found to remember the difference is this:

A negative feedback loop is self-correcting or counteracting, while a positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing or amplifying.

Applying these definitions to my own system’s response to our family’s difficulty, I realized I had been pulled into a positive feedback loop upon hearing my husband’s news (I quit my job!):

My unregulated distress response was producing anxious and catastrophic thinking, that then led to more anxiety. I needed to get in touch with the elements of this destructive and unsustainable loop to steady my system so I could support my children’s and husband’s internal response systems returning to stable.

Distinguishing the Elements of the Loop

In this discussion of feedback loops, fear, worry and anxiety each play a role in creating and sustaining a disruptive fear cycle. And all three emotions produce a stress response.

In our everyday lives, we tend to use the emotion words, fear, worry, anxiety and stress, interchangeably when describing someone’s emotional state; but are they synonyms? In fact, although related, these distress responses are distinct in origin and expression.

Consider how each emotion contributes to the creation of this fear loop: Initial fear is an immediate stress response to a possible threat, whereas worry creates a more prolonged stress response in which the threat does not have to be immediate, just possible. If the worry continues it becomes chronic, keeping the body in a state of stress, even without an active threat. Over time this can produce the state of anxiety that can result in burnout and/or health problems.

This creates a feedback loop:

The resulting anxiety, from the unregulated fear and worry, heightens the perception of threat - even benign or imagined ones – then more fear is triggered...and the stress response is continually activated.

Here is a chart that summarizes these feedback loop components, their roles and natures:

The bottom line is fear triggers acute stress. Repeated negative thinking prolongs activation, manifesting in worry and anxiety. Over time, this leads to chronic stress, which throws off our neural circuits and hormonal systems, making us more reactive to fear and less able to regulate worry and facilitate homeostasis in our total brain-body system.

Reflecting on my family experience now, I can identify moments when I was caught in each of those phases of a fear feedback loop. Thankfully, necessity propelled me learn more about how to recognize when the fear switch is being tripped and gain the awareness and tools needed to disrupt the formation of the unhealthy loop.

Now that we can see how fear, worry, and anxiety - all producing a stress response - create unhealthy and unhelpful loops, we can turn our attention to:

How can we change the way we relate to these inevitable distress emotions? The key? How you handle your thoughts.

In my next post, I will share a valuable resource that was a gamechanger in my quest to transform how I relate to the thoughts that are a part of these distress loops. Stay tuned...

Meanwhile, to ponder...

Which distress emotion -fear, worry, anxiety (all of which produce stress responses)- shows up most often in your story, and how does it keep you stuck in a loop?

To consider...

Journaling Prompt: Identify a recent situation where you experienced fear, worry, stress, or anxiety. Which one was at the root, and how did it spiral into the others?

**My offer of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about how you might develop your resilience through the struggle(s) you are currently facing.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g