How to Escape a Doom Spiral

You know it when you're in it: the familiar whoompf as your nervous system and body take in the presence of a threat, followed by the narrow focus, repeating thought patterns, and undeniable pull towards something, anything that will distract you or make this awful experience go away. Welcome to the doom spiral.

Ok, but how do I make it go away?

As you probably know already, the doom spiral is both highly uncomfortable and hard to control. Part of you wants to feel anything other than the impact of the thoughts, feelings and sensations that come with it, and yet another part feels driven to ruminate and focus on it. This rumination and focus often fixates on what happened, why it happened, and what should be done about it, often with a pretty harsh self-critical vibe.

It's totally normal and absolutely part of human nature to want to avoid things that feel unpleasant, and calling a doom spiral unpleasant is putting it very mildly. However, part of what makes a doom spiral so persistent is the fact that the part of you that wants to escape can't get away from the other part of you that's fixated on the doom. Acknowledging the fixation is a crucial first step.

Still dooming over here. What now?

If you're able to acknowledge the part of you that wants to focus on the doom, congratulations, you're already a little bit outside of the doom spiral. Now there's at least a tiny part of you that is able to notice, and therefore is not fully absorbed inside either trying to escape or trying to fixate on the doom.

If want to increase that space a little more, try noticing the things around you - the physical objects in your space, the smell in the room, anything you can touch or hear. Yes, your mind may still be going full-tilt doom mode, and even noticing and acknowledging that helps bring yourself and your awareness back into the present moment. This isn't like flicking a light switch and turning the doom off. It's more like increasing the amount of space around the doom so that you have more room to move around it. It's still there, but it's not totally running the show.

I never want to be in a doom spiral ever again. How do I do that?

While we can't (and honestly wouldn't be better off even if we could) totally turn off the threat detection system that drives your doom spirals, getting at the root cause can significantly reduce the frequency and intensity. This involves being a little bit curious about when and where the doom spiral starts, what triggers them, and what happened in your past that feels similar to that situation today.

This is something that we usually need help with, and that's normal and totally OK. A skilled therapist can help guide this process in a way that is effective and leads to a feeling of relief. It can also be really helpful to understand where those feelings come from, and be able to trace the connection from the past to the present.