The Doom Loop™

The pattern that keeps intelligent people stuck trying to control what was never theirs to control.

Most people never notice when the loop begins.
They only feel the anxiety, overthinking, or exhaustion that follows.

The Doom Loop™

The pattern that keeps intelligent people stuck trying to control what was never theirs to control.

Most people never notice when the loop begins.
They only feel the anxiety, overthinking, or exhaustion that follows.

The Path to Feeling Free

The Doom Loop™ -> U-Turn -> The Waiting Room (The Loop of Faith™ -> Untethering -> Throw It To The U™)

Freedom unfolds through a series of shifts in how we relate to the unknown.

The Path to Feeling Free

The Doom Loop™ -> U-Turn -> The Waiting Room (The Loop of Faith™ -> Untethering -> Throw It To The U™)

Freedom unfolds through a series of shifts in how we relate to the unknown.

How I discovered the Doom Loop™

In 2019, something happened that shifted the course of my body of work.

I didn't yet that this was a turning point.

I figured it was a deepening of my work. I assumed it was just a deepening of what I was already doing. I had published a book on my coaching system in 2017, and I certainly wasn’t planning on abandoning that work altogether.

Here's what happened.

It started when a dear friend of mine shared a post on Facebook. In it she mentioned the three universal fears described in Gregg Braden’s book The Divine Matrix.

The first two were immediately familiar.

Fear of abandonment.
Fear of not being good enough.

These are fears that showed up consistently for my coaches and their clients. I mentioned often that these two are at the core of what keeps people stuck, no matter their desired outcome, who they were, where they came from, etc.

But then there was the third. And it landed like a sucker punch.

The fear of trust.

In other words:

The fear of letting go of control.

In an instant I know how important this was. It landed hard, because up until then I had been blind to it. It didn't show up in coaching sessions at all.

That's because for the majority of my life, I had been operating from control. I was fully in it, and so were most of my clients.

And one thing that happens when you're fully in it, is that it becomes invisible. You don't see it as a problem, because you're not aware you're even doing it.

I started researching what it takes to let go of control. Granted, it started out as a desire to figure it out. To control it. Little did I know it would lead me to the very thing that would set me -- and my clients -- free.

What I would eventually discover is that the moment something feels out of our hands, the mind begins a predictable pattern of trying to restore control.

It's a process I now call The Doom Loop™.

It happens so quickly that most people never realize it is happening.

The moment something feels uncertain, threatening, or outside of our control, the mind begins searching for a way to regain safety.

In 2019, something happened that shifted the course of my body of work.

I didn't yet that this was a turning point.

Here's what happened.

It started when a dear friend of mine shared a post on Facebook. In it she mentioned the three universal fears described in Gregg Braden’s book The Divine Matrix.

The first two were immediately familiar.

Fear of abandonment.
Fear of not being good enough.

But then there was the third. And it landed like a sucker punch.

The fear of trust.

In other words:

The fear of letting go of control.

What I would eventually discover is that the moment something feels out of our hands, the mind begins a predictable pattern of trying to restore control.

It's a process I now call The Doom Loop™.

It happens so quickly that most people never realize it is happening.

The moment something feels uncertain, threatening, or outside of our control, the mind begins searching for a way to regain safety.

How the Doom Loop™ works

One of the first things I did in my search to understand what it truly takes to let go of control was conduct in-depth interviews with my clients.

I was curious where control — and the fear of trust — showed up in their lives, and more importantly, what it actually felt like in the body.

Most people described the same thing.

Tension.
Contraction.
An activated nervous system.

But as I listened more closely, a surprising pattern began to emerge.

Those sensations were not actually the beginning of the process.

They were the end result.

Before the tension…
before the contraction…
before the nervous system activation…

there was something else.

A moment of relaxation in the body.

A tiny moment where the body registers:

“This is out of my hands.”

That moment is so subtle that most people never notice it.

Yet it is precisely where the Doom Loop™ begins.

Because for many of us, that sensation of “it’s out of my hands” has become deeply associated with danger.

With loss.
With rejection.
With abandonment.

The body interprets the sensation as a threat, and the nervous system quickly contracts in response.

This is why nervous system regulation alone is often not a long-term solution.

It addresses the activation, but not the moment where the pattern actually begins.

That tiny moment of relaxation — that split second of realizing something is out of our control — sits at the heart of the Doom Loop™.

And once the loop begins, the mind quickly steps in to make sense of the sensation.

One of the first things I did in my search to understand what it truly takes to let go of control was conduct in-depth interviews with my clients.

I was curious where control — and the fear of trust — showed up in their lives, and more importantly, what it actually felt like in the body.

Most people described the same thing.

Tension.
Contraction.
An activated nervous system.

But as I listened more closely, a surprising pattern began to emerge.

Those sensations were not actually the beginning of the process.

They were the end result.

Before the tension…
before the contraction…
before the nervous system activation…

there was something else.

A moment of relaxation in the body.

A tiny moment where the body registers:

“This is out of my hands.”

That moment is so subtle that most people never notice it.

Yet it is precisely where the Doom Loop™ begins.

Because for many of us, that sensation of “it’s out of my hands” has become deeply associated with danger.

With loss.
With rejection.
With abandonment.

The body interprets the sensation as a threat, and the nervous system quickly contracts in response.

This is why nervous system regulation alone is often not a long-term solution.

It addresses the activation, but not the moment where the pattern actually begins.

That tiny moment of relaxation — that split second of realizing something is out of our control — sits at the heart of the Doom Loop™.

And once the loop begins, the mind quickly steps in to make sense of the sensation.

This core pain is almost always connected to something deeply human.

Aloneness.
Heartbreak.
Loss.
Devastation.

And it is often held in place by a core subconscious belief such as:

The Universe is against me.
God doesn't favor me.
I am all alone in the world.
I don’t get to have what I want.

These beliefs are already painful in and of themselves.

But it doesn’t stop there.

There is usually one almost imperceptible thought that follows them; The thought that creates the true sense of doom: “And there is nothing I can do about it.”

When the body senses that something is out of our hands and this deeper meaning is activated, the brain quickly moves into defense.

That defense is fear.

Fear mobilizes the system to do something — anything — to escape the feeling.

Some people escape into over-analyzing, trying to figure out the solution.

Others jump into desperate hustle and fix-it mode, attempting to force control back into the situation.

And others become immobilized, sitting on the couch binge-watching Netflix while feeling guilty about it.

All of these reactions are attempts to escape the underlying sensation of powerlessness.

Some of these escapes even provide temporary relief, especially when they appear to work. For a moment, you feel back in control.

But over time they become exhausting. The body simply isn’t designed to bathe in cortisol all day long.

This core pain is almost always connected to something deeply human.

Aloneness.
Heartbreak.
Loss.
Devastation.

And it is often held in place by a core subconscious belief such as:

The Universe is against me.
God doesn't favor me.
I am all alone in the world.
I don’t get to have what I want.

These beliefs are already painful in and of themselves.

But it doesn’t stop there.

There is usually one almost imperceptible thought that follows them; The thought that creates the true sense of doom: “And there is nothing I can do about it.”

When the body senses that something is out of our hands and this deeper meaning is activated, the brain quickly moves into defense.

That defense is fear.

Fear mobilizes the system to do something — anything — to escape the feeling.

Some people escape into over-analyzing, trying to figure out the solution.

Others jump into desperate hustle and fix-it mode, attempting to force control back into the situation.

And others become immobilized, sitting on the couch binge-watching Netflix while feeling guilty about it.

All of these reactions are attempts to escape the underlying sensation of powerlessness.

Some of these escapes even provide temporary relief, especially when they appear to work. For a moment, you feel back in control.

But over time they become exhausting. The body simply isn’t designed to bathe in cortisol all day long.

If you are reading this and recognizing yourself in these patterns — questioning whether something is possible, whether you deserve it, whether the timing is right — there is a good chance you are not simply “thinking things through.”

You may actually be inside the Doom Loop in this very moment.

And when you're inside the loop, it can be incredibly difficult to see beyond it. The thoughts feel convincing. The scarcity and urgency feels real. The sense of impossibility can become paralyzing.

The mind believes it needs to solve something immediately.

If you're a deep-feeling thinker who recognizes the Doom Loop™, you're in the right place.

From time to time I send reflections about the Waiting Room and what happens when life moves beyond our control.

You're welcome to receive them by email:

You may actually be inside the Doom Loop in this very moment.

If you're a deep-feeling thinker who recognizes the Doom Loop™, you're in the right place.

From time to time I send reflections about the Waiting Room and what happens when life moves beyond our control.

You're welcome to receive them by email:

Why the Doom Loop Feels Impossible to Escape

This temporary relief is one of the reasons the Doom Loop™ feels so impossible to escape. It's the ego's way of keeping you safe.

Over time I noticed that the mind tends to draw the same conclusions about this sensation.The experience becomes:

Personal
Permanent
Pervasive

For example: Imagine someone preparing to give a presentation in front of their peers. Even the thought of it may trigger anxiety. Their heart races. Their hands sweat.

Why?

Because other people's opinions are unpredictable. And unpredictability means something feels out of their hands.

The mind then draws a powerful conclusion:

The universe is against me.
Everyone will reject me.
There must be something wrong with me.

The experience becomes personal, permanent, and pervasive.

At the same time, the mind reinforces the pattern through another set of mechanisms.

Because the sensation feels real, the mind assumes the story must be real too.

This is what I call emotionalizing. “If I feel this strongly, it must be true.”

From there the mind begins gathering evidence, searching the past and present for proof that the conclusion is correct.

And finally, control is placed outside ourselves — in other people, in circumstances, or even in the universe itself.

The paradox here is that your ego identity who believes all of this to be true, then tries to negate it by fighting, forcing, or fixing to get back some semblance of control.

And the more it does, the more it proves to itself that the doom is real and true.

This is why you may have tried it all, and still feel stuck.

Which is one of the reasons I gradually began moving away from many traditional coaching and healing tools.

Because a surprising number of them unintentionally reinforce the Doom Loop™ — and the intellectual control that sustains it — rather than helping us transcend it.