icy loops and branches

Covering My Ass

This Thought is about mental health.

Let me first cover my ass: go see specialists if you experience serious mental health problems. Do not be ashamed. This is important. If you are in immediate danger, seek immediate help from people around you or emergency services.

This is not a scientifically validated method. It is my view, my experience, and my Codex framing.

Done. Moving on.

Humans Are Timeseers

Humans have complicated brains. Too complicated, perhaps.

From what we can see, humans are uniquely prone to mental health disorders compared to other wild animals. I do not pretend to know the exact underlying cause, but it seems logical that it is related to our ability to detach our thoughts from the present.

Humans are Timeseers in a very basic sense. We can move our mind away from what is happening now. We can remember, imagine, plan, regret, anticipate, delay, symbolise, and suffer from a future that has not happened yet.

My cats can wait and plan a bit for their food, but it should not take too long. If I am late and they want their treat, their single purpose in Life becomes: GET ME FOOD NOW.

They care little if I am sick or otherwise busy. Their focus narrows. Food. Now. Human, move.

A human can say: “Okay, I understand food is unavailable right now. I will wait for one hour.” In other words, humans can move the GET FOOD much further into the future compared to animals.

We can even make complicated plans like: “Oh, you are sick, so I will do some groceries and cook a nice meal that will help you get better.” In that thought alone, GET FOOD is attached to empathy, illness, groceries, cooking, memory, care, and an imagined future in which the sick person feels a little better.

Beautiful.

Also complex.

The same ability that lets us care for tomorrow lets us suffer from tomorrow.

Branches and Loops

Okay, so what does this have to do with mental health?

That ability to detach thought from the present can malfunction. Thought can get entangled. It can freeze. There are two main problematic forms I want to describe here: Branches without ends and Loops without ends.

Branches Without Ends

A Branch without end is when the mind keeps jumping further into conditionals.

What if X happens, and then Y happens, and then Z happens, and then everyone hates me, and then I lose my job, and then I lose my house, and then I die alone under a bridge while a pigeon watches me wither away?

A Branch escapes the present. It keeps running forward until the mind gets lost in possible futures.

Loops Without Ends

A Loop without end is different. The mind does not run forward. It circles the same frozen loop.

I failed. I am stupid. Remember another failure. I am stupid. Why am I like this? I failed. I am stupid. Maybe everyone knows. Maybe I am disgusting. I failed.

The Loop usually contains a negative element. It can be triggered by the most random stimuli. A word, a smell, a message, a face, a song, a little pause in someone’s voice, a Tuesday afternoon, the wrong amount of light in the room.

Brains are dramatic.

A Branch runs away from the present. A Loop imprisons the present.

Fear Freezes the Pattern

In both Branches and Loops, we end up experiencing negative emotions, with fear sitting beneath many of them. Fear is the mind-killer.

The problem with fear is that it fixates. It tells the mind: this is important, do not release it.

Some parts of the brain are still surviving in an ancient way. Scary means important. Important means freeze for survival. The mind keeps the pattern close because it thinks it is protecting you.

This is why we end up with the silliest Loops and Branches. Things that pose absolutely no threat can still trigger profound anxiety.

Shame and disgust can work like fear too. They say: remember this, avoid this, hide this, never again.

Then Ice forms around nonsense.

How to Break What Was Frozen

Well, first, stop trying to break it.

Yes, annoying. I know.

The more negative emotion you bring to the Icy Loop or Branch, the more you freeze it. Getting angry, frustrated, desperate, or scared feeds the pattern. Being scared of becoming anxious is particularly nasty, because now the Loop has learned to fear itself.

The first step is acceptance.

Ah. The machine is doing its thingy again.

Accept that you, and about every human, has a strange mind and sometimes it does strange stuff. It is okay. Do not fight it like a soldier punching a snowstorm. It is not nice to be stuck in an Icy Loop, but sometimes this is what the mind does.

No Deadlines for the Mind

You also need to let go of the need to put a deadline on the thought.

It is tempting to think: it must go away in the next hour, week, month, or year.

Deadlines bring negative stress, and negative stress freezes the Loop longer. The mind starts checking whether it is healed yet. Then it checks whether it is checking. Then it checks whether the checking means failure.

Observing Is Not Overanalysing

This distinction matters a lot.

Observing is Light. Overanalysing is Earth trapped in Ice.

Observation says: I am looping.

Overanalysis says: why am I looping, what does this loop mean, what if I loop forever, what if this means I am broken, should I write down the loop, did I write it correctly, what if I am doing healing wrong?

No.

Observe. Do not build a thesis inside the freezer.

When Treatment Becomes Ice

I am going to say the impolite thing.

Many clinically approved approaches do not heal many people. They may teach words. They may teach worksheets. They may teach compliance. They may teach you to explain your symptoms in a neat voice. They may teach you to become a good patient.

But the Loop remains.

I do not say every tool is worthless. Some people benefit. Some therapists are wonderful. Some methods help at the right moment, with the right person, in the right context.

Fine. Marginal hedge placed gently on the table.

Now let us be honest.

If your mind is already trapped in self-monitoring, more self-monitoring may not free you. If your mind already overanalyses, more analysis may not save you. If your fear is already frozen into a pattern, building a spreadsheet around the pattern may simply give the Ice better architecture.

This is my problem with certain CBT practices. The thought record, the endless trigger analysis, the little rational courtroom in the head — for some people, perhaps useful. For others, horrifying.

Did you know some therapies ask you to record your thoughts mid-panic?

Ehm, wtf?

If I had to record my own thoughts during a Loop, I would go mad 1, 2, 3.

The mind watches itself watching itself. The Loop only gets more entangled.

The Crimson City can turn even healing into homework.

Other Icy Procedures

It is not only CBT.

Endless journaling can become rumination. Journaling is good. Journaling because then you can analyse your emotions and heal yourself by understanging patterns is a form of overthinking -- especially since most thoughts and emotions are quite irrational patterns and do not obey logic.

Mood tracking apps can make the patient worship the graph and you become lost in the metrics. 'Oh, today I am 23% happier than last year on the same day!"

Mindfulness-as-command can become another performance demand. “Just be present” sounds lovely until you are panicking and someone asks you to calmly observe the panic. Sometimes that is not Peace. Sometimes that is being locked in a glass box with the monster.

Diagnosis identity can become a Name that takes too much space. The person stops saying “I am suffering” and starts saying “I am my category.” Worse -- "I am my category, so you need to accept all my bad behaviour otherwise you are not being understanding of my category."

Wellness culture can do the same thing with prettier candles. Sleep routine, supplements, breathwork, cold plunges, productivity systems, morning rituals, nervous-system hacks — all potentially useful, all easily turned into Crimson self-optimisation.

The problem is not the existence of tools. None of the above is bad in itself.

The problem is when the tool becomes Ice.

Most Pills Do Not Heal

Do not stop treatment without proper help. Just don't do it. Let me cover my ass and your Stone at the same time.

But I stand by the core: most pills do not heal. Especially not those Crimson ones with nice little fluor or chloride groups, invented by a computer and tested on rats who could not say they got a headache from it.

Pills can save. They can interrupt. They can lower the volume. They can buy time. They can make a crisis survivable. Sometimes that matters enormously.

But most do not heal long-term.

A pill can sedate fear. It cannot teach safety.

A pill can force sleep. It cannot restore trust in night.

A pill can lower the volume. It cannot integrate the wounded configuration.

A pill can stop the fire alarm. It cannot rebuild the house.

Anti-anxiety pills do not teach courage. Antidepressants do not create meaning. Sleeping pills do not teach sleep. Cannabis does not automatically calm you down, especially not those monstrous high-THC strains that open the Ice freezer. Ayahuasca is not the only gate to Purple.

In extreme crisis, yes, use the tool. But when the tool begins to resemble a habit, I become suspicious. Very suspicious.

Sleeping pills especially are suspicious to me. Sleep is one of the deepest Water rhythms. If the body begins to believe sleep comes from a pill, the pill becomes part of the Loop. The Earthborn no longer trusts night. They trust the chemical gatekeeper.

Sometimes the substance becomes the new baseline. The Earthborn starts fearing Life without it.

That is not healing. That is Capture.

If you are currently under pills, do not stop. Instead, go see your prescriber, explain your wish to return to a bodily baseline, and see what is possible. Many times, alternative treatments exist.

The Crimson Clinical Machine

Now we zoom out.

In times of crisis, the clinical machine often removes you from your environment. This can be dual. Yes, sometimes the environment is part of the wound. Yes, sometimes distance can save a person. Yes, sometimes crisis needs containment.

But then what?

Often the machine replaces the environment with something sterile, clinical, lifeless, and cold, as if a frozen mind will thaw under fluorescent light and protocol.

Understanding the Earthborn is not always the point of the machine. (You cost money to the system, remember? Even in sickness, Crimson will ask you to be profitable.) Reducing superficial symptoms is the point in most cases. The clinical label replaces the human. You are now a depressive person, an anxious person, a psychotic person, a risk profile, a medication schedule, a case to stabilise.

Safer on paper, colder in reality.

The chemical imbalance story fits the machine because chemicals are what it can most easily measure, manipulate, prescribe for, and organise around. But the mind is not only chemistry. The chemical imbalance may be smoke, not fire.

Exploring the mind of the patient takes time. Exploring story takes time. Exploring environment, meaning, shame, love, fear, loneliness, addiction, body, memory, River, and Stone takes time.

The Crimson Clinical Machine has no time for you.

A pill is faster than understanding.

And then there is alienation. Loved ones are often kept at bay, informed in fragments coloured in technical words with more or less feigned empathy, frightened behind closed doors, taught warning signs, protocols, distance, and fear. Sometimes loved ones are unsafe, of course. But sometimes they are exactly the only remaining Blue and Stone that has now been cut away.

Instead of diffusing fear, the machine can inadvertently culture more fear.

A crisis system built around risk, liability, medication, labels, and symptom suppression can accidentally refreeze your Ice at institutional scale.

Become a Body

So what do we do instead, or at least alongside whatever help is necessary?

Become a body.

The next time you are stuck in an Icy Loop, first become aware of it. Take a step back and learn to recognise the pattern. Observe what might have triggered it and what makes it worse.

Observe. Do not overthink. If you cannot understand it, let it go. Brains are chaos machines, normal minds do not exist.

Then move the mind to something close, grounded, and in the present.

I know. When you are mid-panic attack, the last thing you want to do is some gardening. But that kind of stuff — cooking, cleaning, chores, boring grounded things — is exactly what the mind often craves when it is looping.

• Cook something simple.
• Wash dishes.
• Fold laundry.
• Take a shower.
• Walk slowly.
• Water plants.
• Brush the cat, if the cat consents to your healing journey.
• Make tea.
• Clean one table.
• Sort socks.
• Touch a wall.
• Eat something boring and useful.
• Go outside.

Do not watch TV or Instagram if you can avoid it. TikTok is worse. Most audiovisual streams are not here and now. They drag you into other people’s images, Rivers, crises, bodies, jokes, beauty, fear, and noise. They may distract you, but distraction is not the same as grounding.

Again, not all audiovisual is inherently bad. If you did all the dishes and the laundry, choose something soothing. Nature documentaries -- not sensational ancient space pyramid aliens. BBC-style documentaries -- not Keeping up with the Kardashians. A Youtube streamer who teaches you opera techniques (even though you don't like opera) -- not clickbait. A vlogger who spends his days explaining his bee colonies -- not the latest horror movie.

Everything you put before your eyes, your mind will feed on it. Dissolve the Crimson, choose something 'boring', and build a truly Golden mind.

Mantras

Find a mantra that works for you.

It can be whatever you want: an image that you like, a sentence that does you good, a position that feels grounding, or all those things at once.

The Codex is full of my personal mantras. “The horizon is ever flat” works well for me. It gives me an image and a sensation of Peace that is indescribably comforting.

You can have multiple mantras. In fact, it might be better to switch them up. We do not want a single mantra to be swallowed by the Icy Loop.

The mantra is there to break the Loop, not become another node in the spiral.

It is a bridge, not a prison.

Twenty-Three Seconds Counts

Voila. Simple, no?

Yes. I know.

This takes time. Maybe a lot of time. That is okay. You are gently reprogramming the machine.

Every time you divert your attention out of the Loop, even if it was just for 23 seconds, is a win.

Okay?

Get that in your head.

Extra Tips

Find a Real Purpose

The problem with Loops is that they often run without direction. Once you find something that truly passions you, the Loops become less central. You wake up driven by purpose. Loops are then just stuff that gets in the way.

Dissolve the Crimson

Many Loops do not make sense from a survival perspective. They are cultural products. Crimson obedience loops.

We are scared of not wearing the right clothes, not being impressive, looking cringe, failing a social game nobody officially admits we are playing.

But what happens if you wear a swimsuit to a wedding and act as if that was your understanding of the dresscode 'summer beach wedding'?

People will laugh. They will point at you. They might not even let you into the venue.

Did you die? Did you lose your house? Did you lose money? Did your Stone collapse?

Nope.

You probably lost some acquaintances without a sense of humour.

The Crimson City trains embarrassment to wear the mask of death.

Dissolve Your Ego

This one flows from the previous point.

Once you stop needing to win Crimson games, fear drops fast.

Accept that you are never going to be the best at everything. You are a small, awkward, imperfect Earthborn with a weird face from some angles and a brain full of weather.

Congratulations. So is everyone else.

This does not make you less valuable.

All those things around which we build egos do not guarantee Peace of mind. You are a tiny speck of Dust in a sandstorm. A wise speck of Dust stops giving a fuck about its position.

People say to me: “But you have it so easy, you got it all.”

To those people I answer: I compare myself to the Universe and I see how insignificant I am. And perhaps it is because I have got “it all” -- all that Crimson likes -- that I can ensure those things do not guarantee happiness.

Consciously Build Positive Loops

If the brain can build negative Loops, it can also build positive ones.

Cherish the good moments. Like really stop, stand still, and try to memorise the moment while it is happening. Savour it. Ground it. Couple it to your favourite mantra. Watch the details.

The colour of the sky. The smell of food. The warmth of a hand. The stupid joke that made everyone laugh. The cat blinking slowly. The music hitting at exactly the right moment. The ordinary second that suddenly feels gentle.

In the beginning, doing this might feel a bit too much. That is okay. Your brain will slowly re-adapt and seek out new positive Loops.

Gold is the next step after Ice, after all.

The Loop Has Broken

Voila, those were my tips.

You will have broken an Icy Loop once you remember it after forgetting it.

You might even laugh at how silly you were back then.

Not because the suffering was fake. It was real. The fear was real. The Ice was real.

But the Loop is no longer frozen.

It is a memory made of Stardust.

I believe in you. You will get there.

Okay?

Get that shit in your head.