A simple technique for breaking the cycle of negative looping — using sound, sight, and touch.
I teach my clients and students that the brain is many things, especially a pattern machine — constantly detecting or scanning the environment and even our own body, consistently using past experiences to generate prediction models, first and foremost to reduce fear in the now and manage our clear worries of the future and unclear anxieties about the future, especially anticipation and performance anxiety.
Pattern seeking is also how the brain, mind, and body allow a person to not only be mindful of threats, but also to recognize opportunities and create meaning in daily life. Thus, whatever you keep directing your attention towards, your brain interprets this ongoing focus as important — and sends you more signals or messages of it. Keep paying attention to a worry and it grows. Dwell on an anxiety and it expands. Ruminate daily and it distracts a person from the now. This isn't a character flaw — it's neuroscience.
Attention as signal Whatever we keep paying attention to, the brain-mind-body keeps sending more of that.
The 3 + 3 well-being technique is a practical, evidence-based tool drawn from brain-mind-body research I have used for many years with my clients and patients — young and old. Its aim is simple: to interrupt a repeating negative loop by deliberately redirecting our attention through three sensory channels — sound, sight, and touch. When the mind is spinning, empower the body-mind-brain to become the calming anchor.
This easy-to-deploy technique has three steps, each targeting a different sense to reduce the three fears — ruminating, worry, anxiousness — that make the negative looping decline and, at some point, stop for many. Work through the following steps in order, and take your time with each one. Some of my clients report a noted positive change within one to three days, others up to a week. Doing nothing will get you nothing — be patient, be resilient, and keep doing it until there is a change in the unhealthy pattern.
Work down this table in order — it mirrors the live, timed version of this exercise: a moment to name the feeling, two minutes of breathing, then three objects to see and name, and then three to see, hold and name. Press start and follow along stage by stage.
On practice Consistency and repeating positive purposeful behaviours is the bridge between knowing what helps you and actually becoming who you want to be.
Before you can shift your attention, you need to know what has it. There are five major feelings that tend to pull us into the negative loops of ruminating, worry, and anxiety: happiness that tips into anxiety about losing something important, sadness over a loss, fear of potential known or unknown harm, anger arising from a disparagement of a value, and shame over a behaviour one did or did not do. Rather than fighting the feeling or pushing it away, the first move is simply to name it — out loud, and in the third person. Ask yourself: "Mark, what feeling has got your attention right now?"
Naming a feeling in the third person creates just enough psychological distance to observe it without being consumed by it. By naming the feeling you are experiencing, the brain moves from an emotive state to a logical state by merely asking a question to be answered — what I call in my sessions, observe but do not absorb. Concurrently, by going into the third person, you have shifted the brain into a coaching circuit and an emotional regulation process. In short, we are now responding to the matters at hand instead of reacting and over-focusing on the feeling of fear.
Another benefit we achieve with the name-it-to-tame-it exercise is self-trust. Doing it with clarity, a tone of kindness, and sparking motivation and momentum (grit) is a simple holistic technique that enhances our wellness. The third-person technique is perceived by the brain as someone being there with you, guiding and empowering you. Sooner or later the brain learns that someone is actually you. Really!
Once you've named the feeling that has hijacked you, activate a two-minute breathing technique of your choice — box breathing, a slow exhale, whatever works for you. Then, when you've finished your breath work, say gently out loud: "Mark, it's time for your 3 + 3." You're signalling to your brain-mind-body that a shift is coming.
Verbalising an emotion activates the prefrontal cortex, the brain's regulation centre, which helps reduce the intensity of the emotional response. Speaking in the third person adds a layer of self-distancing that supports new, logical brain activity. Specifically for my geek readers, this technique invites the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to commence logical reasoning that replaces reacting to emotions, and instead, assess, plan and activate a calming, solutions-focused brain-mind-body process.
Now bring your eyes — your vision — into the 3 Plus 3 process. Don't overthink it: just look at something (a happy thing, please), and after a focused ten-second stare, your brain-mind starts to "see it" more so than the looping thing you see in your thoughts. In short, to change our unhealthy focus pattern we need to change the focus instead of stopping the focus. If possible, look outside a window — natural environments with a lot of green (trees are great) are particularly effective at drawing the brain's attention to beauty and awe. If that's not an option, find an object across the room: a tree in a painting, a lamp, a bookshelf. Rest your gaze on that object for a full ten seconds. Then say it out loud in the third person: "Mark is seeing a painting on the wall."
Repeat this exercise with two more positive objects, giving each one ten seconds of focused attention and naming it aloud afterward. As mentioned earlier, the secret sauce for this part of the 3 Plus 3 is having that item you look at last be one that brings forth happy and fond memories. Some of my clients keep a photograph, a book, or a favourite coffee mug handy for this third see-it-and-name-it. Personal sharing: mine is a picture of The Beatles at Shea Stadium in New York, way back in 1964. My back-up is a Beatles coffee mug. Feel free to copy and paste my number three!
By the end, you will have deliberately directed your eyes — and your brain-mind-body — towards three distinct things in the world around you, each one pulling attention away from the negative loop inside your head. This visual process activates a "looking out" experience, quietly disrupting the internal negative looping. Serotonin and endorphins now assist the parasympathetic nervous system in calming us down when we look at non-threatening images in the now. It's not rocket science, and yet it speaks directly to our nervous system for wellness. To put it another way: the healthy hard is looking at something kind and positive; the unhealthy hard is keep looking at threat-seeking thoughts. Choose your hard wisely.
Deliberate visual attention activates areas of the brain associated with present-moment awareness, creating a natural counterweight to the inward spiral of rumination on the past, fear in the here and now, and worries and anxieties of the future. It gives the brain and mind a greater sense of control over our emotional state and lowers physiological arousal. The body then follows, and we start to slowly notice less physical tension in four key areas: neck and shoulders, lower back, gut-brain, and chest.
The final step brings the body fully into the 3 Plus 3 well-being practice through physical contact, along with seeing it and saying it. Pick up any three items within reach — a coffee mug, a book, your eyeglasses, whatever is nearby — and, as in Step 2, make those items happy, joyous ones. Hold the first positive item out in front of you, look at it for ten seconds, and say it aloud in the third person once again: "Mark is holding a Beatles coffee mug." Set the first object down slowly, then repeat with a second item, and then a third.
Here is where a bit of creativity and individuality come into play — some of my clients change positions in the room for the third step. They may have started out sitting on a couch in the living room for the first and second steps of the 3 Plus 3, and with the third step move to a dining room chair or the balcony. Whichever process you use, the key is to remain in a calm and optimistic mindset.
The combination of touch, sight, and sound-voice creates a triple sensory interrupt — engaging multiple brain regions simultaneously, making it harder for any single negative-looping thought to maintain its hold. It may take more than one attempt, or more than one day, before a new, consistent healthy pattern emerges. You can keep holding the same items, or mix things up from time to time.
If the feelings or thoughts haven't eased after one round, don't stop — repeat the full 3 + 3 sequence another three or four times. Persistence is part of the practice: the brain responds positively to repetition, replacing an old unhealthy pattern with a new healthy one. This exercise also teaches delayed gratification and patience, a key emotional-regulation and social-intelligence skill for life. Being patient as we wait is powerful.
What makes the 3 + 3 technique valuable is not just its simplicity — it's its portability. You don't need a quiet room, a meditation cushion, or twenty free minutes. You need only yourself, several objects around you, and a willingness to pause and pay attention to something other than what your brain has been negatively looping on.
By anchoring yourself to sound, then sight, and then touch, you activate a basic but powerful psychological-physiological grounding technique that, practiced over time, restores a sense of safety and security, agency, confidence, and calmness. Attention is often a limited resource — feed it with a positive and kind presence, and eventually a healthy presence grows. Start small, stay consistent, and let the three senses do the well-being work that enhances your wellness.