How to Get Out of a Mental Tailspin
- Autumn Woods
- May 6
- 6 min read
I was sitting in the backyard one afternoon, when I heard the Lord ask me if I knew how to get out of a tailspin. I had a mental image of an aircraft trying to recover from one, but knew that God was also referring to a mental tailspin. I said that I didn’t, but knew I was about to learn.
Being an aerial enthusiast, I eagerly started researching. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) defines a tailspin as “an aggravated stall that results in an airplane descending in a helical, or corkscrew path.” Even though both wings are stalled, the one on the inside of the spin is always more stalled than the outer wing. The crazy angle of the wings results in the outer wing generating more lift, reinforcing the spin, while the inner wing generates more drag, a resistance to forward movement. This sets the plane up to spiral out of control.
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When you’re in a mental tailspin, what’s going on inside you is often stormier than what’s happening on the outside; in fact, it can drag you down and make things worse. We see this illustrated in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” This doesn’t mean that your outer circumstances are not real or terrible. It means that allowing them to overwhelm your heart and mind will cause you to stall, spiral, and potentially crash. Lifting your outer circumstances above God, who dwells inside you, will drag you down because you can’t handle the weight and intensity of what’s going on in your life.
When your heart and mind are spinning out, you’re panicking. Fear is taking over the controls, and you aren’t operating in the peace and perfect love of God. You can’t do anything about what’s going on outside of you until your heart posture changes. Similarly, the only way to get out of a tailspin in the air is to stop the stall on both wings, addressing the inner spiral first to correct the course of the entire aircraft.
Pilots are taught an acronym to help them remember what to do to get out of a tailspin. PARE. We’re going to examine each step and use it as a guide for stopping mental tailspins with the help of the Holy Spirit.
P - Power to Idle
That’s right. The first thing you have to do to stop the plane from spinning out is cut the power. That sounds frightening, and it’s the exact opposite of what a pilot would do to get out of a regular stall. But putting the power to idle reduces the amount of force pushing the nose of the plane up. You want the nose to come down to help you level out.
For a believer in Jesus, the first thing we have to do to get out of a mental tailspin is recognize that our power is limited, but God’s is infinite. Any power we have comes from Him, and we have to surrender to Him, bowing our hearts and minds in worship. Your striving and trying to push through the mental spiral on your own is not going to get you out. Every ability you have comes from God, and when you’re focus is not on Him, that’s when you get into trouble. “Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). So, we have to do what is contrary to our nature, stop pushing, be still and know that the Lord is God. That’s step one. It’s not playing possum or abdicating responsibility; it’s getting your priorities straight, and reminding yourself that God is greater than your outer circumstances and your inner turmoil.
A - Ailerons to Neutral
Ailerons are small, hinged flaps at the outer rear of the wings that create micro-adjustments to help with lift, turning, and rolling depending on how you need the aircraft to respond. During normal flight, they are a big help, but in a tailspin, they are a major nuisance. The second step to spin recovery is putting the ailerons into neutral. In other words, they need to be flush with the wings, not raised or lowered. If you try to get fancy with them, you can cause yourself to spin out in the opposite direction.
In the case of mental tailspins, the ailerons are our tendencies to try to “help” God do His job better. It’s us saying, “But what if I just do this…? What if I make this little adjustment?” It’s Sarah sending Hagar to Abraham to produce Ishmael so that God’s promise about Abraham’s seed is fulfilled, when she needed to wait a little longer for God to give her Isaac. It’s not real surrender. You’re still trying to maintain control. Instead of bargaining and making micro adjustments to your mind or your outer behavior, continue to bring your thoughts captive before the Lord. Even if you have to do it 18 times in a minute, you are still training yourself to put the thoughts in subjection to the Lord, and preventing them from taking control of you.
R - Rudder to Opposite Spin
Now that the aircraft’s nose is down and the wings are streamlined, the pilot’s next move is to determine the direction of the spin and add the opposite rudder to get out of it. If the plane is spinning left, add the right rudder; if spinning right, add the left rudder. The best way to determine the direction of the spin is to look down the nose of the aircraft.
At this point in the proceedings, you have surrendered to the Lord and turned over your desire to keep tweaking the problem. Now it’s time to look directly at the direction your thoughts were spinning and go the opposite way. King David was brilliant at this. Throughout the Psalms, he demonstrated the ability to interrupt his pain, anguish, and helplessness by meditating on God, who is the opposite of all of those things. When people stabbed David in the back, he reminded himself that God is faithful. When he was depressed, he encouraged himself to hope in the Lord. When he found that he could not overcome his enemies, he appealed to God to do it for him. Instead of staying stuck in an “I can’t” spiral, whip your thoughts into the opposing swirl of “but God can.” If you need help practicing this, Psalms is an excellent training manual.
E - Elevator Forward
The final step in spin recovery is to quickly push the yoke, or elevator, slightly forward into the dive. This seems counterintuitive, like you’re plummeting down at a fast rate, but it actually reduces the plane’s angle of attack and breaks the stall on the wings. From there, the pilots puts the rudder in neutral, adds power and raises the nose, leveling out and resuming regular flight.
This is a final, humble acknowledgement that where you are weak, God is strong. You commit to your surrender, your original position of bowing before the Lord and recognizing His supremacy, which allows the Lord to lift you up and level you out so that you can continue living on mission with your mind, will, emotions, and strength submitted to God. You elevate your eyes, focusing on the Lord and what you know is true about His character.
James 4 says: “…‘God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded (v.6-8)… Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up (v.10).”
Why We Spin Out
A lapse in humility is often what starts mental tailspins in the first place. We get so focused on the problem, our inability to solve it, and the resulting shame, that we forget we were not meant to do it on our own without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We forget that our Heavenly Father is greater that whatever it is that is consuming our thoughts and that we are able to come to Him directly for help because of Jesus. In your Daddy Daughter or Father Son Time, ask the Lord to show you an area in your life where you spiral out. Work with the Holy Spirit to develop a rescue and recovery plan using this as a guide. Memorize a few Psalms that speak to that place in your heart and help interrupt the mental tailspin so that you can get to a place of humility and worship and quickly recover from the spin. It takes practice, and it doesn’t mean that the problems outside automatically get fixed, but you will be better equipped to deal with them because your gaze is focused on God, and all that He is capable of. And you'll be able to move forward, rather than being dragged and paralyzed by fear.
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