About Aaron Jarrels
I built Break the Loop to help couples stop having the same fight.
Aaron Jarrels is a licensed therapist and founder of Break the Loop, a relationship education framework that helps couples stop repeating versions of the same fight by recognizing and interrupting the pattern underneath it.
I hold a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology with a specialization in Marriage and Family Therapy. I am licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in California and an Independent Mental Health Practitioner (LIMHP) in Nebraska. I serve as Chief Operating Officer and a therapist at Austerity Health.
My clinical work informs the questions I bring to Break the Loop. The framework itself is relationship education: a way to help people describe a recurring interaction, recognize their own responses, and practice a different next choice.
Why I Built Break the Loop
In working with couples, I kept returning to a practical question.
Partners could often explain what they were arguing about. The harder part was describing what started happening between them once the conversation became difficult.
A concern came up. One person heard criticism and began explaining. The other felt unheard and pushed harder. Someone pulled away. Before long, the original concern was competing with another argument about tone, blame, distance, or whether either person was listening.
The issue still mattered. So did the interaction around it.
I wanted to give couples a practical language for noticing that interaction. Something they could use to examine one real disagreement without having to explain their entire relationship first.
That became Break the Loop.
What Break the Loop Helps You Examine
The issue is what you are trying to address. The Loop is what starts happening between you while you address it.
Break the Loop organizes that experience into four parts:
Launch → Overload → Old Story → Protection Move
- Launch: What happened or what did I notice?
- Overload: What started happening inside me?
- Old Story: What did the moment begin to mean?
- Protection Move: What did I do next?
One person’s Protection Move can become something the other person reacts to. In BTL language, it may become their next Launch.
This is an educational map, not a diagnosis or a claim that every disagreement follows an identical sequence. Its purpose is to give you specific moments to examine and a place to begin practicing.
Understanding and Responsibility Belong Together
Understanding a response does not excuse its impact.
You may understand why you became defensive and still need to take responsibility for what you said. Your concern may be legitimate even if the conversation became difficult. A boundary can remain necessary after you understand the interaction more clearly.
The Loop describes a pattern, not a person. It is not a label to put on your partner or a formula for dividing blame equally.
Each person’s behavior can affect what happens next without both people carrying equal responsibility for harm.
That distinction is central to how I teach BTL.
My Clinical Work and My Educational Work
At Austerity Health, I serve in both an operational leadership role and a clinical role as a therapist.
Break the Loop is a separate relationship education framework. Its public resources offer explanations, reflection exercises, and practices for recognizing recurring conflict.
Using a BTL resource does not establish a therapist-client relationship. The framework does not replace individualized assessment or treatment when those are needed.
If a relationship involves fear, threats, coercion, intimidation, stalking, sexual coercion, violence, or fear of retaliation, safety and appropriate professional support take priority over joint pattern exercises.
Research, Evidence, and What Is Still Developing
Break the Loop’s language and teaching structure are original. They are informed by established research on couple interaction, emotional regulation, relational meaning, and conflict recovery.
Research on those processes does not independently validate the complete BTL framework, its exact sequence, or its effectiveness. I want readers and professionals to be able to see that distinction clearly.
I am also developing the Definitive Field Guide for Recurring Relationship Conflict: a free, research-grounded reference intended to be useful to couples and professionals independently of Break the Loop.
The guide’s purpose is to bring relevant research, its limitations, and practical distinctions into one carefully sourced resource. It is currently in development.
Start With One Interaction
You do not need to examine every argument you have ever had.
Choose one disagreement that feels familiar. Look at what happened, what changed inside you, what the moment began to mean, and how you responded.
The first practice is small:
Catch one Loop and do one thing differently.
Bring Break the Loop to Your Organization
Organizations can explore the developing BTL educational program and facilitator pathway. Qualified relationship professionals can also review the framework’s scope, evidence boundaries, and potential relevance to their work.