Back in the day when my trauma was running riot in my life and I didn’t know it, I was alternately angry, depressed and motivated to change. Eventually the more chaotic things became, the more stuck I got.
Luckily life (and my soul and life purpose) had other ideas for me and eventually the more I resisted, the more I was broken down until I was forced to choose change.
Luckily for you, there are amazing tools/techniques/help available that can help. Here are some signs of stuckness you may relate to:
1. You don’t trust yourself
You constantly second guess yourself and worry endlessly about whether you did the right thing or if what you did was good enough. You are on a constant state of high alert and may suffer from Imposter Syndrome.
This is characterized by feeling like a fraud when you have a win or demonstrate competency, particularly in your career and happens when our inner landscape and opinion of ourselves doesn’t match this capability.
2. You are disconnected/isolated from others
It’s great that it’s become socially acceptable to acknowledge being introverted. However being socially isolated and disconnected because of pain or trauma isn’t cool.
The reality is we are designed to be tribal and interdependent. If through circumstance and/or decision making, you are an island, with your barriers up and you don’t trust anybody (because you are convinced other people will hurt you), perhaps healing would help.
3. You have a sense of almost paralysis and are living the same day, the same weekend and the same year over and over
Putting one foot in front of the other and continuing on just as you are feels like your only option. It’s a bit like being paralysed by invisible forces and operating from tunnel vision at the same time.
You are bored out of your mind and so stuck you feel like you will lose it at any moment, yet you justify continuing to stay as you are, because change is so terrifyingly scary.
You are worn down, nothing excites you and you have forgotten who you really are, maybe except on that vacation ten years ago…
4. You are often numb when you would like to feel joy, excitement or connection
Numb is actually a choice and a protection mechanism and allows you to stay detached and removed. You may have a sense that if you connected with what is below the surface you would cry and never be able to stop or perhaps you could explode with rage.
The other side of this coin, is that someone could do something utterly horrible to you and you wouldn’t say/do a thing about it.
In this scenario, there is a horrible sense of intertia that is overwhelming and seems endless.
5. You live in your head
You’ve just about forgotten how good it feels to live instinctively, feel alive, go out on a limb and you endlessly justify your choices as ‘adulting’ or ‘what life requires of you’ or because you have a very responsible job or perhaps there are others who depend on you.
You wear ‘busy’ as a badge of honor because it makes you feel valuable and reminds you, you are capable and needed. It also keeps you from feeling those sneaky feelings that are so uncomfortable and bottled just below the surface.
Paradoxically, you may occasionally indulge in risky behavior as an antidote to this and remind yourself that you are still alive. You know this recipe isn’t good or safe, but right now, it’s all you have.
You long for escape from all of it. What was freedom again?
6. You react when you shouldn’t and this frustrates you
You exercise incredible self control until you can’t and then at the most inopportune moment, you lose it or say something that appears out of character.
This is humiliating, embarrassing and you may have to make amends.
7. You look for love as if it’s going to save you (and it never works out)
I see this frequently. People have such a good security system keeping them safe (mammalian brain), that instead of dealing with themselves, they search for someone to love them, thinking it will be exciting, romantic, they will be rescued and ‘all the pain will go away”.
The result is inevitably a learning rather than loving experience, which reinforces all of the above things. Often, these people ‘hate’ their ex with a passion and the shitty things they did, or they are obsessed with one person and how to get them back.
These are all defense mechanisms, designed to keep them from being present with them and what requires healing in their life.
8. You justified your way out of your dreams, settling instead for a life that is mediocre and it feels like crap
It was all too hard, because some things happened to you in the past that you weren’t taught how to handle.
That wasn’t your fault, but the scars remained and before you knew it you were 40 and it just felt too hard to change. You probably kept going the best you could, hoping things would change and thinking it was ‘your lot’.
Deep down you are tired – tired of fighting, struggling, perhaps being broke, having romantic disasters and feeling broken by life.
The thought of paying more money and having to work on yourself to change all of that, feels unfair, engenders feelings of regret and even annoyance.
9. You live in the Past
Rather than face up to what you are dealing with, you tell yourself “if XYZ had been different, my whole life would have worked out”.
This usually involves blaming someone/something else and is never true, because if you were empowered and connected with your potency, one little thing wouldn’t have stopped you.
Maybe you even fantasize about what could have happened if things had been different. This is another way we keep from dealing with now.
If any or many of these things apply to you, it is possible to deal with all of it and be completely different – much more quickly than used to be available to us.
