5 Reminders for When You Feel Stuck
No feeling is final
There is a particular frustration that comes with feeling stuck. It doesn’t matter if it’s your car stuck in the mud with your wheels spinning or if you’re just experiencing the metaphorical feeling of spinning your wheels as you wait for life to change. It can make you feel angry at yourself, at other people, and even at the world around you.
Take a deep breath. There are lessons to be learned even in the middle of feeling like you’re stuck in a rut with no hope of freeing yourself. I know from experience.
The Stuck Place Is Filled With Lessons
For months, I felt like I was spinning the proverbial wheels as I tried to free myself from grief. I went through all the stages from denial to anger to sadness and back again. I thought peace would never come, and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t moving on faster.
The funny thing is that when I stopped spinning my wheels and trying so hard to get out, I found myself free. It wasn’t the effort that moved me forward. It was my willingness to sit in the stuck place and allow help to arrive. It came in the form of an unexpected but welcome perspective shift.
The stuck place has something to teach you. When I couldn’t move on, I spent time considering my attachment. Was it to the person or to the idea? Why couldn’t it be to both? I took a good hard look at my own actions and the arc of that relationship. I sat in my feelings and let them be. I removed the judgment and honored my grief and the love that created it. I learned. That learning contributed to my healing.
No Feeling Is Final
When you’re stuck, it’s easy to think you’ll always be stuck. Luckily, no feeling is final. Not anger. Not sadness. Not grief. Feelings only stay when you hang on tightly to them. If you allow them to simply be, they will come and go in their own time.
This is one of the biggest lessons of the healing journey. Do your thoughts dwell on a person or a past argument? Are you worrying over the future or stuck regretting the past? Look at where your thoughts go. You don’t have to follow them. Simply note them without judgment and redirect your attention to something that better serves you.
This doesn’t mean that you should ignore your feelings or distract yourself from thinking about them. It does mean that dwelling on them can become a crutch that interferes with your healing. Are you processing how you’re feeling, or are you just wallowing in the angst of feeling it? One will help heal you, and one will only spin those wheels, digging you deeper into the feeling.
Healing Is Not Linear
It’s funny how much I thought I could dictate my own healing. I loved one person deeply for two years of my life. Somehow, I thought I could just wrap up the grief in a matter of months. When those months stretched the length of a year, I became frustrated at what I saw as my lack of progress.
Healing isn’t linear. It doesn’t work on a timeline that you dictate. It stays for as long as it needs to, and apparently, I needed every bit of that time to feel my feelings. My love was strong and loyal, and yet I assumed it would stop being that when the object of it was no longer in my life. Healing isn’t linear, and love isn’t conditional. I thought being stuck was a lack of progress, but it was, in fact, part of the forward movement.
What I couldn’t see then was that my perspective was shifting beneath the surface. I moved beyond denial and anger. I stayed in sadness for a long time. Eventually, I healed. I have nothing but love left, and it’s the peaceful kind of love that doesn’t seek to change what is and instead simply accepts. It took a long time to get there, and I anticipate setbacks. Healing is funny that way.
Setbacks Sometimes Launch Us Forward
Now that I’ve reached a place of deeper healing, I can see how the setback of being mired in grief actually helped propel me forward. When I felt stuck, I couldn’t run or distract myself from my true feelings. I could only feel them. I cried all the tears I didn’t cry when the relationship ended because I was too busy trying to move forward. I acknowledged both my love and my overwhelming sense of disappointment.
I thought it was a setback, but it actually helped me to move on. I needed that time to reflect on my actions and to nurse some empathy for my former partner’s way of handling our separation. I could see the big picture the way I couldn’t before.
Sometimes, you might find yourself surging forward in your life out of anger, and it feels like moving on when all you’re really doing is spinning those wheels even faster. Maybe you do surge forward but find yourself crashing later. When I finally was able to move forward, I did it from a place of love and peace. It didn’t feel like spite, bitterness, or anger; it felt like forgiveness, compassion, and understanding.
Trust The Process
I’ve learned that I need to trust the process. I haven’t just learned to trust the timing of the Universe, although that is also important. I’ve learned to trust that someone who is for me will choose me. Trusting the process is about having faith that what is meant for me will always be mine and what isn’t never will be. Trust involves doing the next right thing and then the next, living in the present rather than the past, and knowing that good things are coming.
It doesn’t mean I never feel frustrated. Sometimes, I want to rush the process and move to whatever I think the next stage is supposed to be. Releasing control can be hard for people with a past history of trauma. I try to breathe through these moments and remember that I can only control the way I react to the world around me, but I cannot control events or other people. This can cause frustration, but with a perspective shift, it can also bring you peace.
That stuck feeling can come with so much angst. You might feel like you’re doing something wrong if you aren’t moving forward. The busy mentality of society can make you feel like there’s something wrong with staying still. Yet, stillness can create a sense of peace. In solitude and silence, you just might find that your stuck feelings are asking you to pay attention.
- What are you feeling?
- What are the thoughts connected to those feelings?
- Where do you feel them in your body?
- What stories are you creating around your feelings?
- Are you judging how you feel or feeling how you feel?
Sometimes, you just need to stop and tend to the feelings bubbling under the surface. To cry. To get angry. To allow your authentic emotions to emerge. You don’t have to be perpetually okay. You don’t have to be a picture of happiness in the face of life’s disappointments. You get to have whatever messy feelings you’re feeling even if they don’t make sense to anyone else. Whatever you feel, it’s valid.
Sometimes, feeling what you feel is enough to help you move forward. Sometimes, it’s not, and time is the only healer. Take a deep breath. Stop spinning your wheels. Ask for help or trust that help is coming. Do the next right thing. Know that it’s enough.
