For When You Feel Stuck

For when you’ve tried every self-help trick and still feel like a potato with feelings.

I’ve been writing a lot about stuckness lately. Well, mostly I’ve been writing down a plethora of questions regarding feelings of stuckness. Technically, this still counts as writing, though, right?

The first question that popped into my mind this morning, hot coffee in a borrowed mug, was this:

“How do we fix stuckness?”

I don’t really know if stuckness is something to fix, rather something to witness or acknowledge. But it made me think of another question, which was:

“Is stuckness a social construct or simply a feeling?”

The answer? I think it can be both.

As a social construct, stuckness is the feeling that we are somehow behind, have fallen short, or are running out of time based on societal ideas of productivity, success, and efficiency. Perhaps more notable is the idea that these things must be somehow tangible. So when we are going through something internal, a shifting of identities, or entering a new chapter, it’s not necessarily visible to the outer world.

We forget that just because an individual’s process may be invisible externally, there isn’t a great movement happening internally.

On the other hand, stuckness is also a feeling. There is something very real about the felt sensation of stagnation. Something visceral. For me, it feels like a mix of emotions, like grief, frustration, confusion, and paralysis, have all welcomed themselves to my dinner table.

Stuckness feels like an internal pressure gauge that’s been cranked all the way up, but the lid is sealed shut so that nothing can escape. And over time, it starts to feel like your stuckness is accumulating, like compound interest.

You can feel something building inside of you, while simultaneously feeling like it has nowhere to go. And before you know it, you’re crashing out in a Trader Joe’s parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

And it’s not really about Trader Joe’s or the wild lack of parking for a busy establishment, but your body alerting you that something feels off, and it needs you to listen.

This is usually the part where self-compassion feels rather difficult because there’s a high likelihood you know you feel off. You might even already know you feel stuck, but you haven’t been able to crack the code.

You feel like you’ve tried everything. New books, a new morning routine, a new hobby, etc. And maybe it has provided temporary relief, or maybe it’s just made you feel worse. Like, even after trying a million things, something inside of you still feels stuck.

I’m going to ask something, and please know that when I write this, it makes a part of me roll my eyes all the way back to the beginning of time. So just bear with me.

Have you tried acknowledging the stuckness?

I’m trying VERY HARD not to regurgitate my morning coffee as I write this. But as someone who has tried (for months) to push through this period of my life with resistance, force, pressure, or general disdain for how I’m feeling… I can tell you it hasn’t made much of a positive difference. If anything, it’s made me feel more stuck.

And maybe that’s the thing about stuckness, it doesn’t live in ultimatums. It doesn’t care if you’ve downloaded the latest meditation app or if you’ve created a whole new morning ritual. And it certainly doesn’t care if it’s popped up at the most inconvenient chapter of your life.

Stuckness isn’t logical and yet, it makes complete sense.

In my body, stuckness feels like late February, where it’s the shortest month of the year, and somehow it feels never-ending. You are ready for winter to be over, but somehow it feels as if it keeps getting colder. You can almost taste Spring, and yet you must be patient.

And it’s in this place I often forget that everything is still alive beneath the frozen surface. Things are still happening, even when I can’t see them. Because if you can feel stuckness, aren’t you still just as alive as when you feel unstuck?

I know I’m getting rather philosophical about stuckness. But I’d like to believe there is a meaning, like an invisible recalibration I can sense but don’t fully have the words for.

It makes me think about Rainer Maria Rilke and something he wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”

When I first read this, I didn’t fully grasp what he meant. Unironically, I wasn’t feeling stuck at the time. But now, the words hold far greater meaning. Because lately I seem to have nothing but questions and very few answers.

I have forgotten that questions about life and feelings and hard transitions are not some sort of proof of a fatal shortcoming, but rather proof of being deeply alive. Of being human.

I’m sure one day I will stumble into the answers, but until then, I can let the questions be my guide. Or at the very least, try to.

Love,

Bethany xx