You are not broken.

Working in community mental health, I have thought and re-thought and will continue to re-think the value of mental health care for people who struggle with poverty and oppression. My clients have many barriers to good housing and employment, including mental illness, poverty, and criminal histories. Even some of the most generous assistance programs are unwilling to work with certain criminal backgrounds, and I am left wondering what to do. I am one piece in a network of systems that at times can work beautifully well and at times utterly fail.

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What can we learn from feeling stuck? If every experience offers the possibility to help us life more free, more meaningful lives, then stuckness might have its own seed of liberation. The feeling of being “stuck” is somewhat generic and can encompass a variety of human experiences, from fairly mundane to a kind of horror that begins to feel mundane:

·         Stuck in a relationship that’s not very good but not very bad, living a life that feels dissatisfying but I have no ideas about what would be better.

·         Stuck in an abusive cycle, where I feel terrified of someone or something in my life that has the potential to cause me harm if I try to make any changes, or even if I don’t make any changes. I genuinely feel there is nowhere I can go because every road seems dangerous, even the road of doing nothing.

·         Stuck in bad circumstances, such as being loaded with debt, wanting a job but not having a car or Internet access that would help me to look for one or actually commute if I could find one, living in an apartment that’s broken down and costs more in rent than it’s worth, and every time I try to make a move the ground seems to come out from under me.

Feeling stuck is painful. Our animal nature wants freedom as much as it wants comfort. The capacity to choose our lives can help us live gracefully with what might otherwise be unbearable situations. When we feel that choice is missing, we can fall into that learned helplessness that is akin to depression. This is a different experience than living with the spiritual belief that our lives are ordained for us by some wise benefactor. Submission to an outside will can itself be a choice that helps some to find freedom in life. A substantive difference in quality comes from the belief that such submission is voluntary and purposeful. Coerced submission is no blessing.

When we feel stuck, all that energy that wants to go and do gets coiled around the basic problems, becoming increasingly more painful. Some of us start finding ways to numb the pain or distract ourselves and displace all that pain and energy into something over which we have more control. A frequently-used example is yelling at a dog instead of speaking up to a boss. Irritation with life in general, or a sort of floating anxiety and fearfulness that seems to have no cause, may point to somewhere in life where we feel we cannot move and we want to avoid perceiving.

This perception is important. One way to begin to free that energy and reclaim it is to sense and sit with it, to sense the blocked energy and suffering, and to continue sinking into that sensation. Becoming free sometimes demands that we learn to move toward the intolerable. To simply sit with ourselves being stuck and feeling frustrated and let that part of ourselves speak. If we can sit with this and find a trusted ally who is willing to listen and offer honest feedback, we might begin to recognize something we’ve been avoiding that might help us to become free: a conversation, a resolution, an action. Sometimes we have to learn how to wait while staying awake enough to see an opportunity when it comes.

Action is not always possible or desirable. Sometimes giving ourselves space to feel or finding people who can sit with us in pain is enough to lighten the heart of its burden. We can change our experience of ourselves, but we might need to find physical safety and meet our survival needs before we have the energy to do so. Help exists if we are ready to look for it. We might not know what is possible, or who is willing to help, or what is available to us, before risking a change.

What else helps when you feel stuck?

Author Brian Bouldrey once told me that in adulthood, every victory is conditional. That has stuck with me throughout my twenties and now early thirties, and I notice that we experience nothing that is not some mixture. Sometimes we lift our torches to the world and ask for what we want, and sometimes what we receive is not what we expected.

I struggle with knowing what to do in these situations. My mind wants to clamp down and cycle through stories about why this is not right and fears about settling for what is offered. This is the cycle of a mind that is stuck within scripts and closed to information. The mind becomes constricted around beliefs about how things are supposed to be and not capable of achieving its natural, open, relaxed state wherein more becomes possible.

Lately I find myself slowing down more when my mind wants to cycle into anxiety. I take a deep breath and notice the urge to keep searching, looking, thinking, debating, to keep busy and postpone the actions that would move life forward. Instead of energy moving, it becomes blocked and fixated. At the same time, simply acting from this blocked energy does not feel complete or whole.

I can take a breath and imagine myself sinking inside, among the clusters of hurt and fear. I can notice what is happening within my physical body, within this environment, at this moment. All of this includes the cycling of mind and anxious movement of energy within. All of this includes the solidity of the chair, the gravity that keeps me anchored to earth. I can ask for help, for more information. I can make a decision, knowing that each decision is not an end but another step on a long and winding path. My being wants to be in relationship to this world, to be actively involved and in motion, to be still and seek rest.

Does life feel like a perpetual series of crises? Does drama feel endless? When feeling stressed, is there a rush and overflow of thoughts and a feeling like action is needed now, now? Is there even an awareness of a gap between the stimulus and the reaction? Do we act out with immediacy, without consideration, leaping into familiar modes of saving, intimidating, or escaping?

Within us are vulnerable places, old wounds or buried sensations stored in the body. Even the most well-adjusted and nurtured among us are likely to have something of the kind. Childhood can be wonderful and a terrifying, overwhelming experience. Traumas encountered as we grow and age can similarly become stored away, unprocessed, influencing us from behind the scenes.

We might be more driven by these buried memories more than we realize. However we managed that situation as a child potentially informs the structure of our responses to anything else that feels similarly stressful or overwhelming. If anger was shut down, we may automatically shut down anger even when it is necessary for self-protection. If we had to contort ourselves to please confusing demands from our caregivers, we may grow up constantly attempting to read and adapt to the expectations of those around us, or to the mental images we carry in our minds of what those confusing caregivers would have wanted from us. Adults becoming more independent, complex, and mature at some point must face the contradiction of the childhood image of certain adults as near-godlike in their wisdom, beneficence, terror, or demand for obedience; versus the adulthood realizations of those same adults as simply human, flawed, loving, wounded, or scared.

I do not advocate that we blame our adult problems on childhood lay them at the feet of our caregivers, but I believe strongly in the value of understanding how history has shaped and informed the present. Of particular importance is the way our story of history shapes our experience of the now. We do not have to start with the autobiography when stuck in crises or in compulsory emotional and mental responses that feel uncontrollable. We first start with noticing that this is our experience. Somehow I always seem to have this response in this kind of situation. I get angry when someone does this, and then feel embarrassed later when I realize what the person actually meant. If we are able to notice and have contact with the observing part of self, we can now learn to catch that response in the moment and sinking deeper. I’m getting angry, so I will take a breath and notice what else is happening. What’s going on in my body? What thoughts are coming up? What emotions do I find? What is similar to the past? With the metaphor of sinking, I imagine a storm troubling the surface of a pond, which is my usual awareness, and slowly dropping deeper beneath to still waters, able to gaze up and see the troubled surface.

I do not advocate discounting all of our immediate responses as somehow inferior relics from childhood, either. Anger or fear may well be a legitimate response to something in the situation we cannot quite name, and perhaps that emotion is also made bigger by previous experiences or something we’re not quite recognizing. Sinking into a larger awareness of what is occurring helps us to get more information and make more accurate responses. If I do not feel I can address the situation accurately when I feel angry, I can come up with strategies to manage the anger until I’m ready.

What I think brings balance is inviting the opposite into my experience. When I feel the urge to speed up, I can take a breath and try to slow down internally. When I feel the urge to lash out and protect, I can try to consider what is motivating the actions that feel like an attack. In major crisis situations, instinct is a valuable asset to help us through. If we can practice this slowing down and seeking balance in situations that are less urgent, we can become calmer and more effective in dealing with everyday matters and the big, scary crises if they come, as they come.

Let your breathing bring you gently into your body. Let your breath become a little slower, a little deeper. With every inhale, allow your belly to fill until the breath rises into your chest. With every exhale, allow your breath to slow and complete itself.

With every breath, notice your senses. Notice what you are seeing, or notice the texture of darkness and light behind your eyelids. Let your focus soften to simply receive what is present. If you are reading this text, take in the guidance and spend a few breaths with your senses before moving to the next.

With every breath, notice your senses. Notice the feeling of contact between your skin and the air, your skin and your clothes, your skin and the pressure of what supports your body or feet.

With every breath, notice your senses. Notice any scents in the air, or simply the feeling of air moving in and out of your nostrils.

With every breath, notice your senses. Notice the sounds of the environment. Some may be pleasing, some may be discordant. Notice any urge to focus on a pleasing sound, or silence, and notice any urge to push away or ignore sounds. If you can, let your breath open these urgings to simply allow sound to arise and fall away.

Shift you awareness to your heart, or imagine that you can sense your heart. With every inhalation, breathe in what you sense or what constricts you. With every exhalation, imagine the threads that connect. Breathe into what is within you, and exhale into what surrounds you. We are separate and interconnected. You are here and alive.

There is a god from the ancient Egyptian (Kemetic) pantheon named Nefertum. According to one of the stories of creation, Nefertum emerged from the blue lotus that grew from a great ocean. Realizing that he was alone, the god wept, and from his tears came humanity.

This myth evokes an underlying truth in our experience. The human heart grapples with fear and longing: fear that it is alone in a vast, uncaring world; longing for connection to others who can share joy and pain. Longing to be seen, to share, to be connected, to be open among other open hearts.

Unfortunately, so much in our life becomes fodder to close around our pain, fear, and loneliness. Early experiences of rejection, abuse, neglect, from the most extreme to the most subtle, feed disconnection. If Nefertum had not taken the risk to cry openly, to share his pain and loneliness with the world,  humanity would never have been born to witness and reach back toward him.

We lose the opportunity to touch others and be touched when we close off. Yet we cannot deny the pain and truths that keep us closed. To be open is to risk experiencing all that pain. New skin is tender and vulnerable to the elements, not yet strengthened by the wind and rain. I think we fear that subjecting those tender parts of ourselves to the world will harden and scar. This feels like a loss, yet it is also a process of strengthening and building resilience.

When things hurt and I feel pain and vulnerability, often the last thing I want to do is to return to face the person who contributed to the hurt. Sometimes it is absolutely not safe to do so. Other times, lingering past hurts restrain us with fears that we are not equal to enduring more pain.

We don’t have to wait our entire lives for perfect conditions, so we can finally give ourselves permission to take a risk. We don’t have to rush headlong into terrifying worlds or wait until we’re good and angry before we finally tell that person what we really think. Opening can be a slow, gentle, but continuous process.

Clinging to suffering is not being good to ourselves, but neither is avoiding  suffering. Remaining a tight bud only seals the pain deep within and keeps us cloistered from sunlight, from rain, from wind, from the open sky. Consciously experiencing our suffering is what leads to transformation. To choose to become open in the moment — not completely, but to move toward openness — to choose to say the thing we were afraid to say, to bring up the lingering doubt, to acknowledge that I felt hurt by what happened, to take up the task I’ve been scared to attempt, and bringing awareness of what is happening inside me while I move into this uncertain, frightening territory — that is when the flower opens and the tears flow, that is when our pain invites its salve. That is when feeling pain is also healing pain.

Our lives may be colored by a particular feeling or mood, accompanied by certain thoughts or beliefs that seem to recur. In my own life I have noticed an automatic emotional reaction to the unexpected: this moment of fear, a sense of “Uh oh, what’s about to happen?” Some part of me seems primed to expect the worst. When someone important to me says, “Oh, I want to talk to you,” then I feel myself preparing for something awful. With time I have been  able to notice this, take in a breath, and choose to be open to whatever is about to happen. Often these conversations end up interesting, helpful, beneficial, or transformative, but still this part of me prepares for a catastrophe that may never happen.

Analytical psychology may call this a complex; Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) calls it a negative cognitive schema. Strict CBT theorists say that the thought causes the feeling, the thought that “something bad is always around the corner,” for example. I have a minor quibble in that I think sometimes those feelings are activated by certain conditions and then justify themselves with relevant thoughts. Either way, these thoughts and feelings happen together. We can allow them to continue making each other bigger and bigger. We can notice the automatic responses, take a deep breath, and look at what is happening with curiosity.

Thoughts and feelings are like the two wings of a bird or plane. We may want to elevate one and diminish the other, but both can help or harm us. If one is not working properly, the other suffers. If both are faulty, good luck getting off the ground. I encourage a willingness to listen and hold both with interest.

I cannot get rid of that moment of fear, and I’ve tried! What I can do is notice what the fear wants and does: my muscles start to constrict, heart rate accelerates, I start preparing for defense or flight. The fear is saying: something unexpected is happening, and I do not know what’s coming. The fear is bringing me to attention and presence in the moment, but it wants to go further into a narrower room. Fear wants to be ready for something bad, and intellectually I understand from experience and insight that what’s coming could be something wonderful, something neutral, or something that I know I can handle because I have survived so much already. If the thoughts start saying, “Don’t be stupid, you always act like this, nothing bad’s going to happen,” then I’ve become locked in an inner debate that will only escalate the inner tension.

Fear is not trying to hear any of that. Fear knows something bad could always happen. Fear is not wrong. Reason is not wrong either. This is an unwinnable inner argument. My best option is not to take sides, but to make room for every part of me. Time to breathe, slowly and consciously, letting my muscles relax. Breathe, and bring my attention to what’s happening, to the conversation at hand. If I can continue breathing, I know that I am alive, I know that I can get through what’s happening.

I speak of fear but that is only one example. You may respond to everything with irritation or anger: hurt, inconvenience, impatience, the unexpected. You may respond by becoming numb or disconnected to your experience, feeling lost in a fog or like you’re floating somewhere away from your body. You may respond by focusing only on whatever feels good in the moment, tuning out everything else.

(Have you ever felt intense desire or affection for someone or something who ended up being bad for you? Did you ever, while feeling those feelings, have moments of doubting thoughts that you ignored by focusing on what you thought was good and happy about the relationship? After the relationship was over, did you ever kick yourself or ask your friends “Why didn’t you warn me?” when you were warned, in so many ways?)

What I advocate is effort to work with both as each bringing something important to the table, but each potentially being misleading in some way. This can feel difficult to work with, takes time and practice, and there is always an opportunity to practice. This way of being does not offer a sense of security by stating rules that are always true, though you may come to discover your own inner set of rules that makes sense for you. Enter into a conversation with yourself, constantly unfolding, in which many voices have a chance to speak, and each has value. The voice that says “This is wonderful!” and the voice that says “I have doubts” are both welcome and heard, though neither gets to steer the plane alone.