The most common experience I hear from clients around being stuck around an EXTERNAL circumstance, a problem, financial, work or relationship issue is that their response to what has happened externally is unresolved INTERNALLY. We may experience this as a polarizing inner dynamic or inner conflict (two parts of us having a fight in our heads) We can start flip flopping around how we should feel or act around the issue and this in itself throws us into a state of inaction. It can literally feel like a brain freeze and our stuckness is a kind of shutting down.
A big part of this problem is that most of us haven’t had the support, tools or inner resources to take our own side, to be present to ourselves around our inner dissonance, our hurt or fear.
Our initial gut response is often SPOT ON!
Most commonly we have an initial gut response to something that is usually spot on! And then within a flash our mind comes in and starts to talk us out of what we’re feeling. We may minimize our feelings or dismiss them. If we’ve been hurt in a relationship we may tell ourselves to take the higher ground, or that it’ll go away after a few mantras or positive affirmations. What can really add to our hurt or pain is that many of us can internally shame ourselves around our response, telling ourselves that we are too sensitive and should just get over it.
Why Do We Do This?
Many women who are either mothers or are working in a caring profession (or both) are often fine-tuned into attending to the needs of others. Being ‘other focused’ is an innate part of who we are. A colleague once said, “service and giving is in our DNA.” When we are hurt, we can spend a lot of time trying to understand why the other person may have hurt us: perhaps they’ve had a difficult childhood, they’ve been hurt themselves, they had a rough day that day or they’re tired but they didn’t mean it.
All these things may be true, BUT….. they undeniably undermine attending to our own hurt, tending to our own needs, loving ourselves, validating the truth of our experience and the compassion we are needing in that moment. Until we can address the simple truth of our feelings in that moment, whether it was fear, hurt or sadness, it is very hard to just get back into the FLOW!
A Simple Practice to Get Back Into Your FLOW MOJO
The first simple thing that directly shifts STUCKNESS is actually stopping and putting your focus on your stuckness. This may sound counter intuitive but many of us spend a lot of time trying to get away from feeling the discomfort of our stuckness. For this practice we are going to bring our compassionate presence to it in away that perhaps never happened when we were growing up. Perhaps it was unsafe to do so. We can start changing this by asking yourself two questions:
- What are the feelings that you experience connected to being stuck? And..
- Where in your body do you feel these?
Many of us can experience our stuckness as pressure in our head, or tightness in our chest or belly. We may experience it as a constriction in our throat, which is often where we carry our unvoiced hurt.
Go into the feeling space of where you are stuck internally and speak to it directly with kindness, compassion, gentleness. Be curious, find out what it needs. Perhaps there’s sadness there, depression, a feeling of powerlessness.
An inner shift can happen almost immediately when we start to feel that we are listening to ourselves and give our fears or hurts our kind and loving presence.
When we start to make a SHIFT on the INSIDE this invariably has a flow on to our OUTER circumstances.
Our problem isn’t what makes us significant. Our significance stands out in how we RESPOND to our problem – using courage, curiosity, responsive action, compassion and self love.
My work with many women and men is in supporting them to shift those blocks and repetitive patterns in their lives in order to find a path out that feels satisfying, grounding and relieving.
Love Shushann
What Can you Do Next to Address Your Stuckness?
You can book a session with me where I talk you through a very special and empowering process that I know creates an immediate shift. This can be done face to face or via Skype or phone. Book Here