Step One: Feel your longing, notice where you are stuck

“Becoming unstuck is about moving from constriction and frustration to flow, vitality, and ease. It’s about an internal stability that allows you to experience calm amid the storm.”

I hide and ignore my core feelings and emotions. For a long time I thought that this helped me to have control over my life. What I have come to realize is that by keeping everything trapped inside I have been walking around like a volcano waiting to erupt. I cry out of anger and get frustrated at my sadness. I have often wondered why my reactions to my feelings are so backwards. I am stuck because I have never allowed myself to feel and to sit with the feelings until I come to terms with them. During the last week I have allowed myself to feel, to really feel, what is going on inside. When I get frustrated I sit with it until my heart stops racing and that burning in my stomach subsides. Just over a week ago I had to face an over whelming surge of emotions in a situation that I couldn’t control. My heart raced, my stomach did flips, my face lost all color until the built up anger turned it red. I don’t think that I would react the same way today as I did then. I sat on the edges of those feelings that day and let myself process them until there wasn’t anything left to digest.

From what I have read the difference between stuck and unstuck is simple. Everyone meets adversity in life- there are different types of adversity but it is in how we handle it that determines how stuck we allow ourselves to be. What seems like a wall to some is only a bump in the road to others. The difference seems to lie in the ability to go with the flow, ask for help, and cooperate with those people around them. I asked for help recently- the simple act of asking released some tension and the overwhelming response to my request lifted my spirits and helped me step over the bump in front of me. There is no shame is asking for help. The strongest of people ask for help and know that there is no shame in doing so.

I have personality traits that seem to keep me stuck.

1.     I tend to keep life chaotic

2.     I have an inability to calm or sooth myself in a healthy way

3.     I lack an adequate concept of self-care and setting limits

4.     I repeat the same behavior and hope that the outcome will be different.

I have personality traits that will help me get unstuck.

1.     I am able to give and receive support from friends and family

2.     I do not attach my identity or ego to success or failure

3.     I possess a sense of humor and a light heartedness

Painful experiences are not a life sentence. We have all suffered from a trauma of some sort at some point in our lives. What is one step that I can take today that will help me get unstuck? I will resist the negative talk inside my head. I will focus on what I’m doing to take care of myself and take time to have fun with others. When I am with others I will not dwell or discuss the negative situations or sticking points in my life. Life is painful or difficult because of our attachments to things. I am attached to not feeling. I have “protected” myself in the past by removing my emotions thus erasing my humanness, which left me feeling empty. I am cutting the cord with the emotionless me. I am feeling things as they happen. I am living and flowing. Oh, and having fun too.