It's one of the hardest things to explain to someone else, and sometimes even to yourself. Nothing is really that wrong. There's no single crisis that you can put your finger on, no obvious trigger, nothing you could point to and say yes, this is why I am feeling the way I do. And yet there's an ongoing persistent sense of being stuck somewhere. Is it in a job, a relationship, or a version of yourself where you feel unable to move, unable to quite name what's continuing to hold you there.
People often arrive at this feeling with a quiet kind of self blame and critical thoughts about themselves. What is it, Why can't I just decide what I want to do? Why do I feel as if I keep going around in circles? What's wrong with me and why is it, that I am struggling and can't seem to move forward? But having this feeling of being stuck is rarely a failure of willpower alone. More often, it's a pattern doing exactly what patterns do: repeating, because something about moving forward feels unconsciously unsafe.
What feeling ‘stuck’ is usually protecting you from
Change, even desired change, tends to stir up feelings that can be difficult to think about. Leaving a job, for example, might mean facing a fear of not feeling good enough elsewhere. Ending a relationship might mean contemplating a loneliness that feels unbearable. Making a decision at all might mean giving up the notion that the ‘right’ choice will eventually become clear to you, so you never have to take the risk in being wrong.
Staying stuck can be, paradoxically, a way of staying safe even when it's also a source of true discomfort and emotional pain. The mind will often choose a familiar discomfort over an unfamiliar one, especially when the unfamiliar discomfort touches something that feels old, or familiar let’s say.
Why insight alone doesn't always move things to where we want them to be
A lot of people who feel stuck have already done plenty of thinking, creating lists of pros and cons, or asking advice from friends. And yet understanding the problem intellectually doesn't always loosen its hold. That's because feeling stuck, experiencing being in a holding pattern, usually, isn't a thinking problem at all. It's an emotional one, often rooted in something that formed long before you had the words or the language to describe it.
This is where psychoanalytic therapy works differently to just having all the intellectual answers. Instead of searching for the ‘magical’ right piece of advice, psychotherapy creates space for you to notice what actually happens if and when you imagine what not feeling stuck might look or feel like. Therapy creates space for you to experience thinking about what change might be. It holds space for what feelings arise, what are the historic fears that become stirred up, and what you'd be giving up as well as gaining.
Movement, not a decision
Therapy doesn't resolve what you might think of as feeling stuck with a single breakthrough or a definitive decision on what to do. More often, the dynamics of feeling ‘stuck’ gradually loosen as the feelings underneath it come into focus, make more sense and are less frightening to contemplate. Movement becomes possible not because a decision has been rushed or forced into existence, but because the roots underpinning it have shifted.
If this feels familiar
If you recognise anything I say here, and have a sense of feeling stuck that you can't quite explain or talk yourself out of, it isn't a flaw in your character or your ability to think through change. Feeling stuck is worth taking seriously as a pattern with its own history, rather than a problem to fix or to experience alone.
I offer a confidential space in North London and Central London to explore what might be holding things in place, at whatever pace feels right for you.