What does it mean to feel stuck?

Moments of expansion followed by periods of contraction. Does this sound familiar?

Have you experienced healthy, positive impulses that feel like expansion, inspiration, expressiveness, confidence, and an openness to connection? These positive impulses feel great in your body. 

But when you attempt to follow through on your impulse, you experience a contraction. You may feel heavy, slow, confused, sluggish, anxious, and/or uncomfortable. You may have interrupting thoughts that keep you from following through on your ideas. You may become self-critical, because you don't understand why you can't respond to your inspiration more productively. 

For many of my clients, this pattern has become their normal. You may find that you dismiss your own inspiration because the pattern has convinced you that you can't achieve what you desire.

Your pattern is resistant to change. If you have a stuck pattern, you have likely tried many things to heal: therapy, coaching, healing, meditation, or other techniques. If it hasn't healed yet, it simply means that you have not yet unlocked and released the pattern. 

I promise you: there IS a real reason you feel stuck and there is a simple and highly effective path to get unstuck. Keep reading! I will help you understand what's happening.

Why is your pattern on a loop? Here's the answer.

This section is really important and clarifying. You might want to read it a couple of times. 

First, your stuck pattern has been triggered. 

Being stuck is a loop of expansion and contraction that is rooted in a genuinely clever survival strategy that you developed as a child. 

What triggers the pattern can be highly personal to you or it can be the result of a collective trigger. The pandemic is an example of a collective trigger that activated the stuck patterns of many people. 

Many people have a life purpose that places them in direct tension with their core wound and their triggers. For example, if your life's work is about teaching people to tap into their inner knowing as a source for creativity, and your trigger is about being rejected for revealing your authentic self, then you may find that your attempts to share your work are constantly triggering your fear of being rejected. 

Your stuck pattern is directly related to your core wound. 

Core wounds usually originate in birth or early childhood, but not just because you were harmed or injured. A core wound is created when the natural reflexes and relationships that would have discharged and healed the injury were suppressed or interrupted, or the caregiving relationship was inadequate, insufficient, or harmful.

A core wound does not have to look like a big trauma. For example, perhaps you felt loved by your parents and had your basic needs met as a child, but the stress in your household meant that you felt you had to suppress your emotions in order to feel safe. This was a wise strategy to prevent your authentic self from being harmed. AND, this created a pattern in your nervous system that will arise anytime you are trying to express your authentic self but feel insecure about how you will be received.  

The mechanism that created your core wound is also the reason it is on repeat.

Your pattern is stuck, but it is not trying to harm you. It is simply repeating the pattern in an attempt to complete the healing movement that was suppressed or interrupted. This is what makes healing possible and the reason we can look upon these patterns with compassion.

Being stuck = energy stuck in your nervous system.

Although this may seem like a simplistic understanding, it really is that simple. What you experience as "being stuck" in the world is directly connected to energy stuck within your nervous system as a result of your core wound. 

This is also why mental or spiritual understanding, and any healing that does not address the nervous system, does not work. 

Your nervous system cannot be reasoned with. It just needs to be safe to complete its expression.

With this understanding, healing is not only possible, but it is also beautifully simple and miraculously powerful. 

This is how healing happens: by discharging the stuck energy in your nervous system a little bit at a time, while supported in a safe, secure frame held by a warm listener. 

Dear One,

HEALING IS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT. It is what you are designed to do.

The fact that the pattern is showing up again is the brilliant way that your body and nervous system say:

I am ready. This is another chance. Let's heal this now!