The Spiritual Meaning Of Feeling Stuck: Three Keys To Getting Yourself Unstuck
An open oven bakes no bread.
Paulo Coelho, author of Warrior Of The Light
Healing Crisis
When clients come to me it’s usually because pain or tension in their bodies has interfered with their life in some way.
This is a tactic that life uses—often the only way to get us to stop and pay attention.
While talking with them it becomes clear that, not only are they stuck in their bodies, but there’s stuckness in their lives, as well.
Just as the body and mind are one in the same (hence the term body/mind), so physical and mental/emotional stuckness, and the stuckness in our lives, are one in the same.
The idea that what’s happening in our bodies is connected to our lives IS the spiritual meaning of feeling stuck.
I’ll talk about how stuckness is a natural progression of our spiritual evolution.
And I’ll explain how to find the thread that, when pulled, will unravel stuckness on every level.
Feeling Stuck in Life
Everyone feels stuck at some point in their life.
If you are young, this may be the first time you recall this feeling of stuckness.
For those of us who are older, you probably recall other times throughout your life that you felt this way.
That is because feeling stuck is something that will happen many times throughout our lives.
Feeling stuck comes with a variety of emotions.
There can be frustration, anger, sadness or fear.
And very often, those emotions are accompanied by tension and pain in our bodies.
If we view stuckness through the right lens, it will resolve itself naturally and without forcing it to change.
If we see it as a problem that needs to be fixed, it will keep coming back.
In the Western world, we are told that the best way to get through this stuckness is to pull up our adult pants and take massive action to push through to the other side.
For a small number of people, this works for a time.
The problem with this method is that each time stuckness shows up in your life (and it will show up again and again) you need to generate this massive oomph to blast through.
This takes up a lot of resources you could use for other things.
There’s an easier, more organic, way to move through stuckness.
I’ll go over three keys to getting yourself unstuck.
But first let’s see why we get stuck in the first place.
Why We Get Stuck
If you prefer to watch and listen you can check out this video on The Three Keys For Turning Stuckness In Your Body And Life Into Flow:
…or listen to the podcast version and/or look for the BioSoul Integration Podcast wherever you listen to your audio podcasts:
When we are in the womb, our primal brains (foundational layer of our nervous system that develops two to four weeks after conception) start to observe those around us.
We sense the subtle ways that these people label parts of themselves as good or bad and how they then push the parts they deem bad deep inside.
We unconsciously recognize that we rely on these people for our survival, and so we are compelled to do the same—pushing parts of ourselves away.
I call these parts the defendant sense of self.
But when we push these things down and ignore them, we are denying an important part of our being.
This creates friction within us because it goes against the nature of life to make parts of ourselves unconscious.
By way of the people and situations we encounter in life, the Universe is nudging the parts of us that we’ve made unconscious to the surface of consciousness.
There are many layers of unconscious material.
Every time we unpack one of these layers we sequence through a series of stages.
Donald Epstein’s book, The 12 Stages Of Healing, is a complete compendium of the twelve different themes that show up every time we transform a layer of our defended self.
Stuckness is just one of these stages, and in my experience it’s the most important stage of the healing journey.
It’s the balance point between the more contractive stages of the healing journey and the more expansive ones.
The stuckness is there to bring awareness to the parts of ourselves that we’ve habitually ignored and dishonored.
It is only by reintegrating these parts into ourselves that we can move forward into the next era of our lives, a process sometimes referred to as shadow work (another in-depth blog post of mine).
You will come into contact with this stuckness many times throughout your life.
Unraveling the layers is a lifetime job.
By learning how to handle the stuckness properly, you will be able to navigate your way through these periods and emerge to the wonders that lay beyond the stuckness.
How to Get Unstuck From Trauma That We Embody Early On
Let’s take a look at the three things you need to do to get through the stuckness in a way that helps you move forward more easily.
1. Context vs Content
It’s natural that stuckness brings the emotions of frustration, anger, sadness and fear to the surface to be felt.
Most adult humans have at least some level of aversion to feeling the energy of those emotions in their bodies.
On the other hand the mental pathway is so engrained in us.
So when there are emotions that we are averse to feeling in our bodies, they squirt into our heads as thoughts.
The thoughts are content.
Most people get wrapped up in thinking about how to get out of stuckness, the things they can do to get unstuck, etc.
But this is all in the realm of thought and content, and we’ll never figure out how to get unstuck this way.
The solution to getting unstuck is to pay attention to the rhythms and patterns that we find ourselves in at the moment—the context.
And in this case, we feel stuck.
Simply acknowledging the truth of this fact to ourselves and giving ourselves permission to feel the sensation of the emotions related to stuckness will start us moving THROUGH the stuckness.
2. Stuck Between Being Fragmented And Empowered
Fragmented
Here is where we take a look at the stages preceding and following the stuckness.
We discussed earlier how our primal brains adopt a program whereby certain parts of us are considered negative and need to be ignored.
At a certain point on the healing journey life will ask us to integrate these disenfranchized parts of us.
As the thoughts and emotions of these separate parts get louder and louder we start to become aware of how the parts are opposing each other.
For example, maybe we hate our job but we like the money.
Maybe a relationship we’re in really isn’t satisfying but we’re afraid we’ll never find someone else to love us.
This creates a kind of friction in our body and being and we start to feel stuck.
Stuck
You then start to realize that you have been in this situation before.
You realize that you are responding in the same manner and that the outcome is the same.
You become frustrated.
You reach a place of surrender.
“I’m stuck and don’t know how to get unstuck.”
This is the point where you begin to open up to the possibility of getting help.
You may not actually reach out for help yet, but you become open to it.
You start to have compassion for yourself and start giving love to that young, hurt part of yourself.
You start to accept that side and give it recognition and support.
You start to honor its existence within yourself.
Empowered
This is where you can begin to make different choices.
These are choices you couldn’t see before.
The energy that was bound up in the stuckness is released and integrated and pushes toward making choices in alignment with our more authentic selves.
You start to reclaim the power that has been waiting to be recognized.
3. Don’t Try to Get Unstuck
This may seem counterintuitive.
How can you get through something if you don’t fight it?
Have you ever encountered a Chinese finger puzzle?
The harder you try to pull your fingers out, the more the puzzle tightens and keeps you trapped.
The secret to getting free is to gently push your fingers together.
It’s then that the puzzle loosens up and you’re able to free your fingers.
The stuckness responds exactly like a Chinese finger puzzle.
The solution to stuckness is to go toward it.
The way to go toward the stuckness is to give yourself permission to feel the sensation of the emotions related to it, in your body.
As you do this, the space around the stuckness begins to expand.
Resources are freed up that allow you to glide through the stuckness and out the other side.
A Quick Recap
Stuckness is a normal part of spiritual growth.
We will encounter it many times throughout our lives as the universe helps us unravel the many layers of hurt we need to get through in order to grow.
You can keep fighting it, but you are only sentencing yourself to a repeat of the same thing many times.
By learning to embrace the stuckness each time it arises, you allow yourself to heal layer by layer, growing in the process.
By moving into the stuckness, you create more of that coveted “flow” state everyone is always talking about.
The Next Step
As I’d said, stuckness is just one of the stages of the healing journey we experience each time we transform a layer of our defended self.
I’ve created a guide to help you pinpoint which stage of the healing journey you’re in, get a sense of where you are in the bigger spiritual picture and what the next steps are.
If you’d like to explore more deeply just click the link, pick the statement that feels most relevant to your life right now and receive your free, personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
You’ll Learn:
- The Two Main Forces That Drive Our Growth And Evolution & Which Of Those Forces Is Impacting You Right Now
- Twelve Stages Healing That Are Common To Everyone’s Journey & Which Stage You’re In Right Now
- How To Speed Up And Smooth Out Uncomfortable Parts Of The Healing Process
- How To Know When You’re On The Path To Expressing Your Authentic Self And Living Your Purpose
- How To Achieve Deep Life Satisfaction Regardless Of External Circumstances
- How To Plot The Course To Get To Your Ultimate Destination- Wholeness
I look forward to helping you express more life,
Dr. Jay
About the Author Dr. Jay Uecker
Dr. Jay is the founder and owner of BioSoul Integration Center in Louisville, Colorado. He’s a chiropractor, a hands-on healer, an in-person and online soul integration coach and the author of If It Didn't Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose. For two decades Dr. Jay has been helping people navigate their healing journeys. Over the course of that time he’s worked intimately with thousands of people. Those who are most drawn to Dr. Jay's work are those who are seeking to integrate and embody their soul's essence and their soul's gifts so they can share them with others. Life will keep nudging us in that direction, anyway. BioSoul Integration helps to speed up the process and smooth out the rough spots created by the innocent and unconscious resistance that lives in our primal brain and nervous system. Click the link to get your Personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
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