On Feeling Stuck

many of us spend a large part of our lives in one way or another feeling stuck that is in a state where a strong desire to move forward on an issue meets with an equally strong compulsion to stay fixed where one is for example we might at one level powerfully want to leave a job in finance in order to retrain in architecture but at the same time remain blocked by a range of doubts hesitations counter arguments and guilty feelings or we might be impelled to leave our marriage while simultaneously unable to imagine any realistic life outside of it to act feels horrific but doing nothing is killing us as well every avenue appears shut off and so one ruminates turns over the question late at night tries the patience of therapists and watches life go by with mounting anxiety and self-disgust as an outsider one might be tempted to ask questions to move things on why don't you try to enroll in a course to see if you might like a new area of work why don't you discuss your dissatisfactions with your partner why don't you go to counselling what about splitting up but we're likely to find that our friend can't make any progress whatever we say it seems as if they are subject to a kind of law disbarring them from progressing not the sort of law you'd find in the statutes of the country they live in but some sort of personal law a law that might go like this make sure you don't achieve satisfaction in your career make sure your relationship has no life in it but cannot be abandoned make sure you aren't happy in the place you live in in order to understand the origins of these laws we have to look backwards difficult childhoods and the complicated families they unfold in might be the originators of a lot of these restrictive unspoken laws whose impact echoes across our lives some of these laws might go like this make sure you never shine it would upset your little sister or you have to be cheerful not to let my depression break through or never be creatively fulfilled because it would remind me of my envy or reassure us that we are clever by winning all the prizes at school or we need you to achieve to make us feel okay about ourselves or you would disappoint me if you became boisterous and one day sexual of course no one ever directly says such things in a family laws couldn't operate if they could so easily be seen but the laws are there nevertheless holding us into a particular position as we grow up and then once we've left home continuing to surreptitiously distort our personalities away from the path of their legitimate growth it can be hard to draw any connection between adult stuck situations and any childhood laws we may miss the link between our reluctance to act at work and a situation with dad at home 30 years before but we can hazard a principle nevertheless any long-term stuckness is likely to be the result of butting in to some sort of law inherited unknowingly from childhood we are stuck because we are being overly loyal to an idea of something being impossible generated in the distant past impossible because it was threatening to someone we cared for or depended on a long time ago therefore one of the main paths to liberation lies in coming to see that the law exists and then unpicking its warped and unnecessary logic we can start by asking whether beneath our practical dilemma there may be a childhood law at work encouraging us to stay where we are we can dig beneath the surface problem in search of the emotional structure that might be being engaged so for example in the unconscious architecture equals the creativity dad never enjoyed or sexual fulfillment equals what hurt my lovable mum we may discover that some of the reason we can't give up on finance and take up a more imaginative role is because throughout childhood we had to accept a law that we couldn't be both creatively fulfilled and make money in order to protect our volatile father from his own envy and inadequacy or we can't leave our marriage because unconsciously we're coming up against a law from childhood that tells us that being a good boy means renouncing once more bodily and visceral sides the specifics will differ but the principle of a hidden law from childhood can explain a huge number of adult stucknesses the way forward is first and foremost hence to realize that there might be a law in operation when we get stuck though we aren't merely being cowardly or slow in not progressing and that we feel trapped because we are in our faulty minds back in a cage formed in childhood which we have to be able to see think about and then patiently dismantle we can along the way accept that we are now adults which means that the original family drama no longer has to apply we don't have to worry about upsetting parental figures their taboos were set up to protect them but they're making us ill we can feel sad for the laws that these damaged figures from the past imposed on us often with no active malevolence but we can recognize that our imperative is to move them aside and act with the emotional freedom that's always been our birthright we may need to be disloyal to a way of being that protected someone we cared about or depended on in order to start to be loyal to a more important person still ourselves our decision dice are a tool to help you make wiser decisions in work love and the rest of your life you

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 491,688

Rating: 4.9593534 out of 5

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, childhood trauma, abraham hicks on feeling stuck, stuck on a feeling, sermon on feeling stuck, how to get out of a rut in life, how to get out of a rut and get motivated, अटकने पर, Al sentirse atascado, 感觉卡住了

Id: ku9gabtzmX8

Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020