Are you feeling stuck?
Stuck in an unwanted job?
Stuck in a toxic relationship?
Stuck in a state of indecision?
“I feel stuck.” This is a common phrase that some clients say to me when they come to the sessions.
“Stuckness” is often the result of an inner conflict between two parts inside us. The Parent part, that took on all the parental messages from childhood about what we should or shouldn’t do, and the Child part in us, that wants to satisfy our needs and wants. Both of these parts are operating on information from our past personal history. To be able to resolve the conflict and get unstuck, we need to come back to the present moment and use the information available to us in the here and now. That is to access the Adult part in us, which focuses on current reality.
We also get stuck as a result of denying our reality. As long as we are in the denial loop we stay in the stuck loop. This happens when we live our lives according to old decisions we have made in the past. We are no longer aware of these decisions yet we are still following them automatically. The behaviours resulting from these decisions are no longer useful to us, yet we still defend those behaviours and carry on. The act of defending behaviours that are no longer useful in the present moment is called denial or discounting, in Transactional Analysis terminology.
When we discount, we are denying our responsibility to act appropriately in relation to a current reality. We can discount on four different levels:
🙈Discount that a problem exists - no problem.
🙈Discount the seriousness of the problem - not serious.
🙈Discount the solvability of the problem - no solution.
🙈Discount our ability to find options to resolve the problem - no self capacity.
We can discount ourselves and others.
When we think, feel and behave from one of these discounts then we feel stuck and powerless to change the situation. We can’t change the things that we continue to deny the existence of.
The first step to getting unstuck and feeling empowered is to bring to awareness and explore on a deeper level those inner conflicts, the discounting patterns and past decisions that are still influencing our present life.
Does this resonate? Would you like to explore your personal situation further?
Get in touch.
