feeling stuck is just a symptom
what it takes to move forward
When my cat gets scared, her whole body tenses. Her muscles brace, preparing to leap away from the threat. She becomes taut with potential energy as she seeks an escape route. Once she finds it, she unleashes all that energy and scurries away from the danger (in this case, me vacuuming the carpet).
If there is no escape route, if she is cornered against a wall, she remains in that state of tension. Eventually, she cowers and makes herself small. The energy in her body disappears, but the fear is still there. She’s stuck.
As I write this, she’s slumbering peacefully on a pillow beside me. She’s about as tensionless as can be, at the moment. But her reaction to the vacuum demonstrates an important principle: all living organisms move away toward safety and away from danger. If we want to create more motion in our life, perhaps we need more safety.
using force to create change
Let’s say you want to be more creative in your life. You want to do more writing, something that you love but that has traditionally been difficult for you. How would you go about it?
Most people would do something like setting a routine to write X amount of words every morning. They would try to keep the habit and criticize themselves when they failed to do so. If they felt uncomfortable when they sat down to write, if they felt resistance to putting words on the page, they’d try to push through and do it anyway.
Depending on the strength of their internal resistance, they might just succeed. Or maybe they’d keep it up for a few weeks or a few months, and then give it up. Not for me, they might say. Oh well, I tried.
Imagine that it’s physical resistance, instead. Let’s say you’re trying to work on your posture. You try to force your shoulders, push your chest out. You hold that for as long as possible, every day. Over time, you see some change. But it is a slow, grinding change, a “mind over matter” change. It’s exhausting.
Why is it so hard? Because you’re fighting your body’s primary impulse: to survive.
the quest for safety
We’re constantly gathering information about the world. Our mind is always scanning the environment and learning from what happens to us. Our nervous system creates a map of our reality with one primary goal: to determine what is safe.
But safety to a human being isn’t just about physical safety. Since we’re tribal animals, physical safety requires us to belong to a group. Social isolation or exile means death. The amount of love we feel, in turn, is a measure of how much care we can access from others, and thus how safe we are.
So if you were in the third grade and some classmate got a hold of your creative writing and made fun of you for it, then your mind would store that memory as a signal that writing is not safe. Now, decades later, when you pick up a pen, that memory is lurking beneath the surface of your subconscious and translating itself into resistance & procrastination.
If you were bullied on a more regular basis, you might learn to avoid it by making yourself look physically small. That might involve hunching your shoulders and caving in your chest. If that survival strategy works, then it sticks around. Now, as you try to fix your posture, you’re fighting against your own nervous system, every step of the way.
safety is internal
The beautiful thing about all this is that if we can create that experience of safety, then the results we want will naturally follow. If writing feels safe, then it’s easy to feel excited about it. If lowering our shoulders feels safe, then our muscles will just relax. The tension in your body & mind is seeking release, just like my cat bracing to run.
That tension just needs an escape route. It needs a place where it can go that feels safe. And you are that place. Your connection with yourself and your ability to sit with the tension will create the conditions of safety you’re looking for. By approaching the fear and grief and anger and sadness in our bodies with warmth & curiosity, we create space for them to relax.
Sitting with these sensations is not an easy task. It’s a skill, developed via practice. It’s the most important thing I want to teach to other people, because it’s been the most important thing that I’ve learned in my life. Here, we can begin the journey. We can begin asking ourselves, for the first time: what do I need to feel safe?
From there, all the rest flows.
questions
Here are some questions to start moving towards that release.
In what areas of my life do I feel stuck? What would I like to move towards, and what feels unsafe? Why does it feel unsafe?
How does fear and grief show up in my body? Where do I feel that tension?
What happens when I invite that tension to fully express itself? To take up space in my body? To say what it wants to say?
Can I hold that tension with as much love & warmth as I can muster? What happens in response?
thank you
This is the second edition of my weekly newsletter, and I appreciate you being here so much.
With love,
Scott