What to do when you’re stuck
Do you know what to do when you’re stuck?
I grew up in southern Minnesota. Snow was our life for 6 month of every year.
We played on the playground in below-zero temperatures. We walked to school in moon boots and parkas. We (the grown-ups, not me) put chains on our tires and drove where we needed to go, regardless of the snow. Except for blizzards, nobody stayed home because they were afraid of getting stuck in a snowdrift. You just learned how to drive on snow and ice. You went out every day in it. You expected to arrive at your destination.
You also probably kept a shovel and salt pellets in your trunk because you expected to get stuck once in awhile. But you also expected to get un-stuck.
Do you ever feel stuck?
In a job? In a relationship? In a habit? In a mood?
We all do. It’s why we quit things and leave places. Why we don’t hash out our differences or have honest conversations. We will let friendships wane and marriages fail because we get stuck in emotional assumptions we feel unable to reverse. We think things like
- I’m going to get hurt
- this will never get better
- no one understands me
- I don’t matter
Counselors use the term “stuck points” to help people understand and identify thoughts and feelings that are not reality. Stuck points are emotional snowdrifts. If you stay where you are, the snow hardens into ice around you. It will be even harder to dig out of the hard place where you find yourself.
Basically, all you talk about in a counseling session are your stuck points. Stuck points are those places where you spiral emotionally, where you think you’re looking at a situation logically, but you aren’t. You think you can see the absolute truth about something, but you get caught in the injustice or hopelessness of a place that’s not even real.
You expect circumstances to improve or someone to change. and You get stuck while you wait for the world to right itself again.
So let’s be honest about what stops us from moving forward. Here’s how I get stuck when something isn’t going well. I think:
- This isn’t fair
- If ________ is true, then _________ must be true
- This is how this will end: ___________ (worst case scenario)
Stuck points take over everything. A stuck point prevents grief from morphing into comfort. It severs a friendship, when forgiveness or grace could’ve mended the offense. It pits friends, coworkers, and family members against one another, while they ignore or fail to appreciate our differences. A stuck point leads us to holding grudges, judging motives, and manipulating outcomes. When we get stuck in the emotions of our limited perspectives, we shackle ourselves to hopelessness, blame, or retaliation.
Stuck points are the absence of common sense and hope. They exist, not because we’re terrible people, but because we’re human. We’re genetically engineered to self-preserve. We are afraid a lot of the time. That’s why we’re stuck.
Reversing stuck points requires more than positive thinking. We require regenerative cognition. You must believe something different than you presently do.
Recently in counseling, I was explaining one of my stuck points. I recognized it. (When you talk about it, it’s easier to recognize when you’re spiraling and crazy-talking.) I realized the core problem–I had stopped trusting God with a big terrible thing. I could blame others, yes. I could find culprits and misfortunes. But ultimately, I had stopped trusting God with my future. So I felt compelled to spiral into destructive thinking.
Obsession is nothing if not a lack of God-trust.
So if I recognize my obsessive thinking–if I know it’s unhealthy–if I recognize the spiritual implications of staying stuck–why don’t I change it? Why do we, when we’re faced with our own issues, dig in harder and find someone else to blame for whatever feels icky and scary inside of us?
I’ve had a second–and bigger–epiphany.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that the Christianity I currently embrace is the Christianity I want to keep.
I like what I understand right now. I’m comfortable here, with the knowledge and responsibility I currently have. I like the God I understand at this moment. I like how I’m serving him at this moment. I’ve grown enough.
My epiphany is realizing that I have decided on a personal Christianity that is no longer evolving or pushing me to self-evaluate and change.
I’ve gotten tired of growing
Evolution is painful, and I have experienced enough pain, thank you very much. I’ve done my Christian duty. I’ve suffered and grown. So I decide that I’m done here.
I stop learning. I stop growing. I get stuck spiritually, which means I get stuck in every possible way. After all, I’m a spiritual being. My soul affects my mind, my body, and my feelings. It’s who I am.
My fears and obsessions are stuck points that all revolve around a single stuck point: I don’t want to learn another aspect of God’s character. I don’t want to see how he helps me during this crisis because I want out of the crisis. I don’t want to learn about his faithfulness in my present pain. I’m tired of learning it.
Do you ever get stuck here, in the space where God calls you to a greater faith (that you really don’t want)?
We understand ourselves and God mostly through painful experiences. That’s the difficulty.
So how do you get un-stuck spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically?
- Be honest–peel away all the layers until you get to the core: your raw, vulnerable, true soul. Prepare to cry. You will cry when you’ve peeled away all the layers. You will cry when you confess what you really think about life and God and yourself.
- Get help–enlist the perspective and wisdom of a person who will call you on your crap. Once you’ve peeled away all the pretend-you, you will immediately start covering yourself up again. It’s what we do. So stop it.
- Learn to lament–say prayers that express your frustration and confusion. Lamentation is a physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental exercise that unburdens yourself onto God without the requirement of fixing something. A lament is authentic extrication measure. Click here to order a great book that shows you how to lament.
- Pursue growth–push yourself to grow. Read, study, ask questions, invite perspectives, confess false thinking. The only way to get un-stuck from anything is to access the problem and pull out of it.
- Dismantle the stuck points–unwind your fatalistic statements: are they actually true? Or are they just fears? Speak the truth about who God says you are and what God promises to do for you. Then adjust your thinking and verbiage to match. Start speaking God’s words about your fears. He is good. He never leaves you. He loves you. He designed you. He has a purpose for you. This is how you get unstuck: you believe the opposite of what your obsessive, fear-rattled mind tells you to think.
Dig out of the snowdrift
Maybe you have to back up a little. Maybe you throw some salt under your tires. Maybe you shovel for an hour. Maybe you find someone with a winch. But don’t stay in the snowdrift.
Minnesotans embrace winter. They live in it, fish in it, skate in it, play in it. But they take blizzards seriously. Nobody who’s smart drives when the snowdrifts are blowing across the prairie or when a blizzard blocks out the sky. Everybody knows the danger of driving when you only see snow, not sky or ground.
People who drive in blizzards drive off the road, into a snow-covered field or onto a frozen lake. They get covered over by quiet, beautiful whiteness. And unless someone rescues them, they freeze to death.
Getting unstuck isn’t changing your feelings. It’s changing your direction.
