Feeling Stuck in Life? How to Find a Way Forward, 2

In the first part of this post we saw that feeling stuck in life, at some point or other, is a pretty normal part of our journey.

I’m referring to genuine experiences of impasse, where, in some key area of our life, we just don’t know how to more forward, perhaps for a long time.

Sometimes people are conscious of this, and sometimes not.  Take a group of people who went to high school together, who still go to their favorite bar every weekend, and sit around the same table where they’ve sat for 20 years.  Do they experience the discomfort of stuckness?  Possibly not.  But are they perhaps stuck?  …Probably a question they should at least consider…

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Lessons from Impasse

The ego doesn’t totally run the show.  We may really want to move forward on something, and yet find it impossible to do so.

Neuroscience researchers like USC Prof. Antonio Damasio have demonstrated that much of human decision-making is non-rational, emotional and rooted in the unconscious.  Decisions are not just made in a rational, goal-oriented way by the ego, the conscious, goal-driven part of us.  These neuroscience findings were anticipated by the work of Jung and other /a-midlife-transitions even 80-90 years ago.

What is true of ordinary decision-making is profoundly true of large-scale decisions about the future direction of our lives.  Making such a decision in any kind of authentic way involves parts of the mind that are far from usual consciousness.   Also, the emotional aspects of the personality are involved just as deeply as any thinking or rational component — as is, what we can call for lack of a better word, our intuition.

True impasse, true “stuckness” can be seen as the whole person demanding that the ego pay attention to its priorities and its needs.  Unless the ego is willing, and is willing to some extent, to relinquish control, stuckness is liable to continue.

Feeling Stuck in Life: What I Can’t Get Past

Feeling stuck in life often revolves around some bedrock truths, realities or feelings that we need to take in.  Often this means coming up against who we really are.  Such experiences of self-encounter, in the deepest sense, are what /a-midlife-transitions often refer to as encounters with soul.

Example.  A 40s woman is going through the motions.  She is knowledgeable and does well at her career, but without enthusiasm.  Her home life also functions, in that she looks after her two children, and feels close to them, although her relationship with her spouse is limited to meeting the kids’ needs and performing tasks needed to keep the household going.  On the surface, this woman feels that she is “doing what she is supposed to be doing”, according to the messaging of her family of origin and of society. But this superficially complete picture doesn’t stop the feeling that she is missing out, nor stop the yearning for “some kind of real experience!”

A key part of working in therapy to get past stuckness is often in identifying — and accepting — where life is not stuck.  Where does my life’s energy really want to go?  This is often difficult work, because it may entail looking as aspects of ourselves that the ego resists, or even shuns.

Stuck-ness and Renewal

Many indigenous cultures, and other cultures worldwide recognize that human life involves a process of numerous deaths to a certain identity and self-definition, in order to rise with a new identity and relationship to who we most fundamentally are.

I love this song by the great Stan Rogers, which is about death and re-birth — but a re-birth that is only brought about by hard, painstaking — loving — work in the depths.

Feeling stuck in life often embodies the sense that our direction, our purposiveness, our zest for life has sunk into the depths, and we need to get it back.  Embarking on /a-midlife-transition is often a process of salvaging this sunken treasure.

Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst

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PHOTO:     © Oregon Department of Transport ; Stephane Mignon modified ;  Official U.S. Navy Page

© 2014 Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)