Stuck

Emotional 𖤓    Intellectual 𖧼

"My shoulder is killing me," I whine to my massage therapist.

"Show me where on the diagram; describe the pain and when you feel it."

"To tell you the truth it's been going on for a while, it's acute today. But I've been feeling crooked for a couple of months. I think I had you work my left side just last visit."

He sits me down and starts poking around the area of pain. He hits a trigger spot.

"Ow."

"What do you suppose that is?"

"It's got to be Mom. Her life, and so my life, just gets harder and harder."


He asks question after question while he counters with his thumbs the tension build-up at a line of spots just under my left shoulder blade, each tightness triggering tears and deeper sharing of indelible words, an image of the 6 year old version of myself still resenting old hurt. Through imagining he has me love and support my angry little girl, and feel compassion for a mother as I attempt to break through the cocoon I can see around me. He reveals to me the old tapes that keep me from playing the mature adult I mean to play. He helps me unstick my painful shoulder, AND my interactions with my mother.

"Stuck" for me is when I stop making progress in an area I am trying to change. Being stuck in one area of our lives sets us up to be stuck in other areas. Plus, most of the things that make us stuck are emotionally charged, often unresolved things from the past. Our unconcious is so busy working to fortify the effects of the past it hardly has time to work on the present. If we are aware, we can even pinpoint its physical sign--hyperventilating, anxiety, sadness. If we are smart, we'll get some help to break up the jam.

It seems when I experience one lesson, it's usually followed close by a couple more of the same ilk. As a matter of fact, a friend expresses her stuckness via email too soon to be coincidence. She has been trying to work on some long-term health issues. In the course of the written exchange, she mentions that she hasn't slept for years. She is working on it. I applaud her insight. I supported her delaying any more big life changes until she gets unstuck from her sleeplessness. It's difficult to find clarity about just about everything when you're Z-deprived.

Fast forward to a Memorial Day weekend and a reunion of women working on creating their authentic lives. Anna is a lifelong learner in her 40s, very successful in her career. Her career is not her passion. She's searching for that. Her story includes a long-standing resentment toward her family, a struggle to let go of hard feelings and an unexplainable angst. Dana works hard on finding her talents and passions, but struggles to breathe most of the time due to a tightness in her chest and tears just behind her eyes. I wonder out loud if it is possible they need to break through their stuck-ness before their next big burst of progress.