Episode 332 of The Peaceful MInd Podcast- Feeling Stuck? A Gentle Way Forward
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Speaker: [00:00:00] You are listening to episode 332 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to The Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel certified life coach Catholic Mom and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional, steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out.
So you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello, beautiful, mama. Welcome back. Today, I wanna start a little differently. I want you to just notice first as you start this episode, how are you feeling right now? Right now as you. Press play on this episode, and [00:01:00] I just want you to name it. Okay? Maybe you're moving through your day, maybe you're getting things done.
Maybe you're managing a lot, holding a lot. Maybe there's a low hum of pressure in the background. Maybe there's a sense of being a little stuck somewhere in your life or maybe you actually feel okay because you know there's something just under the surface that keeps coming back. Just notice it right now.
One word to name it is enough. And as you notice that feeling, I want you to know this right away. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing about feeling stuck or unsettled or unsure means that you're doing like motherhood wrong or life wrong. Now, perhaps what you named wasn't stuck and it was a different kind of emotion.
And I want you to know that's perfectly okay [00:02:00] too. I really do think that what I have to say here does apply and can have you thinking and understanding how to loosen what you're feeling right now. And of course if it's ecstatic and if it's on the part of the scale, that's the joy. Answer.
We're going to, we're gonna hold onto that and we're gonna milk that as well. But I'm hoping that maybe even at the end of this episode that I want you to just notice. I just want you to notice, do you feel like a little better? Did something just loosen up a little bit, right? Because whatever feeling you're feeling, it actually just means you are human.
And more than that, it. If it is on the negative side or today I'm in particularly just honing in, if you have the feeling of stuck stuckness, that it just means that your mind is trying to solve something. So I [00:03:00] want to talk to you again in particular about the feeling of being stuck. And the reason why I'm just going there is because I was feeling this past week and I actually posed.
This into my coaching program. Who else was feeling stuck? And what about because I knew that me trying to help them would also help myself. And whenever I'm going through something myself or I'm, it's a theme that's coming up in my coaching practice. There's usually an episode out here that I know that more moms out there are suffering with the same thing.
So here I am, turned on the mic, I'm addressing it. Okay, so I'm going to talk about that feeling of when you are stuck, it is something that comes up again and again. And even in the spaces that. Or in times of your life when you like, are aware that you are growing or trying something different or new or hard, [00:04:00] but it still doesn't feel great.
It feel to be what? What we will process is not moving forward doesn't make us feel good. And the reason why is because we are put here on this earth as creative beings, right? And time passes and it goes against the grain of our natural, the way our human life works when we feel that we're frozen or, sometimes we say it's like our feet are in, cement.
We're just, we have like our mind racing. We have this list of things we wanna do, and we're just not doing them right. That feeling of stuckness, it just will be coming back in our life. So instead of being someone who resists it or making it mean something's gone wrong, I wanna help you understand it in a new way, a way.
Of course that brings you back to [00:05:00] more of a peaceful mind. So let's talk about this first. What does it actually mean when you say I feel stuck? Because if we slow that down, stuck is not a circumstance. It's not something that's outside of you. It literally, like I, I guess I gave the picture of, our feet in cement.
Like we could definitely say that would be a circumstance of being stuck. But for, again, for the sake of what I know, you know that, I mean about feeling stuck in your life and motherhood, I want you to lean into. It's not something outside of you. It is a feeling, a vibration in your body that's being created, but by what your mind is offering you.
And usually underneath that feeling are thoughts like this, I don't know what to do. This isn't [00:06:00] working. I should be further along. Nothing is changing when I want it to or even. I can't believe I'm still dealing with this. And when your brain offers you those types of thoughts, of course you're going to feel stuck.
That makes complete sense. So the first shift I wanna offer you is this, again, feeling stuck is not a problem, it's just information. It's your mind pointing to an area where you are wanting more clarity, more movement, or some direction. And instead of pushing that feeling away or judging it, what if you got curious about it?
What if you asked yourself gently, what do I think I'm stuck on right now? And then just let the answer [00:07:00] come. No pressure, no need to solve it immediately. Just awareness because awareness alone can start to soften. That stuck feeling. That is what I did myself. I was like, what's going on here? Love what?
What is really going on here? Danielle and I just stay with myself for a bit and I get curious and I'm literally like, oh, this is interesting. Okay. Can I pinpoint it? Do I do, I know where the stuck feeling's coming from. I just, again, ask a little bit more questions, trying to uncover some things.
Now, the second thing I want you to see is that sometimes the reason we might stay in that stuck feeling is because we're waiting for certainty to come to us. We're waiting to feel completely clear. [00:08:00] We're waiting to feel completely confident or completely ready before we move forward, right? We think that, we know we're not moving.
We feel stuck, but we think the longer we take or that if we do nothing, that it will go away, and that all of a sudden we will just bubble up with this like clarity and confidence and move forward. But. That's not really how movement actually works, the clarity that we're always looking for. It often comes after we take a step, right?
We take a step and that's what then reveals to us something we've just collected more information. We know if it helped, if it got closer to it, quote, working for us, not before. So if you're sitting there thinking, I just don't know what to do, I want to [00:09:00] gently offer you this, you don't need to know the whole path.
You just need to be willing to take one small step, and small, something that feels doable, not overwhelming. 'cause your brain will then, it'll try to jump to that whole big picture. It will try to solve all of it at once. And that will bring on the overwhelming, and then that's where it freezes, and that's where the stuck feeling then grows when we're in that frozen state.
Not taking any action, not making any decisions, not making any guesses, but when you bring it back to one small step, something shifts, you will create movement. This is coming from your brain that might say, see that little step and be like, okay, that's easy. I think I could do that. I'm capable of that today.
And then you create movement, and that movement [00:10:00] then creates momentum. Now, the third piece I wanna talk to you about is something that might feel a little counterintuitive to you, and that is that sometimes we stay stuck because we are resisting the feeling itself. Being confused feels awful and we don't wanna feel confused.
We don't wanna feel unsure. That's super uncomfortable. We don't wanna feel like we don't have it figured out. That doesn't feel great, especially as moms who, where we're used to managing so much. But resisting those feelings actually keeps them in place longer. Actually, when we're like, I don't wanna feel stuck.
I hate this feeling of stuck. This feels terrible actually, is what keeps us there longer, right? That's the counterintuitive, that's the irony there when we think, oh, [00:11:00] if I don't like it that much, then I'll I'll hurry up and change and get out of it. But that it's not the way that it works. When we're resisting it, it is like pushing a ball underwater, like a, a beach ball underwater.
It, you can only hold it down for so long, right? Arms get tired and then it just shoots right up with one little slip. So what would it look like for you to actually allow the feeling of stuck. Of stuckness to be there, to just be there without make it mean anything. I did that. That's how I got a little bit of traction on where I was feeling stuck because I can recognize nothing's gone wrong here.
That stuck is just a feeling. It's a very natural feeling for humans to have on occasion. It's very interesting. What is this trying to tell me? What do I, is it trying to tell me something? Is there something [00:12:00] for me to learn here? I didn't make it mean I was behind. I didn't make it mean that I wasn't capable, and I knew that it wouldn't last forever.
And sometimes that could just be exactly what you needed here today. Whatever you're dealing with, that you are frozen on, whatever the change you're not making, however you're feeling today, if it doesn't feel great, it will not last forever. Just even noticing and saying, oh, I just happen to feel stuck right now, and letting that be okay because when you stop fighting the feeling, you free up energy to actually move forward.
Now I want to bring in something that I think is really important for you to remember. That's always like you don't have, you've heard this a lot of times, and I do not mind [00:13:00] being a broken record when it comes to this. You don't have to do this alone. You're not meant to figure out everything out in your own head, and there is something powerful about getting your thoughts out of your mind and onto paper.
Or bringing them into a space where they can actually be seen. Where you can be seen, right? Be because when everything stays in your head, it can feel like a tangled, jumbled mess that then creates a heaviness. But when you write it down, something shifts. You create space, you create perspective.
Sometimes even just writing out, this is what I feel stuck on. Can bring you clarity you didn't have before. Again, I am speaking out of the steps that I took when I felt stuck this past week. It was literally that question that I asked, and again, I got [00:14:00] curious and I was really self-compassionate about myself and I saw this as very human, but I did take pen to paper right in my journal.
Again, very lovingly, this is what I feel stuck on. And at first, like your brain wants to say, I don't really know. Some of you do know what you're stuck on, but when you don't, you just know you have that feeling. I feel stuck in life. Like this is where that asking that question saying, this is what I feel stuck on.
Your brain will go to find an answer for you. And I've seen it over and over again, even. Without someone responding right away, right? Even without any coaching, right away, the act of putting it into words helps your mind go start to solve for it. So if you've been holding something in your head, or you're not quite knowing why you feel the way you do, I wanna gently invite you to take it out, [00:15:00] write it down, bring it somewhere, let it be seen at the very least by you.
But maybe somebody else. And I also wanna offer you a simple practice that you can take with you after this episode at the beginning of your day, or even right now, right? Or how I said at the beginning of this episode, to just notice how you feel. Name it one word. And then you ask yourself, where would I like to be at the end of the day?
Not a huge jump. Not from I'm so overwhelmed right now. And then you put, I wanna be completely peaceful, but just one small shift. Maybe from stuck. You desire to just go to a little more open. Feeling more open. If your thought or feeling right now is anxious, could we go to [00:16:00] slightly calmer? From overwhelmed to just a bit more steady, because this is how change actually happens in small intentional shifts, not in big dramatic transformations.
And when you start practicing this, you build trust with yourself. You start to see that you can influence how you feel. You're not at the mercy of your emotions. You do have a role in guiding them, and that is where your power lies. And let's just anchor this back to God's love for a moment.
Because even in the feeling of being stuck, God is not distant. He's not waiting for you to figure out everything before he shows up. He is with you in the stuckness. He's with you in the uncertainty, in the questions you have in the in between. And sometimes the invitation is not to have all the answers, but to just trust him in the next [00:17:00] step.
Just the next step, not the whole plan, just the next faithful step forward, your best guess. And that can be enough. So beautiful Mamas, as I start to close and wrap up today, I wanna leave you with this if you're feeling stuck. Hear me, you're not behind. You're not doing anything wrong. You're simply in a moment where your mind is asking for direction, and instead of judging that, you can meet it with curiosity, with self-compassion with grace.
Steady not perfect. And from that place, you can take one small step. That's all that's needed. Before you go, I want to invite you if you have something that you've been feeling stuck on, to bring it into a space where you can get support, whether that's writing it down, sharing it to someone, or coming into coaching.
You don't [00:18:00] have to carry any of what you're going through your motherhood alone. All right, mama. Thank you so much for being here today. I hope you have a blessed week. I'm so grateful for you, and I'll talk to you again next week. Until then, may peace be with you. Always. Thank you for listening to The Peaceful Mind Podcast.
If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood. I invite you to take the next step by scheduling a Peaceful Mom strategy. call at www.daniellethienel.com You'll also find the link in the show notes. It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood journey.
