Possible reasons why you can't get 'unstuck'

We teach what we need to learn. So this post comes from a humble place of knowing how hard it can be to get unstuck in different areas in our lives. My work has been about helping people get unstuck when it comes to exercise and self-care. My personal work has been about learning to let go of the past and replace negative coping strategies with more positive ones that are true to who I truly am.

Today in my master level of Reiki training, we talked a bit about why some people can make shifts when we work on them and why others can't. Some people seem more stuck then others. And in some areas of my own life, I feel more stuck then others.

But what I realize is that when we get so focused on our struggles and less focused on building a true sense of who we really are, we can start BECOMING our struggles. Our identities become intertwined with what our struggles have been.

We can become a number of things that we can confuse with our true essence. Our pain and our struggles are NOT who we are. They are what have shaped us, helped us grow or made us feel pain and suffering but they are not who we truly are. We each have our unique essence and gifts we come into this world with that will always be a part of us. And we can use the things that have happened in our lives to either break us and define us or to help us learn about who we really are: our strengths, our ability to overcome, our ability to love and feel compassion for self and others.

We can start to refer to ourselves with labels that can confuse this fact. I know all too well!

We can start defining ourselves by what we have survived instead. We can let our suffering start to become our identity instead of experiences we have gone through.

In doing so, we don't stay open to the possibilities that something is truly behind us. We keep ourselves stuck in defining our identity based on these struggles. We are so much more than that, each of us. We are capable of so much love and the human spirit is so strong that we don't need these experiences to become who we are. I don't negate the need to heal from these experiences and to face them head on, but I think it's important to let go when it's time to let go.

THE TRICKY PART IS THAT IF WE'VE LET OUR SELF IDENTITY BECOME WHAT OUR TRAUMA OR STRUGGLES HAVE BEEN, THEN WE CAN UNCONSCIOUSLY FEAR THAT WE WILL BE LEFT WITH NO SELF IDENTITY AT ALL. WITHOUT OUR STRUGGLES FILLING THE SPACE WHERE A TRUE SELF IDENTITY SHOULD BE, WE MIGHT BE AFRAID OF BEING LEFT NOT KNOWING HOW TO DEFINE OURSELVES.

If you are stuck thinking you are someone who struggles with weight and always has, you might be locking yourself into the belief that this is indeed who you are instead of realizing that the experiences that drove you to overeat no longer exist.

If you are stuck thinking that you are a workaholic that can't find time to take care of yourself, then this will always be the truth until you realize that this has just been a coping strategy or unhealthy choice that is not you, but merely a behaviour.

If you believe you are damaged from your inadequate parenting or from suffering abuse, you don't leave the possibility that this is what happened to you and that you are not in fact doomed to be damaged the rest of your life.

I could go on and on.

Peace to everyone who needs help letting go and getting unstuck. I'm sure everyone can relate to this feeling. Believe you are more than what has happened to you!