Getting stuck in your life: what helps?

Have you woken up and suddenly asked yourself, “How did I end up here?” Do you feel like you’ve hit a roadblock in your life? That you have no control over your life and that you actually have no idea where it’s headed?

Why are you getting stuck?

The feeling of being stuck in life is something that affects many people and can be caused by all sorts of circumstances. For example, because you’ve lost contact with your family or keep failing to achieve certain goals[1].

In addition, you can also get stuck in your romantic relationship. This can happen in two ways. For example, you may find it very important to stay with your partner because you feel that way. Or you stay with your partner because it is more convenient financially, because you somehow feel compelled to stay with your partner or because you feel obligated. That second way in particular is an unpleasant way to stay in a relationship and can make you feel stuck.

People who are in such a relationship often started the relationship in their adolescence or early twenties and then started having children or other things you take on together, such as living together[2].

If you suffer from depression , you may also feel stuck in your past. Compared to people who are not in depression, many memories are used with negative judgment in the life story. For example, the more recent memories receive fewer judgments, this suggests that people who suffer from depressive symptoms are more concerned with their past than with their present time[3].

Those difficult memories can include a difficult childhood. Because of that difficult childhood, for example, you may have developed ways to survive, but they don't help you move forward as an adult. For example, if you had an alcoholic parent for whom you started caring as a survival mechanism, so to speak, you may attract people in your later life who need care. This can also make you feel stuck, because you find it hard to give yourself the attention you need. As a result, you also do not feel that you are getting ahead, because you are always busy trying to solve the problems caused by the other person [4].

Getting moving again

For example, if you’re stuck in a relationship, becoming aware of alternatives and growing beyond the relationship is often a way to eventually move on. Additionally, it’s important to overcome obstacles to ending the relationship if it’s in your best interest to do so (source 2).

To get moving again, it can also be important to determine what it means for you to be stuck right now. What does this feeling tell you? What are you stuck in? Determining this will help you figure out your actual problem[5].

If you feel like you're stuck, you've probably already tried to free yourself. If this has not succeeded then it may have reinforced your idea that you are stuck in your life and you may have very rigid thoughts about this. A hypnotherapist can help you transform your rigid ideas about your problem so that you can see how your problem may have once contributed to your life. This can help you get into a better mental state, making it easier to think of a solution and which does actually free yourself. Your negative ideas about the problem are then transformed into more positive and hopeful ideas about how to move forward in your life[6].

In addition, hypnosis can also help resolve emotional blockages and other unresolved issues. For example, you may find that your spiritual growth is blocked because you’re unable to let go of your ego—due to unresolved mental issues. Hypnosis can play a role here, helping you get back on track[7].

Even if you suffer from chronic pain, you may feel stuck and that your situation is hopeless. In that case, hypnotherapy can also help free you from that feeling, because hypnosis can be used to combat pain and minimize its impact on your life[8].

Discovering beliefs

So there are all sorts of causes and reasons for why you are stuck in your life, and hypnosis can help you get moving again. But how does hypnosis do that?

Initially, a hypnotherapist will help identify beliefs that are currently "trapping" you. Like if you think you are supposed to care for people and that it is selfish to say "no" or something similar.

In a preliminary consultation, hypnotherapists often already ask about your own suspicions of why you have become stuck in your life. Sometimes such a conversation can be picked up again after you have been put into hypnosis, because it allows you to dig a little further into your unconscious.

Regression is also often used to identify a belief that is currently holding you back. You’re often asked to go back to the first moment when you felt you had to do something that you still do today, but that no longer serves you.

These are often moments from your early childhood, as you determine how the world works and how you are supposed to function in it. Then a hypnotherapist helps you reinterpret this moment, but with your adult knowledge. That new interpretation then helps you let go of the beliefs that are not helping you move forward.

If that's gone, you probably already feel some relief.

New suggestions can then be given to help you fill that "gap" again, so you don't go back to that belief after hypnotherapy.

For example, you may be asked to repeat suggestions such as:

"It is enough if I only help myself."

"I am solely responsible for my own life."

"I have alternatives."

"Everything can be figured out."

These are just examples. Depending on why getting stuck in your life occurred to you, you may receive other suggestions from the therapist.

Giving a seductive future

An enticing vision of the future can also do much to get you moving again. If you feel like you are stuck, you may also feel that no matter what you do, you are still not moving forward in your life.

With the progression technique of hypnosis, on the contrary, you can come up with a clear achievable plan to reach a certain ideal future. With progression, for example, you are instructed to imagine your life a year from now. A kind of ideal picture. A life in which you are happy and doing what you really want to do.

Then, in your mind, you go back one step each time to the moment of therapy. Those steps actually give you a manageable plan, allowing you to unravel your stalled life and make something of it again.

That enticing vision of the future and this clear plan can give you the motivation to take another stab at taking control of your life, and the odds of succeeding are much higher.

Improving hope and gratitude

With progression and regression, you're actually already doing a lot to improve hopes for a better future. Research also shows that if, for example, you are a young person coping with the death of a loved one, then determining how that death contributes to your life can also help you think less about the past and have more hope[9].

This approach also lets you examine other situations where you feel stuck. For example, if you’re stuck in a relationship, you at least know that you have perseverance. If you’re stuck, you at least know that you can keep going despite setbacks. In some ways, you’re very strong.

That knowledge and gratitude for your own power can help you put that energy into things like the plans you've made to free yourself again.

A post-hypnotic suggestion can also strengthen your sense that everything is changing and that you can transform your life.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and exactly how it works? Then join us for the free online masterclass.

Or sign up for one of our seminars or training programs. Ideal for your own personal growth and if you want to help people who are feeling stuck.

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