Three Ways to Get Stuck and What to Do About It

There are many ways to feel stuck in life. To name just a few, we can get stuck in ego, feelings, the past, low self-value, resentment, or therapy. This post will address the first three.

Stuck in Ego

We get stuck in our ego when it makes us violate our values or otherwise act against our long-term best interests. Philosophers and novelists call this pride or, in extreme cases, hubris. When ego is more important than humane values, it feels inauthentic. To paraphrase the poet T. S. Eliot, we prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. The ego becomes fragile, in need of continual defense.

As in war, truth is the first casualty of ego defense. Covert forms of ego defense are blame, denial, and avoidance. Overt forms include anger, resentment, alcohol, drugs, workaholism, and compulsive behavior. In love relationships, ego-driven partners appear self-righteous, entitled, and apt to punish disagreement.

It’s hard to overcome or even recognize the reflex of ego-defense because it’s activated at any whisper of vulnerability. Merely acknowledging vulnerability automatically activates defenses.

If you’re stuck in ego, you’re overemphasizing how others perceive you. Identify your deepest, most humane values and uphold them in your behavior, regardless of what others think. If you do that, you’ll escape the mire of an ego in need of continual defense.

Stuck in Feelings

Bad self-help books, articles, and internet blogs proclaim that your feelings are reality: “If you feel it, it’s real.”

Feelings are always real, but the assumptions, perceptions, and judgments that underlie them are often inaccurate. For example, a client was resentful because his wife ignored him while talking on her phone. In fact, she called her girlfriend while he was texting several team members about a problem that came up at work. His feelings in response to her behavior were real, but his assumptions and judgments about it were wrong.

Feelings are valuable signals about a possible reality, but they lack the reality-testing of the prefrontal cortex. That's why the same events and circumstances can seem so different when you feel different. That is when your perceptions, assumptions, or judgments change.

Negative feelings function like smoke alarms, calibrated to give false positives. We don’t want smoke alarms that only go off when the house is in flames. We want the earliest possible warning, which is not necessarily probable. That means the smoke alarm can go off when someone is cooking or smoking cigarettes. When the alarm sounds, you don’t scream, “We’re all going to die.” You check to see if there is a fire and, if there is, you decide how to put it out. Always check out your feelings, but don’t confuse them with reality. A smoke alarm is not a fire.

Advice guaranteed to get you stuck in feelings seems to pervade the internet and some therapist’s offices:

“Feel your feelings, that’s what they’re for.”

Well, that’s not what they’re for. Feelings evolve to get our attention, so we’ll act on the motivation of emotions—what they prepare us to do. Emotional motivations fall into three broad categories:

• Approach (get more, seek to understand, experience more interest, enjoyment, compassion)

• Avoid (ignore, divert attention, reject)

• Attack (minimize a perceived ego threat by devaluing, warning, threatening, or intimidating).

Focus on the motivations of your emotions—what they’re telling you to do—and act on them if what they’re telling you to do is in your long-term best interest.

For example, anger and resentment tell you to attack, that is, devalue, warn, threaten, intimidate, or harm, overtly or in your head. It’s hard to imagine that attacking a loved one is in your best interest. Anger and resentment are protective emotions activated by blaming someone for your momentary vulnerability (guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, sadness, grief, physical pain). Anger and resentment are mere flames; vulnerability and blame are the fuel. Follow the motivation of your vulnerable emotions without blame.

Fear tells you to make yourself safe.

Anxiety tells you to be careful, make contingency plans.

Guilt tells you to make up for violating your values.

Shame tells you to try harder or try something different. In love relationships, it tells you to be compassionate, kind, supportive, protective, loving.

Physical pain tells you to seek medical help.

Sadness tells you to value something or someone.

Grief tells you to mourn and then love again.

Self-Help Essential Reads

Choose Between Chains of Resentment and Halos of Value

6 Reasons You Don't Like Being Told What to Do

Following the motivation of vulnerable emotions, as opposed to speculating about their origins or getting lost in what they feel like, frees us to create more value and meaning in life.

Stuck in Low Self-Value

Self-value is often confused with self-esteem. The latter is how you regard and feel about yourself, especially in comparison to others. Self-value is more behavioral, how you treat yourself and behave in accordance with your values and best interests.

Internet blogs sometimes conflate self-value and self-esteem with confidence. They can go together, but they often conflict. I’ve had many clients who were confident in their skills and abilities yet hated themselves or violated their values and acted contrary to their best interests.

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister describes a form of dark self-esteem that leads to violence. In less extreme versions, it’s based on downward comparison. When we need to look down on others to feel okay, we’re condemned to look up. No matter which criterion we use to feel superior—intelligence, looks, money, achievement, socks—we’ll find a lot of people with a lot more of it. Downward comparison masks low self-value if not inferiority.

Self-value is based on equality. We’re not superior to anyone or inferior to anyone. An endless enhancement of self-value is regarding everyone with dignity and respect.

If you feel stuck in low self-value, use the following checklist every morning.

I will:

• Eat well
• Exercise
• Avoid Drugs
• Drink moderately, if at all

• Learn
• Create value
• Appreciate
• Protect and nurture family
• Connect with friends
• Take time for enjoyment.

I’ll respect myself by:

• Respecting others
• Staying true to my deepest values
• Proving to myself that I’m worthy of love by feeling compassion and kindness
• Practicing loving thoughts and behavior.