“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time.”
Feeling stuck is the modern epidemic nobody wants to talk about honestly. You’ve been “working on yourself” for how long now?
Be honest—your bookshelf looks like a graveyard of half-read self-help books, your podcast app has more gurus than a yoga retreat in Bali, and your journal is basically a crime scene of broken promises.
And yet… here you are. Again. Same place, same patterns, and same excuses wearing slightly different outfits.
Everyone wants to tell you how to get unstuck. I’m going to tell you something worse: you don’t actually want to get unstuck.
Wait—before you close this tab—hear me out. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s ridiculous. I’m literally googling solutions at 2am because I’m desperate for change.”
And you are. Your conscious mind absolutely wants change. It wants it badly.
But there’s another part of you—the part that’s actually running the show—that has very good reasons for keeping you exactly where you are. And until you understand what those reasons are, all the motivation in the world won’t move you an inch.
This isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s about understanding the hidden economics of staying stuck. Because once you see what you’re getting out of it, you can finally decide if it’s worth the price you’re paying.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: feeling stuck isn’t irrational. It’s not a character flaw or a sign that you’re broken. It’s your brain doing exactly what evolution designed it to do.
Your brain wasn’t built for happiness or fulfillment or living your best life. It was built for survival. Neuroscientist Dr. Beau Lotto explains it plainly:
“Your brain didn’t evolve to see the world the way it is. Your brain evolved to see the world in the way that was most useful for survival.”
In a landmark study published in Science, researchers found that people would rather receive a painful electric shock immediately than wait in uncertainty for a shock that might never come. We’re literally wired to choose known pain over unknown outcomes.
This is the survival math your brain is constantly running: Staying stuck equals predictable. Moving forward equals unpredictable. And your amygdala—that ancient alarm system in your brain—can’t tell the difference between “unpredictable” and “dangerous.”
Your comfort zone isn’t actually comfortable. It’s just familiar. And familiar registers as safe, even when the familiar thing is slowly suffocating you.
I once worked with a client who hated her job so much, she cried in the bathroom every Monday morning. But she stayed for three years because, as she told me, ‘At least I know where the coffee machine is.’
That’s the brain’s survival logic at work: misery, but familiar misery. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score:
“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.”
That imprint creates a perimeter fence around what feels safe. Every time you try to step outside it, your nervous system sounds the alarm.
Not because you’re weak. Not because you lack discipline. But because your brain is running 200,000-year-old software in a world that requires constant adaptation.
So when you say: “I don’t know why I can’t just do it,” you’re asking the wrong question. The right question is:
“What is staying stuck protecting me from?”
And that’s where things get really uncomfortable.
Here’s where we need to get brutally honest. Feeling stuck isn’t something happening to you. At some level, it’s happening for you. There are real psychological benefits you’re getting from staying exactly where you are.
Think of the friend who’s been ‘about to start’ their business since Obama was in office. They don’t realize it, but they’re getting something out of staying stuck. And if you’re honest, so are you.
If you never really commit, you never really fail. You get to preserve your “potential.”
This is the person who’s been “almost ready” to start their business for five years. The one who’ll apply for that dream job “when I’m more qualified.”
Psychologist Carol Dweck’s research shows that people with a “fixed mindset” unconsciously avoid situations where they might be exposed as inadequate.
Potential is infinite. Reality is finite. Stuckness is like being a professional “could-have-been.” You get to strut around in the fantasy league of your own life without ever playing an actual game.
Zero risk, zero reward, and infinite excuses.
Being stuck gives you a permanent get-out-of-expectations card. It’s like flashing an emotional doctor’s note:
“Sorry, can’t do adulthood today, my existential dread is flaring up again.”
People stop expecting things from you. You’re off the hook. And if we’re being honest? That’s a relief. As Brené Brown notes in Atlas of the Heart:
“We’re wired for connection, but we’re also wired for self-protection.”
Sometimes self-protection means making ourselves too fragile to be held accountable. The cost? You become the person things happen to, not the person who makes things happen.
Familiar suffering beats unfamiliar uncertainty every single time. The relationship that’s clearly wrong but safer than being alone. The job you hate but know how to navigate with your eyes closed. The city you’ve outgrown but can’t imagine leaving. Dr. Joe Dispenza explains:
“If you want a new outcome, you will have to break the habit of being yourself and reinvent a new self.”
The problem? Your nervous system treats reinvention like a threat. We’ll choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven almost every time because at least in hell, we know where all the exits are.
“I’m the struggling artist.” “I’m the person who’s had a hard life.” “I’m the one who never catches a break.”
If you’ve built your entire personality around being the underdog, what happens when you start winning? Carl Jung observed:
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
But becoming who you truly are means letting go of who you’ve been pretending to be. And that feels like dying. You’ll unconsciously sabotage anything that threatens that story because losing the story feels like losing yourself.
Your struggle becomes your primary conversation topic. Misery is basically your personal brand. You’ve turned suffering into small talk, like weather but with more tears.
People check in, they worry, they give you attention. It’s emotional Bitcoin: not really useful in the real world, but damn if you’re not still mining it.
This is vulnerability weaponized. You’ve become addicted to the attention that comes from struggling. Getting better means losing your audience. Healing means people stop checking in.
Success means you no longer need the support system you’ve built your entire social life around.
Success means exposure, judgment, and having to maintain new standards. Better to stay small and invisible. Marianne Williamson wrote:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
She was onto something. Sometimes we’re more terrified of succeeding than failing. Failure keeps you small and safe.
Success makes you visible. And visible means vulnerable to criticism, jealousy, expectations, and the possibility of losing what you’ve gained.
Read that list again slowly. Which one made you uncomfortable? That’s probably your primary payoff. And until you acknowledge it, you’re not going anywhere.
You tried to think your way out of feeling stuck. Made lists. Set goals. Given yourself pep talks in the mirror that sounded suspiciously like you were auditioning for a low-budget TED Talk.
And yet—here you are. Same hamster wheel and a shinier planner. How is that working out?
The problem isn’t that you’re not trying hard enough. It’s that your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are playing completely different games.
Conscious mind: “I want to change! I have goals!”
Subconscious mind: “Change detected. Threat level: severe. Initiating shutdown sequence.”
Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman explains in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain:
“The conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.”
Your conscious intentions are just the tip of the iceberg. This is why positive thinking doesn’t work for deep-rooted “stuckness.” Why affirmations bounce off like rubber bullets. Why you can want something desperately and still find yourself doing the exact opposite.
Your conscious mind can’t negotiate with programming it doesn’t have access to. This is where hypnotherapy becomes relevant—not as some mystical solution, but as a practical tool.
Hypnotherapy works because it speaks directly to the part of you that’s holding the brake pedal. It’s not magic—it’s addressing the problem at the level where it actually exists.
This isn’t a pep talk. This is a protocol.
Get brutally honest about what feeling stuck is giving you. Ask yourself:
Write until something makes you uncomfortable. The real answer is usually the one you don’t want to write down.
Your brain isn’t broken. It’s protecting you from something it genuinely perceives as dangerous.
Name the actual threat:
Don’t argue with these fears yet. Just acknowledge them. They’re trying to keep you safe using outdated threat assessments.
This is where most self-help advice fails. It treats your resistance as the enemy. Something to overpower or ignore or push through.
Try something different: Treat your resistance as a protective part of you. Not as an enemy, but as an overzealous bodyguard who’s confused about what’s actually dangerous.
Ask: “What does the part of me that keeps me stuck actually need?”
Usually, it needs one of three things: safety, certainty, or validation.
The question becomes: Can you get those needs met WITHOUT feeling stuck?
Your brain believes change equals danger. You need to retrain it.
Ask yourself: “What does ‘unstuck and safe’ actually look like?” Visualize it in detail. Then build evidence through tiny wins. Your brain needs proof that forward movement won’t kill you.
Start uncomfortably small. The goal isn’t the win itself. The goal is showing your subconscious:
“See? We tried something new, and the world didn’t end.”
Do that enough times, and the threat level starts to downgrade.
You can’t let go of an identity without adopting a new one.
Old identity: “I’m stuck.”
New identity: “I’m learning to trust myself with forward movement.”
Make it about becoming, not fixing. You’re not broken —you’re just updating your operating system.
This process isn’t linear. You’ll backslide. You’ll sabotage yourself right when things start working. That’s not failure —that’s your brain doing one last security check. Keep going anyway.
Feeling stuck isn’t a moral failing. It’s not laziness or lack of discipline. It’s smart protective programming that’s outlived its usefulness.
You’re not stuck because you’re broken. You’re stuck because at some point, being stuck kept you safe. Your brain never got the memo that the danger has passed.
It’s like your brain is an overprotective parent still making you wear floaties in the shallow end of the pool. You know you can swim, but until you convince the parent otherwise, you’re splashing around with neon orange balloons strapped to your arms.
Success and happiness aren’t on the other side of trying harder. They’re on the other side of understanding what “feeling stuck’ was protecting you from—and finally giving that part of you permission to let go.
The question isn’t “Why can’t I change?”
The question is, “What am I getting out of staying the same—and is it still worth the price?”
You already know the answer. You knew it before you started reading this. Probably knew it before you typed “feeling stuck” into the search bar at 2am.
The only question left is: what are you going to do about it?
If you’ve tried everything and conscious effort isn’t working, it’s probably because the block is subconscious. This isn’t a character flaw—it’s just how the brain works.
Hypnotherapy can help access and reprogram those subconscious blocks directly. It’s particularly effective when you know what you want to change but can’t seem to make yourself do it—because that gap between knowing and doing is where the subconscious resistance lives.
If you want support with the deeper work, I’m here. But only if you’re actually ready to get unstuck—not just comfortable talking about being stuck.
DISCLOSURE: In my article, I’ve mentioned a few products and services, all in a valiant attempt to turbocharge your life. Some of them are affiliate links. This is basically my not-so-secret way of saying, “Hey, be a superhero and click on these links.” When you joyfully tap and spend, I’ll be showered with some shiny coins, and the best part? It won’t cost you an extra dime, not even a single chocolate chip. Your kind support through these affiliate escapades ensures I can keep publishing these useful (and did I mention free?) articles for you in the future.
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