What does feeling “stuck” really mean when it comes to mental health? Feeling stuck includes many different emotions, thoughts, and feelings. For some people, feeling stuck means a loss of direction in their lives. For others, it may mean something they can’t quite put their finger on, a sense of being disconnected to any true meaning in their lives, almost robotic, or sensing that life is passing them by and they are barely participating in it. Sometimes people describe feeling stuck as it pertains to their relationships with a significant other, family, work, or life decisions. Sometimes it’s a sense of ambiguity or low mood.

Trauma as the root of feeling stuck

Typically, when we feel this way, we don’t have to look very far to spot the accompanying effects of anxiety and depression. Anxiety can show up as a reminder that we are supposed to be doing something to solve the problem, or at least functioning at a higher level. Then depression can be present with a message that “I’m not enough in the world, or “I am a disappointment to my friends and family,” which in turn can lead to hopelessness. And if that’s not enough there is frustration and guilt or anger for not showing up in the world as your best self, or not showing up for others.

See how it can be a vicious cycle? This leads us to the question; how do I get myself unstuck? When we look closer at this we see it’s not as simple as it seems on the surface. In fact, these words “feeling stuck” seem to be a large container of many things involving complicated thoughts and emotions as we look deeper into it. However, could there be another reason for these feelings you may not have considered? As an EMDR Trauma and Grief trained therapist, I have worked with many clients who say they just couldn’t put their finger on why they felt so bad in general, blah, anxious, depressed, hard time in personal relationships. Believe it or not, trauma can be the culprit. On the surface their life looks “normal”, so why do they feel so bad?

The crazy thing is, trauma is very sneaky, the symptoms don’t just limit themselves to our emotions and thought processes. It can show up in our bodies as stomach problems, headaches, crying for no apparent reason, low motivation, low energy, “just not feeling it” or even low performance at work. A lot of what I hear in the therapy room is “I don’t know why I have a pattern of doing this and why I can’t seem to change it”. If you’re saying to yourself, “well that can’t be it”, “I don’t’ remember anything traumatizing in my life”, you would be amazed at experiences you were able to get through without a scratch at the time it was happening, but the emotion center in your brain and your body were storing this experience in a whole different context.

The word “trauma” is derived from the Greek word for “wound”. As human beings we are all subject to small wounds and big wounds, some are physical, some are emotional, and some are both, but they are all impactful to our overall well being. Stored memories or disruptive unresolved events in our lives can leave us with trauma. Before you say to yourself that you have never experienced trauma, it doesn’t always have to be an extremely disturbing event for it to stick. As human beings, we have all experienced trauma in one way or another just by the nature of being human, even the experience of seeing someone else go through a traumatic experience can leave us with secondary trauma.

EMDR

So, what is EMDR? It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a very effective form of therapy using bilateral stimulation of the body through eye movement or tappers or alternating tapping sides of the body. It helps us to get to get to the root causes of your symptoms through processing the stored memories that are getting in the way of you feeling better. You’re probably familiar with the term “REM sleep”? Spelled out, it means “Rapid Eye Movement” when our eyes are moving side to side while we are asleep. This is an important function our brain does for processing all the events of each day while we sleep and putting them in the right context. However, when disturbing events happen, sometimes these experiences are not fully processed through the normal REM sleep cycle. This leaves the remnants of these emotions, thoughts, and feelings readily available to impact everything we do, feel, and think. This is where EMDR can be helpful. It does in a waking state what REM sleep does while you are sleeping. EMDR can even use dream analysis to understand what your brain is trying to process in dreams and nightmares and process them in session. In the over 10 years of doing EMDR therapy, I have watched many people become free from the memories of the past that have them feeling stuck and held back from doing what they want to do. EMDR is research supported and is a powerful tool for helping you get back in the flow of your own life. Not just to show up, but to feel better doing it.

Come in and experience the work we do here at Trauma and Relationship Counseling Center and let us help you move on to a better personal experience and a higher level of healing. We love what we do, I think you will too.