Lately, you’ve felt like you’re watching the world play on a loop. Every day looks the same. Thanks to remote work and pandemic restrictions, you have already seen many of your home’s interior walls. Work looks like a long series of interchangeable Zoom meetings with the possibility of personal advancement. You’re bored. A little listless. To be honest, you feel trapped.
You are definitely not alone. A recent study by technology giant Oracle found that while 80% of people are ready for a career change, 75% of people feel professionally trapped and 27% said they are trapped in their routines.
Believe it or not, the discomfort of getting stuck is a good sign. Awareness indicates an interest in moving forward. This means you are not resigned to your current situation. You are frustrated and want change.
“I would invite people to feel fast as something healthy,” says therapist Dr Chloe Carmichael. “They have an awareness of feeling stuck and that it doesn’t feel natural to them.”
So, while it may seem counter-intuitive, try to welcome the stuck feeling and find positive things in it. Accept it as an opportunity rather than worrying about it. By sticking to negative implications, you can stop feeling trapped and begin to feel trapped. “It is important to start from there, because otherwise people can get in a spiral,” says Carmichael.
When you feel trapped, there is a tendency to direct frustration inward and blame yourself for creating the situation or being too weak, lazy, or unmotivated to escape it. But Britt Frank, therapist and author of the book The Science of Fasting warn that being angry with yourself will not improve the situation. “You do not get angry with your car if it runs out of petrol,” says Frank. “You go to a filling station. The same goes for our brain. ”
Feeling stuck, according to Frank, stems from our hormonal responses to stress. Our nervous systems get confused when our choices are limited, or worse, taken away, causing a fight, flight, or freezing reaction. Due to COVID restrictions, there were very few opportunities for fights or flights, so, says Frank, our brains froze. Over time, it has a draining, physical impact on our bodies. “It’s a physiological reality, but we’re very quick to label ourselves ‘stuck’ as a problem with laziness or motivation,” says Frank. “It is not.”
Two ways forward
Once you feel a grip on the true nature of being trapped, what should you do? The good news is that getting stuck will not be the end of you. You are not a mouse in a gum trap; you can free yourself without gnawing a bone.
The semi-bad news is that you have to make a choice. The mental health experts who asked us for advice were divided in an interesting way. So two paths open before you.
The first possible path of self-withdrawal from your tough situation is deliberate and careful.
According to Frank, brains get stuck in gear when they feel unsafe. So you try to be safer by connecting with people, places, thoughts and things that help you feel energetic rather than drained. Pick one up in the winning column and, as Frank says, “give yourself credit, no matter how small.” Then repeat.
It is a path forged through small, carefully thought-out steps. California Therapist Kailey Hockridge Suggest that if you know where you want to go, you should ask what small steps can I take today? As she and other mental health professionals who have interviewed for this story have noted, small steps are less frightening and eventually get you where you want to go. “Breaking big goals into smaller, more achievable pieces can help us build momentum and confidence in our capabilities,” she says.
So, that first path is all small steps. The idea is that our dumb brains have been so damaged by a stupid pandemic that we have to treat ourselves carefully, as if we were carrying them in spoons to a finish line in an egg race.
But there’s a second way Neil Armstrong helps us get stuck by taking one giant leap. Mark something off the bucket list. Sky diving. Surf. Scuba diving. Hanggly. Fly a plane. Riding a motorcycle. Start a band. Join a boxing ring. Ghost Hunt. Learn to dance. Throw a big, furious party. Take ayahuasca in the woods in the dead of night. Start a fight club (Last one is a joke. Please do not start a fight club).
Here is surely exaggeration. But the point is, do something you’ve never done before. Or do something you love and have not done for a long time. You have become tired of the ordinary, so do something extraordinary. It may sound obvious, but we lived through three years when the only steps to take were small. Maybe it’s time to jump in and show that your life is not as small as you made it out to be.
It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not so crazy to be crazy at this point. As Carmichael notes, they have not come out or tried new things for the past few years. “Sometimes it just takes a new experience,” Carmichael says. “With the pandemic, people literally stared at the same walls.” Changing the view will help significantly.
