What to Do When You Feel Stuck

I hear the words “I feel stuck,” multiple times a day. This phrase is uttered by clients, friends, family, and by people, I don’t know who are simply passing by. Sometimes these words are accompanied by fear and anxiety, other times by hopelessness and desperation, and sometimes, mild frustration. It’s clear that people are experiencing at least some portion of their lives as being lived under duress.

Most of us don’t readily see the choices available to us. (If we did, we probably wouldn’t feel stuck quite so often.) We feel confused by our feelings, and we begin to take long detours down the road of overwhelming despair. Feelings of guilt and shame make a lot of appearances here.

Feeling stuck can manifest in any aspect of our lives. The top categories most of us report a feeling of being stuck are in their jobs, relationships, in various behavioral patterns, in a feeling, financially, and in particular thought processes. We no longer experience as much enjoyment and whatever it was that drew us to these things in the first place, and we become preoccupied with our discomfort and unhappiness. And then, from there, it just feels like things get worse.

So, how do we regain sight of our choices? Well, we’ve lost site of our awareness. We’ll have to take some steps to reconnect ourselves to it so that we can move beyond knowing the feelings of “I feel stuck,” toward why we feel this and start strategizing solutions.

The first step toward reconnecting ourselves to this basic awareness is establishing our objective. What do we want? The objective can begin as something as broad as “to feel better” or “to feel unstuck,” though this is not where we will leave it. Gather as much information about the situation as possible and organize it. Find out the components that make up what we are dealing with, why, the roles of said components, and their importance. Prioritize these components.

The second step is to come up with actions, which meet our objectives. How will we get there? What will need to happen first, second, third, etc.? Taking what the first step produced; things like, what we want our situation to eventually look like, what we can control versus what we can’t. This will help us to gain perspective about the best way to achieve what we want.

The third step is to evaluate our chosen actions for potential consequences, both positive and negative. By taking this step, we can allow ourselves to become more aware of our motivations, the intricacies of our situation, and think critically about the strategies best suited for us. It provides forethought.

Once we see the choices available and the steps we can take toward making a change, we start to feel less stuck. We begin to experience our power. Sometimes we realize we don’t want to make the change at all. Other times, we recognize patterns never-before-seen patterns, and we begin to address those. We stop seeing ourselves as helpless and start to move into our capability.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

The Politics of Sexuality and Confidence in Women

The Politics of Sexuality and Confidence in Women

Do any of you remember Britney Spears? When she first made her debut at the end of the 1990s, she was about 16 years old and sported both a schoolgirl’s uniform and basketball outfit with her hair in pigtails. Many of her facial gestures expressed dramatic, wide-eyed curiosity and a genius mixture of innocent and seductive smiles. Both the lyrics to Britney’s songs and choreography included heavy sexual innuendo. The nature of this sexuality sent a subtle message to her younger fans (and, perhaps, less aware fans) that she was not as much in charge of her sexuality as much as she found herself the subject of sexualization by others.  Britney’s fan based ranged from tween girls and boys to adult men. Britney was beloved by the Pop music community and deemed “Princess of Pop.”

None of this, in itself, is abhorrent, but wait until I describe Britney’s reception as she grew into herself.

Eventually, Britney traded her pigtails for full, voluminous hair and began to dress in shorter and tighter outfits. Her choreography became obviously sexual, and her song lyrics had less innuendo and much more clear, sexual content. Britney’s tween fans and their parents began protesting her new presentation, reporting that she was setting a “bad example” for young girls. The same die-hard fans who once praised her at every turn now persecuted her.

So, what happened? What was the unforgivable change?

Here it is (I gave a little hint in the first paragraph.); Britney went from seemingly disconnected from her sexuality (and sexualized by others) to in charge of her sexuality and connected to it. What’s worse, she seemed to be enjoying it! (The nerve.) It was ok for the artist to be sexualized as long as she wasn’t in charge of it (with a lack of awareness, to boot), as long as it was happening to her in fact, it’s part of what made her worthy of praise. However, the more Britney took control of her sexual power the more she was seen as an abomination. Hm. The more this woman consented to her sexuality, the more it was seen as a transgressive act.

This is not the first time this kind of sexuality shaming has been thrust onto a female artist (Whitney Houston) and, surely (unfortunately), it will not be the last. Good news (not really), the same sexuality shaming happens to women and girls who aren’t in the public eye. Our community is pretty sure that it’s far more admirable to have sex happen to a woman instead of with her; more fetching is a woman who is powerless in her sexuality than a woman who enjoys it.

Perhaps, instead of perpetuating this dangerous message, “a woman’s virtue= sex happens to you; women taking ownership of their sexuality=slut=the worst thing ever” we should question why we are so vehemently attached to it in the first place and question what it is doing to and for the health of our community members. With slut shaming, sexuality shaming, and bullying dangerously interwoven into the lives of both adults and children, this is most definitely a message in favor of violence, not health and safety for our community.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie