Times of uncertainty often become powerful opportunities for growth.
And yet, fear of uncertainty can freeze people in their tracks – they become hesitant to make decisions or take a step in any direction.
So when clients get stuck, how can we help them move forward?
In the video below Joan Borysenko, PhD describes specific skills that can help people become “unstuck” during periods of transition.
Take a look – it’s about 5 minutes.
What has kept your clients stuck, and how have you helped them move forward? Please leave a comment below.
It is true that people prefer to stay in their comfort zone because it create a secure feeling to be in the familiar place. Being stuck, like Joan B. said, is giving some time to reflect or just to enjoy the morning breakfast, see the trees growing, and look at life with a different lens. The personal work in therapy clients do helps them to move in the more healthy direction in which they chose for themselves. Even if it’s not the same thing that the therapist prefers to take.
I appreciate the idea of no longer and not yet. It gives hope, and lasting faith in the good things yet to come and openness to the possibilities.
What you said is so true in so many ways. I will use this to help a friend in need at this time.
Guilt! It acts as an emotional superglue, binding one to the pains of the past, making it ostensibly impossible to move even as far as uncertainty at times, and obstructing any notion of, let alone vision of, the door of “the return”. -Barbara Miller Nickerson, doctoral student at Liberty University
I find that court cases and claims for compensation can create stuckness. As with Thomas K’s observation below – context becomes crucial.
Apart from the obvious perceived disadvantages arising from ‘getting better’ when claiming compensation, there are issues of re-traumatisation that arise from discussing incidents with non-clinical personnel seeking to achieve different goals and without the ability, or willingness, to ‘pace’ disclosure. In that situation, avoidance is a rather sensible, if short-term, strategy. Avoidance can then take on a sense of stuckness.
Therapeutic direction? Consistency in reaching out to sustain trust when it may feel under siege – for client and therapist!
Thank you, Robin, for your comment. In my personal experience, i have found that it is true that the administration and the documents to be produced for the insurance may be the cause of our first despair. But what helps clients/therapists during the life transition period and most important in the healing process is our perseverance.
I am not sure if she is talking about grieving or just loss in term of growth. For one their is grieving a loss and the other is facilitating growth. When a soldier coming from combats and have to be reinserted back in the community it is another kind of adversity that they have to overcome through resilience. Thats the kind of counseling we do. Starting from the beginning for them. Its not like something new to learn but from the memory. So is there anything uncertain nay more. Mentoring is always a goog thing. It is unlikely that they dont know how life was back then, it is just that how people will accept and welcome them back again in the society during that adjustment. Tha’st what I believe that the brain has lots more difficulties in finding its way back to normal.
What if they had a life that didn’t work for them before they went to war?
I don’t think that would have changed anything much.
There is so much said in this video and about being stuck in a crossroad… it is where I feel like i am in now. It is very unpleasant and can be fearful. Thanks
Love her reference to Victor Turner saying “no longer and not yet – the oldest fading away the newest is yet to come” that is very clearly what uncertainty can be. Well done .
I like the call into the “wilderness wandering” metaphor that reminds me of being in exploration without knowing what we are looking and searching for, until it naturally comes to surface from the scary darkness. It is like in the unconscious and to be first revealed in the subconscious mind.Thabjs.
not sure that video said something about finding the way out of the darkness / forest besides waiting
Yes, to validate uncertainty is comforting.
But –wait…ok., what can I do while I wait?
Yes, reflect, find mentors, grieve, anticipate growth. . . . Could we have more on how to encourage growth.
I think that is what is missing the most in this video.
Being uncertain and stuck doesn’t hurt as much as being mindfully in our moments of change. This is what people fear and avoid – experiencing the pain. They fear it will not end, so they shut it out, including decisions about one’s choices. I appreciate the ideas of no longer and not yet.
I agree that grieving is the first step to getting unstuck. I find it to be the most important one because you cannot bypass it or else, you stay stuck. Once I educate my clients on the stages of grief, it allows them to have some “certainty” about the “uncertainty”!
I like that “more certain about uncertainty” .J.
Thank you for sharing this. I think it’s true that growth happens when we wrestle with the transitions and uncertainty of life. As humans, we don’t tend to wrestle with the valleys unless we are thrown into it. I appreciate Joan’s normalizing framework for clients.
This is so important for those of us who are aging and adjusting to change after change, loss after loss. Mindfulness is immensely helpful, as well as remembering that we are on a natural path, and remembering that “we may not know where we are going, but we are not lost.”
Fear of the unknown keeps them in the “stuck zone”. Familiarity of the “stuck zone” is more tolerable. Client’s often tell me that this is “less scary” than trying something new and different.