Why Am I Still Stuck? 5 Mistakes Keeping You From Actually Healing

Okay, real talk — are you someone who's read a stack of self-help books? Journaled about the same anxiety at midnight more times than you'd like to admit? Maybe you've even had one of those breakthroughs - on a walk, in the shower, mid-session with your somatic practitioner - where something clicks and you think, okay, this is it, this is the thing that finally changes everything.

And then a week goes by. And you're standing in the exact same spot, having the exact same reaction to the exact same person, thinking, how do I understand myself this well and still be stuck?

If that's you, I want to walk you through the five mistakes I see over and over with smart, self-aware women who are doing everything right and still feel stuck. None of these are about self-sabotage or not trying hard enough. They're strategies that made total sense to reach for — they just weren't built to get you all the way there.

Prefer to listen? Here's the full episode.

Mistake #1: Thinking your way out of it

This one gets the smartest, most self-aware women, and honestly, it makes sense — thinking has worked for you everywhere else in your life. You can explain exactly why you do the thing, which year it started, which parent it traces back to. And somewhere in there, understanding it quietly becomes the finish line. It's not. Your nervous system isn't persuaded by a good explanation. It responds to what's actually happening, in the moment it's happening — not the story you tell about it afterward.

Mistake #2: Waiting for a crisis to force the change

Nobody sets out to wait for a breaking point. But most of us were only ever taught to act once things got bad enough. So the shoulders get tight, and you tell yourself a good sleep will fix it. Then the headache shows up, and Advil handles it. And you keep going, because the to-do list doesn't know you're tired — until your body shuts the whole operation down and takes the decision out of your hands. Discomfort is already enough of a reason to act. You don't need a breaking point's permission.

Mistake #3: Treating the symptom instead of the source

Breathwork, bodywork, a good regulation technique — these genuinely work, and I use them with clients all the time. But they're built to get you back into your body for a moment, not to hold your whole system safe long enough to actually see what the anxiety or the burnout has been protecting you from. A technique gives you relief. It was never built to give you resolution.

Mistake #4: Rushing to make meaning before letting it be there

This one's close to mistake #1, but it's narrower — it's the split-second reflex to slap a cause on something the moment it's moving through you, before it's even finished. You're crying at something small, or something's finally tipped you over, and before the feeling's even done, your mind's already reaching: oh, this must be about my dad, oh, this is probably a past-life thing. And maybe it is. But you didn't let the thing be there first. The better way is letting it move before you name it — meaning can show up later, if it wants to, but it was never required.

Mistake #5: Hopping from program to program instead of sitting with yourself

This is the one I actually think is the stronger mistake — the next coach, the next mastermind, the next practitioner who promises the missing piece. Every one sounds reasonable, but each new voice adds another layer between you and your own sense of what's true. I did this the other way for about a year — sat with things alone before I ever brought in support — and when I finally did reach out, it worked, because I already had a clear enough sense of what was mine. That's the order that matters: sit with it first, then bring in support for what you genuinely can't see on your own.

So where does that leave you?

Look at that list for a second. Almost every woman I know has lived at least three of these. Most of us have lived all five. Nobody handed you a manual for doing this differently — you found the tools you had, in the moment you had them, and you used them as well as you knew how. That's not a flaw in you. That's just what almost everyone does with what they were given.

These weren't wasted effort. They worked, or they wouldn't have stuck around this long. They just weren't built to reach what's underneath the surface — and that's exactly the work we're getting into next.

If this hit home, come hang out in my inbox — I send an email most weeks going even deeper into stuff like this. [Sign up here →]