Stuckness in Therapy

There are many words that are used to describe the stagnations and standstills that happen within the therapy room. Although they are not clearly demarcated as different terms, the words “impasse”, “deadlock”, “stalemate” and “stuckness” all touch upon different and yet overlapping experiences that leave the therapist wondering where they are heading in their trajectory of therapy with a client.

It’s a moment when the therapist sits back in confusion and realises that they’ve probably been taking a roundabout in the same corner many times, and are not able to move ahead in their map.

When a therapist begins to recognise that the pace of growth is not what was previously expected, it requires intentionality to reflect on whether their client is simply dealing with growth in their individual and non-linear fashion, or whether they have consistently been unable to get to any rewarding part of the journey, such that even the therapist struggles to identify micro-wins. 

Stuckness, in opposition to non-linear growth, will evoke the feeling of helplessness.

The initial stage of dealing with any stuckness involves the taxing realisation that you are finding yourself in a conversational loop with your client, and that many attempts to re-interpret or re-approach the loop are being subverted. What makes the reasons for stuckness difficult to identify accurately is that these are often subconscious struggles of the client or the therapist that keep them in locked positions of being. 

Clients may be unable to sit with the acceptance of what the triggers of their distress are; unable to find the willingness to work towards their goals; they may be willing but unable to sit with the vulnerabilities that are required from inner work; or willing but unable to make the needed behavioural steps, finding themselves in cycles of repeated behaviour. 

The therapist’s role in adding to this stuckness may be that they too are unable to see or commit to a different way of intervening and being with the client, and are possibly struggling to empathise with how the client’s environment is directly or indirectly quelling any attempts or motivations at their growth. 

At the root of beginning to feel unstuck is zooming out, gaining perspective and finding alternate ways to relate to the problem, and relate with each other.

This, in the mix of many arising feelings, is easier said than done, and yet is a crucial set of skills needed to conduct therapy.

Stuckness can make time feel slow, and it brings up feelings of confusion, anxiety,  frustration and self-doubt. 

It is inevitable. 

The client has come to you, most likely because they’ve been unable to work on a part of themselves for a long time. It is only inevitable that the restricting factors of their growth begin to have their enactments within the therapy room as well. 

Stuckness is even considered to be a pivotal point for many practitioners who believe that in these moments, opportunities for contemplation and stabilisation arise. 

Navigating stuckness is a mutually difficult task. Yet, when stuckness is seen less as a reason for frustration and more as a normal growth-induced pain, it allows the therapist and the client to monitor and tolerate these difficult moments more readily.

Settling into half-informed conclusions made from anger disservices the client, as it bars you from feeling motivated to consider the possibility of mutual reflection, even going as far as to not address the mutual feeling at all. 

Having no acknowledgement of the stagnation can be disheartening for many clients who cannot put words to this foreign feeling arising in a foreign space like therapy. 

To be present, co-enduring these hardships together and seeing your client as human are what make therapy so fundamentally different from the socially normalised ways of finger-pointing. One must recognise the importance of approaching the stuckness with transparency, and such vulnerability and awareness is greatly facilitated by therapeutic supervision.