Have you ever felt really stuck? I mean that feeling you get when you can’t seem to move forward with something even though you know you should. It is usually associated with internal struggling and discomfort and self-recrimination. It feels like you are procrastinating or lack motivation but there is also something more to it.

I often get stuck when writing blogs. When we had our health and wellbeing business it used to drive my business partner crazy. I’d be telling her about something interesting I had read and how I could see the connection to stress or health or whatever and how this could be applied to people in a particular way. She would say “There! What you just said that’s your blog. People want to know that stuff. Just write it down. I need to carry a dictaphone with me!!”

As I have been developing my new website and wanting to promote my seminars and workshops, all the marketing people are telling me I must start doing the social media thing and write blogs. And so here I am again getting stuck. So what was this about? I just couldn’t see it. I knew that if it was causing me stress, there was a real opportunity for me to learn something here.

For those of you who are familiar with the Enneagram I am an 8 with a 9 wing and one of the ways my type shows itself is that I need to take action. I do get stuck at times but not for long because I have to move. I knew that I had three courses of action available to me. I could use self inquiry through meditation. I could write in my journal – no problem writing there! Journal writing is a way of emptying my mind and entering a state of observing and receptivity for, I guess, whatever comes through. It is wonderful for sorting out things and accessing inner wisdom. And yet I get stuck writing blogs!

My other option was to consult the person with whom I share a growth-oriented relationship. Psychiatrist, Roger Walsh, describes a growth-oriented relationship as a relationship where you each make an explicit commitment that you are going to use this relationship for mutual growth and awakening. There is a shared understanding that you each invite and give frank feedback. It requires a deep desire to support, understand and trust each other. It is a very humbling experience as you learn to transcend your ego and your ego needs in order to contribute and receive from a place of total equality, respect and non-judgement. For about four years I have had the privilege of such a relationship.

So I rang my lovely sister and we tossed my dilemma around. She is an archetypical 8 so it makes it easier because there is directness and an understanding of where the other is coming from. We played with the issues I had identified and clarified some others, like I am a teacher not an entertainer and my 9 tendencies wanted to contextualise everything and attend to everybody’s perspective, which can get complicated. I am aware of an intensity and passion for my work, which I feel, may be too much for people at times and that holds me back. We looked at why I feel in

the flow when I teach and guide people and when I write in my journal and even when I did my MBA and yet suffer writer’s block when I sit to write now.

Nothing was giving me that gut sense that I had it until she exclaimed, “I know what it is! For you writing in this fashion is like getting up on stage and performing naked! Once you have written and posted it, you can’t control how people will receive it, you can’t protect yourself and it makes you feel totally vulnerable!” I sensed straight away she had hit it right on the head. When I write in my journal it is private, no one else reads it and when I teach a group of people or guide one on one, I can respond to questions and clarify when not understood. My 8 defences were being triggered because, for me, this was letting go of control.

I understood and I knew what to do.

“I guess that’s your challenge – you may need to learn to be a bit naked some of the time and get comfortable with it” she joked, “and maybe you need to call it something else other than a blog – it kind of rhymes with bog and you don’t want to be bogged down!”.

So this is me – being a little bit naked and offering “Something you might like to think about….”

If you don’t have any growth-oriented relationships but are interested, consider whom you could grow with in that way. It will be someone you know now and probably already enjoy a close relationship with. Knowing each other’s Enneagram type helps. Trust your instincts. You may have more than one person with whom you could make an excellent growth-oriented relationship. I know I do. It takes a bit of discussing and, well, you have to grow into it but it is rewarding. After all, some of our deepest work can occur in relationships.

So once again, treating my discomfort or stress as an opportunity to learn something has helped me move beyond it. Of course, the paradox is that you also have to be careful not to overthink it. But that’s for another time!