A great indication that you are in a stressful relationship, whether at work or at home, is that when you think about the particular person or situation, you feel paralyzed.
You can’t move forward. You can’t go back. You are stuck and the stress is killing you!
The reason you feel paralyzed is that you have committed to this relationship and you don’t feel like you can leave it. Either it’s your job and you don’t want to lose it, or it’s a serious relationship in your family or with your “partner”. So you have already invested a lot of time, energy and hope in this relationship. And yet it is not working. Something has gone very wrong.
Let’s say the problem is in your marriage. It could easily be a gridlock situation with a father-in-law, or with your boss, coworker, or assistant.
It could be that the warning signs were there all along, but, as is often the case when the signs don’t match up with what you decided you wanted, you ignored them and moved on with the relationship. At times, she may have felt a lingering uncertainty about it, but she dismissed her inner doubts as cold feet or perhaps normal anxiety about getting married.
But now you realize that you are stressed all the time and if you are honest about it, you can see that the pattern has been there all along. There was a blueprint from the beginning, like a garden layout, and now all the plants are fully grown because it’s been years and they kept reacting to each other in unhealthy ways. You are drowning in the weeds, miserable and confused, when you thought you were going to have bliss married to roses, fragrant lilies and songbirds.
If you weren’t fully invested in this relationship, it would be so much easier to break up, walk away, and move on. But usually we get deeply entangled, so that making the decision to stay or go leads to feeling unable to do either wholeheartedly.
Do you feel paralyzed? Are you wondering what to do next? Does ambivalence in the relationship keep your mind churning with indecision and your stomach churning with anxiety? Then set aside a quiet moment to think about these three points:
1. If you imagine yourself going out, do you notice a sudden release of tension in your shoulders? That is a clue that your heart really wants you to find freedom from this untenable relationship, and just walk away, to find a new beginning.
2. If leaving makes you feel instantly panicked and scared, that may indicate that you have a lot of work to do on your own self-esteem before making a decision either way. So give yourself the gift of time to continue thinking about what is best for you. There is no need to rush, unless it is physical abuse; in that case, don’t delay another minute. Keep yourself and your children safe.
3. If things are basically “good enough” and you’ve already made up your mind to stay, then stop behaving like you always have. If you have a habit of arguing all the time, stop.
Understand that ending paralysis will require action on your part. You need to change the way you run your life and stop dancing to the old tunes that don’t work for you.