the stuck check
6 kinds of stuck—and how to find out which one is yours
There’s a version of my life in Barcelona I still daydream about.
Waking up slowly.
Biking down to the platja to snorkel or tomar el sol before most people had opened their laptops.
An espresso at Pècora, while shooting the shit with Manel, Enrique, and Jana.
A few Slack messages from a sunny spot, maybe.
Home for deep work.
A long lunch—sometimes a stroll down la Rambla de Poblenou, licking an ice cream like a 5-year-old (and watching the abuelas doing the same).
Afternoon meetings.
And an evening walk to the sea to close the day.
It was beautiful.
After my third round of burnout and some big changes, I’d finally built something sustainable. My nervous system wasn’t controlling me anymore. Work I loved. A team I adored. The flexibility I’d always wanted.
And then there was this little feeling.
I want more.
Restlessness tends to show up in my throat. It feels constricted. It’s like I’m preventing myself from saying something that I really want to say.
The wild part in this moment was that I wasn’t dysregulated. And part of me still felt stuck.
So if you’re nodding along—successful on paper, regulated enough, and still asking is this really it?—this one’s for you, my friend.
stuck isn’t one thing
We talk about stuck like it’s one thing. Being stuck. I call myth.
This is what most of my clients come to me with. “I feel stuck.” And we tend to treat stuck like one big thing with one big fix.
But there are different kinds of stuck. And they each need something different from you.
So the first move is to get clear on which stuck you’re experiencing.
I call this the stuck check. Like a gut check (yes, trying to be punny 😉). It’s literally tapping into the body to understand what kind of stuck is showing up.
And there are six common ones I want to cover with you.
Pro tip: As we go, notice where each one lands in your body. I’ll give you examples, but your signature is yours. And if nothing comes up, that’s okay too. Over time (and practice), you’ll know what your signature sensations are (I call it body mapping).
#1 golden handcuffs
This is the comfortable one.
You’ve achieved success on paper. The title. The salary. The home, maybe the family, the car, the trips. And to keep that life going, you need that income. So you stay. And somewhere along the way, you started believing you couldn’t exist any other way. That you couldn’t make this kind of money anywhere else, or on your own.
That’s scarcity talking. The zero-sum mindset that says there’s only one path, and you’re already on it.
I know this one well, because I accidentally ended up with the golden handcuffs. But, as you may have guessed, I took them off.
My role leading People Ops for a remote startup was impacted during a RIF. In the moment, I felt relief, but then jumped into applying to other startups. I started interviewing, and one by one, I withdrew from every process. None of them felt right. What I actually wanted was to coach. That meant building a business from scratch instead of walking into the high salary I’d gotten used to.
And the freedom on the other side? Not at all what I expected…
I thought I’d miss the regular fine dining and the international travel. And honestly, sometimes I do (but not enough to go back. My vision is to do that through the business I build instead). But, here’s what showed up instead.
My mind got quieter. Leadership carries so much invisible weight. Strategy. People. All the emotions of managing relationships. Plus my own IC work. Letting it go gave me so much space.
My time became mine. I stopped doing the nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday thing and started working with my energy. Some Wednesdays, I don’t work at all. Some weekends I do, happily. Some days are ten hours. Some are two. It unlocked a kind of productivity I’d never had. One that energizes me rather than draining me.
And I’m outdoors so much more. Turns out exploring beaches near where I live, snorkeling with sea life, having slow time to myself, felt more fulfilling than any tasting menu. Who knew. 🤷♀️
Does any of that resonate? Where do you feel it? Maybe a pressure in the chest, like a weight sitting on you.
#2 identity stuck
This one likes to hide underneath the golden handcuffs. It’s the question:
Who am I without this?
When your achievement is tied to your sense of self, leaving can feel like disappearing.
When I left the people function, I spent the better part of a year deconstructing who I was without that role. My record went something like this:
You can’t be a real coach until you’ve been a VP. You haven’t earned it.
Never mind that I’d done VP-level work.
Never mind that I’d been an interim VP.
The story had me anyway.
So I decided to be curious. I started noticing the narratives that came up. And I asked where they came from.
What role did culture play? My parents? My friendships? Ten years of working a certain way?
I noticed where I held it in my body when those patterns showed up. And then I asked myself how I’d like it to feel instead.
And I practiced shifting the perspective.
Titles are arbitrary. I’ve done the work. I can show up as a coach and keep growing as one. I don’t have to know everything now.
On the other side, two things happened.
I finally felt like enough. And I made room for all the other parts of me. The one learning surfskate. The wife. The sister. The friend. The solopreneur. The snorkeler. The gardener. The videographer. The forever-learner. I got to play with who I am and see how it all connects. (Bonus: the deeper I go in myself, the better I can hold space for my clients.)
I wrote a whole piece on this in-between—the shedding process—here: feeling stuck in your old self.
What’s the title or label you’d have to set down to step into what’s next? Notice what happens in your body when you imagine letting it go.
#3 body stuck
This is the foundational one. And it’s the reason my coaching philosophy is what it is.
When your nervous system thinks it’s in danger, it keeps seeking safety. And when you’re running survival patterns, you can’t thrive. You stay stuck, because every decision is getting filtered through
Is this safe?
…instead of…
Is this aligned?
Here’s why it sits underneath everything else.
You can’t break free from the golden handcuffs in survival mode.
You can’t shed an old identity in survival mode.
You can’t step into a bigger version of yourself in survival mode.
You need an anchor inside yourself first. A place you can come back to and ground. All the other changes get made from embodied safety.
So this is the one kind of stuck where the move isn’t to dream bigger yet. It’s to regulate first.
Want to see where your nervous system patterns are running the show? That’s exactly what the CALM Quotient is for. Five minutes, and you’ll see your patterns and one practice to start reclaiming calm.
This one shows up differently depending on whether you’re revved up or shut down. Just notice. Does your system feel like it’s in overdrive? Or like it’s gone flat? And if you’re not sure, that’s okay too.
#4 the record
This is the loop. The voice on repeat, driving an old pattern you didn’t consciously choose.
One of mine in Barcelona was, I always need the next thing. The second I had what I wanted, I wanted more. It’s part of how I was (am?) wired. And left unchecked, it kept me chasing without ever asking whether the chase was pointing me to a place I really wanted to go (or to the person I wanted to become).
Here’s what I learned about the record. It runs on autopilot. And when that restlessness showed up in my throat, I didn’t just react and book the next big move. I got curious.
Is this me actually wanting to grow? Or is it the record playing again?
What’s the line that plays on repeat for you? Notice where it lives. The quality of sensations. Whose voice is it? Do you want to keep this record or change it?
#5 too small
This one is fear. And it’s sneaky, sneaky.
On the surface, it sounds like I’ve got something good, and I don’t want to mess with it. Underneath, it sounds like I’m not good enough. Not smart enough. Not [blank] enough.
And for women especially, there’s another layer. When we’re stuck in tend-and-befriend, staying small can feel like care. We put everyone else first and quietly shrink ourselves for others.
I had a client leading product at a remote startup. She was clearly doing the Head of Product work.
For months.
But the founders kept making her prove it. They’d give her the responsibility, then tell her she couldn’t officially hold the title until she’d earned it. Then, it was a title change with no pay raise.
Over and over, her abilities were undermined. Even though she was already overdelivering. Even though she cared deeply about the mission. It was smallness being pressed onto her from the outside.
So, we looked at it honestly. Stay or go? And what came out of it surprised her.
She started a project of her own. A community she’d been longing to build. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted it as a business. So, she started it as an experiment and took the leap.
Within a couple of months, it had grown to dozens of people and become its own thing. And it gave her the other things she’d been craving, too. More meaningful friendships. More time outside. More room to breathe—to ground. She found more satisfaction and stepped into a bigger version of herself. 💗
The question I always come back to:
Is this fear protecting me or holding me back?
Where do you notice the shrinking in your life? For a lot of us, it’s the pit of the stomach. Or low in the body—the hips, the glutes, the pelvic floor bracing for impact if we act.
#6 fog stuck
Lastly, there’s fog stuck. This one is so common.
I know I don’t want, but I have no idea where I want to go.
I’d like to offer you an alternative way to look at it. You don’t have to know the whole map. You just have to find the next X.
When I do vision crafting with clients, clarity comes faster than they expect. Why? Because most of them secretly already know. They just haven’t let themselves say it out loud.
Back to this X. I think of vision like a treasure map. Your vision is the X. But here’s the magic. The X is allowed to move. You’re not signing a contract that says this is who I am forever.
It’s kind of like Uncharted (one of my favorite video games). Nate Drake finds “the” treasure map. He follows it to the X. And the X isn’t the treasure. It’s a clue. Which leads to the next, and the next, until he finds the real thing.
That’s how an inspiring vision actually works. Not know everything now. Progressive clarity, over time.
What’s the fog hiding? Don’t force an answer. Just notice if there’s a quiet knowing you’ve been talking yourself out of.
let’s get your ‘stuck check’ on
Read back through and feel which one lit up most. Quick gut check (stuck check 😉):
golden handcuffs → “I could leave, but I can’t replace this income, this life.” Chest heavy?
identity stuck → “Who even am I without this role?” Bracing when you imagine letting the title go?
body stuck → Everything feels like too much, or strangely flat. Decisions feel unsafe, not just hard.
the record → record playing the same line on repeat, same pattern on autopilot. Throat or jaw tight?
too small → “It’s not the right time. I’m not ready. Who am I to think I can do that?” Shrinking low in the body?
fog stuck → “I just don’t know what I want.” Restless and directionless.
Which one is yours? Vote in the poll below 👇 I’m super curious which one resonates most.
And if your stuck doesn’t fit any of these six? Tell me in the comments. I’d love to hear what it looks like for you.
what to do once you know
Now for the fun part! Once you’ve named your stuck, you don’t actually have to do anything.
Not yet.
(One exception. If you landed on body stuck, regulation comes first. You can’t build anything lasting from survival mode. Focus on nervous system mastery, then come back to this.)
For everyone else, the next move is to dream.
Not a five-year plan. Not quitting on Monday. Just let yourself imagine.
If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would the alternative version of your life look like?
Not just unstuck. Actually thriving.
What are you doing?
Who are you with?
How does your day feel in your body?
(You can do the vision crafting activity here, too).
You don’t have to take a single action on it right now. I just want you to let yourself want it.
That’s where the fog starts to clear, the handcuffs start to loosen, and small starts to feel a little ridiculous (or ridikulous 🧙🏽♀️).
That expansive “I could actually have this” feeling is the whole point. Everything else flows from there.
Ciao, ciao for now!
before you go…
→ Want to discover your CALM Quotient (CQ)? In 5 minutes, uncover your unique nervous system patterns, the greatest areas of growth opportunity, and one practice to start reclaiming calm. Get your zero-cost CQ here.
→ Want to craft an inspiring vision for your life (and work)? Check out the free vision crafting guide to get started. Download a copy here.
→ Want to reclaim your calm? Nervous System Mastery for Women is my 6-week cohort to regulate your nervous system, align with your female rhythms, and break free from burnout—in as little as 45 days. Join the waitlist →
→ Want to go deeper, 1:1? I offer private coaching to help high-achievers, leaders, and startup professionals design a life they love from the inside out—career and beyond. Get on the waitlist—coaching spots open August 2026.
→ Want to bring this to your team? I help remote companies build people-first cultures where people (and company) thrive, not just perform. DM me for more info.
→ Want to come together in person? I host in-person retreats. The next one isn’t on the calendar yet, but join the list, and I’ll let you know the moment it opens.
As always, you can find me on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.