When it’s time to pick up the phone and go to cold calling, or checking in on the doctor, or to make that attempt at reconciling a relationship and we can’t seem to pick up the phone, for some reason, we might say I’m stuck. Or we might say I’m stopped.

Being stopped or stuck is more than merely an interpretation. When we’re stuck, and can’t pick up the phone, we have a larger problem. However, when we’re “stopped” from picking up the phone it’s not so big an issue because it’s likely temporary. Until we make the distinction between stuck and stopped we might have problems with progress in overcoming fear of the phone. Here’s the thought process.

Stuck is having nowhere to go, being a victim of inequity, no more fuel in the tank, dead in the water. Being stuck means crashed and burning. It means the phone and all it’s minions of demons and fiends have won over us, prevented us from reaching out to achieve our goals. We might rationalize it’s our life situation, or some bad luck, or something bequeathed upon us that we have no control over.

“Stopped” on the other hand, means just that – progress interrupted. A temporary stumble, a halt, a hitch in our path.

Stuck – requires fundamental self-examination of why we have trouble moving on. A solution somewhere hidden in realizing that there are 2 voices within us. One a deep voice opposing the benefits of moving forward on anything, not just phone fear. The other voice is our conscious us, wanting to move forward. The conflict is like being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. The solution might just be realizing that it just seems that way. When we bring your conscious awareness into the conflict situation, when we become aware of your our opposing sides, we lead ourselves to opening up to a solution.

Stopped – can be likened to procrastination, putting off or delaying or deferring an action to a later time. Yes procrastination is caused by fear, but perhaps a lower grade fear than that of being stuck. But procrastination also has verifiable ways to overcome the stall. More than likely a solution might be found in the known procrastination solutions.

Once we realize the difference between the two terms, we can begin to put some sensibility into how to proceed.

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