Episode 103: How to get unstuck
3/19/25
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You are listening to the Life Reconstructed podcast with me, Teresa Amaral Beshwate, grief expert, best-selling author and widow. I’m so glad you’re here because in this and every episode, I shine a light on the widowed way forward.
Hello and welcome to episode 103. In this episode, I’m talking about feeling stuck in your grief, and offering 4 practical steps to get unstuck and moving forward toward healing.
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If you’re feeling stuck in your grief, I want you to know that you’re completely, 100% normal. Grief is sticky. I have yet to meet a widowed person who hasn’t felt stuck at times. It’s the way of it.
The first question I have for someone who feels stuck is a simple one, “Why do you feel stuck?” Write down your response to that question. List as many reasons as you possibly can.
Notice if you’re feeling stuck because you keep taking actions you’d rather not be taking. Or you’re NOT taking actions that you’d like to be taking?
Or maybe you feel stuck because you’re feeling the same feelings, day in and day out.
Or maybe it’s because you haven’t yet created a life that feels meaningful or joyful.
Feeling stuck means that there’s a habit happening, and it’s not what you want for yourself.
Thoughts are habitual, playing like a broken record. Which means that feelings are habitual. And we know that actions are habitual, for better or worse.
The brain is a creature of habit. It’s hard-wired to be efficient, so being habitual makes a lot of sense.
But it’s not insurmountable. We humans have the ability to direct our brains. Which is how we can get unstuck and feel like we’re moving forward, making progress toward healing.
And what is healing, anyway? The definition I like the most is by an author unknown to me: “Healing is not the process of forgetting; It is the process of remembering with less pain and more joy.” Unquote.
So how do you get there, especially when you’re feeling quite stuck?
First know that grief is messy. It’s not linear. There are no neat and tidy stages. It feels messy, pretty much all the time.
Second, notice what you have accomplished. Notice how different grief feels these days than it did in the earliest days. Your brain won’t naturally see your progress, so you’ll have to direct your brain to find it and acknowledge it.
Third, exactly what feels stuck? Is it habitual thoughts, habitual feelings or habitual actions? Thoughts create feelings, which drive actions. So, we can go upstream and get to the source, which is our thinking. The thing about thoughts is that they’re optional. They’re not facts, they’re simply optional sentences in your mind. That’s what brains do – they offer thoughts on default. Now default thoughts are not necessarily true, they’re not necessarily useful, and they’re often not very kind. So, we have to take these default thoughts with a grain of salt until we take time to examine them.
You aren’t your thoughts. You observe your thoughts. You get to decide if they are factually true, whether they serve you, and whether they’re kind.
And they should be all three things: true, useful and kind. Because there are an infinite number of thoughts available to all of us. We can challenge our default thoughts until we find other ones that are true, useful and kind.
I don’t think it’s useful to identify thoughts as good or bad, or positive or negative. It is useful to identify them as default (aka unintentional) and intentional. And speaking of intentional thoughts, that leads us to step 4.
Fourth, we humans get to direct our brains to think true, useful and kind thoughts, on purpose. It helps to practice these intentional thoughts regularly. Feel how each one makes you feel. Notice how much, on a scale of 1 to 10, you believe it to be true.
This four-step process will help you every single time you feel stuck. And if you need more help, I’m here for you.
If this episode was helpful, please share it with a widowed friend. And remember that I believe in you, and I’m here for you. Take care.
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If you’ve found this podcast helpful, my best-selling book, also called Life Reconstructed, will help even more. It’s now available on Audible, or in paperback, along with the accompanying journal, plus you’ll get instant access to a 3-part video series that will help you right away. Links are in the show notes.
