Soma Rising

Why Do I Feel Stuck Even When I Know What to Do?

• Tabitha MacDonald • Episode 80

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If you’ve ever said, “I know what I should do, I just can’t do it,” your nervous system may be stuck in a freeze response.

Your mind can be full of plans while your body refuses to cooperate, and that “I can’t move” feeling is more common than most people admit. We get honest about what it’s like to do all the therapy, all the affirmations, all the manifesting and still feel heavy, foggy, unmotivated, or weirdly numb. The missing piece is often nervous system regulation, because your state of being drives your capacity to take action, feel inspired, and make lasting change.

We walk through the nervous system as the hidden saboteur of growth: how safety and threat shape your energy, your choices, and even what you believe is possible. If you’ve been recovering from narcissistic abuse, chronic stress, burnout, religious manipulation, or a high-control work culture, your body may still be operating in protection mode even when your life looks “fine” on paper. We also connect this to identity change and intuition, not as something mystical you have to earn, but as a grounded connection to your higher self and the person you are here to become.

If this resonates, listen through and then share it with someone who keeps saying, “I know what to do, I just can’t do it.” Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: which nervous system state have you been in most often lately?

This is Soma Rising: Conversations for a Conscious Future —where health, wealth, love, and purpose flow together on the Golden Path of alignment.  Learn more at somatribe.org

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✨ Learn more and sign up online.

Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome pain fast so they can experience the love, success, freedom, and fulfillment they deserve.

Additional Resources:


The Nervous System Missing Piece

Identity Shifts After Narcissistic Abuse

Shutdown To Flow State Map

Daily Check-In And Right Tools

Turning Awareness Into Change

Reflection Questions And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00

Let me ask you something. Have you ever tried to meditate, but your brain just would not shut up? Or tried to work on healing yourself, but you keep repeating the same old patterns? Or maybe you've done all the mindset work, all the affirmations, all the therapy, and you still feel stuck, almost as if you just can't move. Sometimes I liken it to feeling like my feet are in the mud and I it's no matter what I do, I can't pull them out. Or that feeling of being in quicksand, where you're just slowly sinking into a pit and there's nothing you can do, almost like you've been immobilized. So what I realized over the last couple days is that my nervous system was the issue. Not my mindset, not my identity, not my tools. It was the one thing I was not addressing in my journey of building out my new business or the extended part of Soma. So today, what we're gonna talk about is our nervous system and why it matters right now. It is literally the missing piece and lasting transformation. It can be the hidden saboteur of change. For a long time, I focused on all of the wrong things or the wrong things at the right time, or the the it was like I would find the tool, but I was applying it at the wrong time. So maybe I found like manifesting or creating or um, you know, tapping or breath work. I mean, my library of tools for transformation is is massive. And um, I will say that even I sometimes get hung up when it's like, okay, what tool do I need right now? And yesterday I was sitting in a meeting and I knew what my to-do list was. I knew what I had to do yesterday, but my body hurt. It felt heavy. I felt like I just couldn't move. Like I just couldn't move. And I pulled a card from my deck, and I love the Ask Your Guides deck from Sonia Chocat. It's such a great deck. And um, so I pulled the card and it said, Rest. Your healer guides need you to rest. And I was thinking in my head, I'm thinking, I don't have time to just rest today. I I'm backlogged. I've been resting for a long time now. Like, I can't just rest. And no matter what I did, I could not do anything. I just I couldn't move. And I sat in it all day. And I really was asking myself questions about like what's actually going on for you right now. And I just kept asking my higher self and I kept using the tools. And, you know, in my in my like thought downloads, I did hear like you need to manage your nervous system right now. That's the priority. And I wasn't doing it. I actually stopped going to the gym because I was blaming it for hurting me. Um, I wasn't getting bodymore consistently like I used to. I definitely wasn't hydrating. And I stopped taking basic supplements that I knew were helping me regulate my nervous system, like magnesium and vitamin B. And I just started drinking more coffee, thinking like maybe I'm just fatigued because it's the long, dark night of winter in Oregon and it's depressing. Um, but it I still just couldn't get anything to shift. I couldn't get excited about anything. Um, somebody asked me if I was excited about something, and I didn't remember the last time I felt excited about anything. I didn't feel depressed or like any of the other things. I just didn't feel like and I actually, to be honest, was kind of relieved to just be out of feelings with anything. And the more relieved I felt to just be out of feelings, the more dissociated I started becoming. And I didn't even know it was happening. So sometimes we feel motivated and clear, and other times we feel stuck, overwhelmed, or exhausted. And no amount of positive thinking can change it. I think I've I know when I'm working with clients and their nervous system is dysregulated, it's very difficult for me to tell on myself sometimes because we're in our own experience. Um, that's why asking yourself questions, looking at who you're being is important, but we'll talk about that in a minute. What I realized yesterday, which was the light bulb moment, was that I wasn't paying attention to how I was actually showing up in the world and asking myself better questions about why I was showing up that way instead of this way. And it wasn't about how I was feeling, it wasn't about what I was thinking, it was my state of being. The state of being is controlled largely by something deeper than our thoughts. It's controlled by our nervous system. So I want you to ask yourself, how are you being today? Not how you're feeling, not what you're doing. You know that question when you meet someone, you're like, oh, hey, how are you doing? Um I want you to just sit with the question, how are you being in your life right now? And your nervous system is going to determine whether you feel safe or threatened, whether you can take action or you feel stuck, and whether you respond calmly or react emotionally, and whether you feel creative and inspired or overwhelmed and shut down. If your nervous system is dysregulated, your body will try to protect you, even if your mind wants something completely different. This is why people often say, I know what I should do, but I can't seem to make myself do it. It's not a willpower problem, it's a nervous system problem. Understanding your nervous system state is the missing piece in long-lasting healing, growth, and identity changing. In Soma Tribe, it's basically the whole thing is around changing your identity. And not because there's anything wrong with who you are now, but it is really a system in of tools to help you shift your identity. Most of the people who come in there have endured some kind of narcissistic abuse, either in their childhood or in a past relationship or, you know, from religious um manipulation or cults. Yes, that's also narcissistic abuse when it's abused, um, coming out of a corporate environment, which is heavily narcissistic. It was funny because I didn't really realize what I was building when I was building it. It was kind of like if you'll build it, then it'll start making sense. And then when I started taking the big picture look at it, I was like, oh, I've been building a full-blown narcissistic recovery program because it's basically helping people restructure their identity after prolonged periods of either trauma or narcissistic abuse. And I don't, I don't pitch it as a trauma recovery program, but that's basically what I built it for was my own healing and um trauma recovery. And also basically helping you shift into the identity of who you're becoming in a way that's very gentle and and powerful because this has a lot to do with intuition. Intuition is basically you being deeply connected with your higher self, who you really are, not who you were sold to be, not who you thought you should be, but who your soul came here to be. And that's basically intuition. It's yes, I teach people how to work with their guides, I teach people how to work with angels, I teach people how to use cards and all of the different types of intuition and the Enneogram and all these fun tools, but the essence of intuition is literally just connecting in with your higher self and being like, who am I here to be? And what is the path for me right now in this stage of my life? And it's gonna change often. Now, if your nervous system, you've done all the identity work, you've done the healing work, you've done the things, but you still can't seem to take action, your nervous system is not aligned because your soul's plan for your life might not feel that safe. And your ego is gonna fight you. This is where you want to make sure that you're using understanding, comprehension. Is this a nervous system issue? Is this a trauma response? Is this an ego state, inner child? Is this, you know, what is it? But I would just want to invite you to just start with the nervous system because that's the foundation of transformation, is the nervous system. And I don't know why I was so shocked to hear this answer freely flow from me this morning when I note this. I teach this in my clinic. But like I said before, I couldn't see it because it was my own nervous system that was changing my perspective of reality. So the questions that I want you to just sit with is who am I here to be? And how am I being right now? And the first question is really, do you feel safe in the world right now with who you are, with how the world is? And if not, it's really hard to make changes in your life to grow if you don't even have a foundation of safety. Now, I will say there's a lot of growth work that will make you feel unsafe because it's gonna make you become the next version of you, which will absolutely feel like a threat to your identity. But the question you want to just ask every morning is how can I create safety for me to grow? And um it's really important for you to understand your the role of your nervous system in that process. Because I think as a collective, we're all being asked to grow right now. We're all being asked to step into our intuitive nature of really being what our soul came here to be. And it is because there is so much drama in the world right now. There is so much control, there is so much narcissistic abuse on our planet at the moment. And when I really connect in with my higher self, and she keeps leading me to work with narcissism, and I'm like, then I don't want to. Um, and then she keeps revealing to me why it's so important that I do want to. And then I get on board and I'm like, okay, that's right. I'm a why person, I need to understand. But right now, with constant social media and constant advertising and constant selling and constant control over your mind, it's more important than ever that we really learn how to regulate our nervous system, connect in with our higher self, and to understand who we came here to be. Because the world needs everyone to be who they were meant to be. So when we're looking at the different nervous system states, I'm just gonna go through the different states and I'll expand on this in coming episodes. Uh, but when we're in shutdown, which is what I was in yesterday, which was total shutdown. Like someone flipped the emergency switch, my whole system went k-chonk, and I couldn't have moved off the couch if you had paid me. Um, in this state, the body is looking to conserve energy because it gets overwhelmed. You may experience exhaustion, numbness, low motivation, and complete withdrawal. Your nervous system is trying to protect you by slowing everything down. Freeze mode is when your body feels overwhelmed but unable to escape. It may freeze. You may experience feeling stuck, procrastination, difficulty making decisions, or just total mental overwhelm. In the fawn state, your safety is going to be sought through pleasing others. You may notice people pleasing, avoiding conflict, prioritizing other people's needs, difficulty in saying no. This is a very common strategy for healers and people who work in the healing arts. And I that was one of the things that I think, like during COVID, that hit me the hardest was I didn't know who I was when I wasn't helping other people. And that's because my nervous system was always in fight, flight, or fawn. And that was like, if I can help other people, I'll be safe. If I can help other people, I'll be safe. But I put safety outside of me, not inside of me. So I didn't know how to create that feeling without having somebody around me that needed to be helped or saved. Fawn state is definitely the people pleasing, right? Is avoiding conflict, prioritizing everybody else's needs, and a difficulty in saying no when someone asks you a question. Fight is the nervous system prepares to defend itself. You may experience constant irritation, frustration, defensiveness, anger. Um, you might feel more combative, like, you know, you just want to take down the system. Fight can be helpful. It can also be dangerous when it's not checked against who you are. Flight, the body prepares to escape. You may notice anxiety, urgency, racing thoughts, difficulty slowing down. This is a very high stress anxiety state. Racing mind at night, you're unable to sleep, you actually don't want to come out of it because when you're in flight, your nervous system feels like it's the most important thing to not get out of it. Because your unconscious mind is literally sending you messages that you're being chased by a saber-toothed tiger and you better not stop running or it's gonna get you. Now, we can use this in a healthy state as well in order to get us into momentum. A regulated state is this balanced state where you have calm focus, steady energy, clear thinking, the ability to take aligned action, and you just feel like everything's okay. When the nervous system feels deeply safe and engaged, that's when you go into your creative flow state. You get inspiration, your intuition is on fire, you're in really creative problem solving. I like to call it more creation, where your creative, your creativity and your vision is like really like in sync with your higher self. And like you just see solutions everywhere. Like that's that is my natural state, is to be in creative flow. So when all I see is problems and I can't see like the solution, I know I'm not in my natural way of being. Because I am the person who typically only sees solutions everywhere I go. I don't see, I don't really engage with problems. I just see solutions. I mean, I do, I process them really quickly though. Like I can see the problem and then I get right into the solution. But lately I've only been seeing problems. And when I say lately, I mean probably a good couple of years. Like it was, I mean, my ability to maintain creative flow has been diminishing over the last couple of years, where I just keep seeing problems. And um I think that might be kind of global and also where I was putting my attention and the fact that I wasn't even like addressing or acknowledging my nervous system state on a daily basis like I used to. And um what I would just want to offer is that none of these states are they they don't mean something is wrong with you. They just, they're just signals from your nervous system about how safe or threatened your body feels. It's important that you learn to recognize these states because you need to respond with the right tools instead of fighting your body. So, what I mean by that is if you're using the wrong tool in the in the state that you're in, then it's not gonna work and you're gonna think, oh, this doesn't work for me. I'm broken. I'm the the one person on the planet who can't be helped. And that's a problem because you're not. It's just that you haven't yet learned to use the tools to manage your nervous system and to regulate your state. Tony Robbins, when I was at the um Awaken the Giant within conference, he was super huge on every couple of like every hour. So we were constantly up, we were moving. He was constantly getting us to regulate our nervous system in order for us to maintain that state of growth and transformation, which is in the flow state. And that included dancing, connecting with other people, and it was a ton of breath work, visualization, gratitude. These things bring your nervous system up into a into an enlightened state of being. And that is something like if your nervous system has been in a like really shut down state for a long period of time, this is one of the hardest to come out of. Because I've even had clients come in and they were like, I just really need to like rest and heal right now. And I'm like, Yeah, but how long have you been there? Like, you don't want to get stuck there for too long because you'll like almost get locked in this prison of I just need comfort and I don't want to be bothered. And I think that's kind of where some of my problem was over the last couple of years was I just wanted to hunker down into a cozy bunker and pretend like the world outside of me was not existing. Now, that was important for the stage of the journey that I was in. There's always room for that. And I will say, you do need to schedule those days in for yourself, especially if you're struggling with burnout or if you're healing from narcissistic abuse, because your identity needs a minute to shift, like to go, oh my gosh, I'm not in that anymore. I don't know who I am, but like I'm not that and I'm not that. And you're you go into this state of limbo that can be very challenging for your identity. So I'm not saying not to go into that state. I'm saying don't get stuck there because I I can definitely see how I was getting stuck there. And then I looked around and I was like, oh my God, like you, there's a big mess around you that you couldn't even see because you were so in free or not the deep shutdown. Okay, so the first step is simply learning to notice your nervous system state. Instead of asking, how do I feel? Ask yourself, how am I being? What state is my nervous system in right now? Now, the best way to do that is to do a daily check-in with your body. How does my body feel right now? Is it heavy or numb, tense or stuck, anxious or restless, calm and steady, energized or inspired? Question two, how easy does action feel right now? Is it impossible, stuck, rushing, manageable or creative? Number three, what does the world feel like right now? Is it overwhelming, threatening, neutral, safe, or full of possibility? Your answers will usually point to one of the nervous system states that you are currently operating in. Another powerful clue is simply looking at how you have been behaving. Ask yourself, who have I been behaving like? And just kind of take a little inventory of your day. Did you hydrate? Did you eat healthy meals? Did you move your body? Did you get any sunlight? And if you live in the Northwest, did you use your sunlight lamp? If you don't have one, you should get one. Did you set boundaries, not just with other people, but with yourself? And did you take breaks throughout the day? Did you give yourself time to reset? Did you take care of yourself? Or have you noticed procrastination, people pleasing, rushing, irritability, and exhaustion? Your behaviors will reveal your nervous system state more clearly than at anything else. Step three use the right tool for the right state. Once you identify your state, you can respond appropriately. For instance, if you're in shutdown, your body may need to rest and energy restoration. This might be where you're listening to some like energy healing meditations. Um, this could be where you're doing some just like self-care. Like today is the day I need to like maybe knit by the fire and have some tea and just be with me. I'm just gonna say, please don't stay there too long. I will say that that's one of the things it's one of the easiest states to get stuck in because it's just like nothing matters. Nothing. And and in this state, it's kind of comfortable. And it's almost like, well, why would I want to come out of this cozy little cottage that I've created inside of myself? And, you know, it's just important to pay attention so that you don't get stuck there. If you're in a free state, your body needs movement. And I'll say that in shutdown, your body also needs movement because sometimes it just needs a kickstart to your electrical system to get you moving. A very easy practice is this one for just moving energy through your body. Um, it's called like a wobble dance. You literally just stand up and shake your whole body and put on some music that that you like that wakes you up. Uh, I found some really cool new playlists on Spotify. I'll see if I can link them in here, but you know, anything that just gets you moving and that makes you feel good. And then you just shake your whole body. It doesn't matter if you're a dancer, if you're not a dancer, you just want to make sure you're standing and that you're shifting and shaking your entire all of your limbs. If you're in fight or flight, or if you're in flight, your body needs slowing and grounding. So if you're like go, go, go, go, go, go, go all day, you need to just stop and ground. And I think I have some grounding meditations on my podcast. If not, go on YouTube and you can find a million of them. You just need to just slow down for a minute, take a deep breath, and come back into your body. If you are regulated, that is the time to take meaningful action, right? So you're gonna want to take action from that place where you feel safe instead of constantly challenging yourself into a state of lack of safety. Now, if you're in fight, watch out who you're arguing with and who you're picking a fight with. And really go like, is this really the best time to have this confrontation with someone, or do I need to get regulated first? And the answer is you need to get regulated first. Now, how do we apply this to life? Imagine what changes when you begin paying attention to your nervous system. Instead of judging yourself, you start observing yourself. Instead of pushing harder, you choose tools that help your body and your system regulate. Instead of feeling stuck in patterns, you begin to recognize when your nervous system is protecting you and when it is holding you back. The awareness creates space for something very powerful, which is intentional change. As your nervous system becomes more regulated, you gain greater access to clarity, creativity, resilience, aligned action. And over time, this supports the process of stepping into a new identity and way of being in the world. Transformation is not just about changing your thoughts, managing your feelings, or thinking more positively. It's about learning how to support your body, your mind, your nervous system so they can move in the same direction with coherence. And that begins with awareness. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions. Which nervous system state do you experience most often lately? Which behaviors tend to show up when you are in that state? And then what small action could help support your nervous system today? If you're not sure, ask yourself why you're choosing to stay confused about who you are being. Drink a glass of lemon water with Celtic sea salt in it and take some vitamin B. And then ask yourself again what's the next step today to get a better understanding of how I am being in the world. I hope this um episode is helpful to you. I really think that I usually get a big lesson when it's time to teach that to the people that I work with. And regulating the nervous system state, especially with all that is going on in the world, is the top priority for most of us right now. And learning how to be the authority of your own nervous system is one of the most powerful tools that you can learn in your in your journey to who you are here to become. I hope you have a great day. Much love.

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Tabitha MacDonald

Host