The Real Reason You’re Still Stuck

Most people come to coaching because something isn’t working anymore. They might not be able to name it clearly. They just know they feel stuck, restless, dulled, overwhelmed, or caught in familiar loops despite doing “all the right things.” They’ve thought it through. They’ve analysed it. They’ve pushed themselves forward.

And yet, nothing fundamentally shifts.

Often, the real reason you’re still stuck isn’t a lack of insight or motivation. It’s much simpler — and much harder — than that.

You can’t fix what you refuse to feel.

Why Insight Alone Isn’t Enough

Many of us live from the neck up. We explain, rationalise, intellectualise. We know why we feel the way we feel, yet somehow that knowledge doesn’t translate into change.

That’s because awareness isn’t just understanding something mentally. Awareness is experiential. It’s embodied. It involves noticing what’s happening in real time — in your thoughts, your emotions, and your body — without trying to tidy it up or move past it too quickly.

Until that kind of awareness is present, change can’t land.

You might be trying to “fix” anxiety without feeling the fear underneath it.
Trying to make decisions without contacting what matters to you.
Trying to move forwards while parts of you are still bracing, retreating, or holding on.

This is where coaching focused on awareness — rather than advice — becomes transformational.

Awareness as the Foundation of Change

In awareness-oriented coaching, noticing isn’t a side effect — it’s the work itself. Before goals can be clarified or actions taken, there needs to be an honest meeting with current reality. Not the polished version. The lived one.

Awareness means noticing:

• how you respond under pressure

• what your body does when you talk about a certain topic

• where you tighten, avoid, speed up, disconnect

• what emotions you’ve learned to override in order to cope

With AJM Coaching, this kind of awareness is central. The assumption isn’t that you’re broken or lacking — it’s that parts of your experience have been pushed out of awareness because, at some point, that was necessary.

Patterns don’t exist without reason. They exist because they once protected you.

Until those patterns are noticed, they continue to run quietly in the background. This is another reason the real reason you’re still stuck often has nothing to do with willpower — and everything to do with what hasn’t yet been allowed into awareness.

Different Types of Awareness — And Why They Matter

Not all awareness is the same.

There is directed awareness, where attention is intentionally focused on a specific issue, thought, feeling, or goal. This kind of awareness is powerful for clarity, problem-solving, and decision-making. It helps you see patterns and choices more clearly.

And then there is undirected awareness — a more open, spacious attention that isn’t trying to get anywhere. This kind of awareness is curious rather than corrective. It allows things to emerge that you might not have thought to look for.

Undirected awareness is particularly important when you’ve been stuck for a long time.

When you slow down, stay present, and stop directing yourself towards improvement, something else often appears: a feeling you didn’t give time to… a belief you didn’t realise you were carrying… a sensation in the body that has been quietly signalling “not yet” or “this isn’t right”.

AJM Coaching works with both. Movement happens not by pushing for change, but by bringing awareness to what is. Paradoxically, that’s what allows change to occur.

Again: you can’t fix what you refuse to feel — but once you feel it, fixing is often no longer required.

The Body Doesn’t Lie

One of the most overlooked aspects of awareness is the body.

Your body holds information long after the mind has normalised an experience. Tightness in the chest. A shallow breath. A heaviness in the gut. Restlessness in the legs. These are not problems to be eliminated; they are signals.

AJM Coaching invites you to turn your attention here — not to analyse, but to listen.

When clients begin to tune into bodily awareness, they often realise they’ve been overriding themselves for years. Choosing what “makes sense” over what feels right. Staying in situations that their body has quietly been resisting.

It’s another reason people remain stuck even when they seem outwardly capable: they’ve learned to mistrust their inner signals.

AJM Coaching helps rebuild that trust.

Why Feeling Is Not the Same as Being Overwhelmed

Many people avoid feeling because they’re afraid it will overwhelm them.

In reality, it’s usually the opposite. Avoided emotions tend to intensify and leak out sideways — through fatigue, anxiety, irritability, numbness, illness, or self-doubt.

Feeling, in a supported and contained way, allows emotions to move rather than stagnate.

A good coaching relationship offers exactly that container: steady, compassionate, non-judgemental. A place where you don’t have to perform insight or rush into solutions. A place where you can meet yourself honestly — sometimes gently, sometimes challengingly, always with awareness.

This is how old loops loosen.

Not by force.
Not by positive thinking.
But by presence.

If you’re still stuck, it doesn’t mean you’re failing.

It likely means something important has not yet been given space to be felt, named, or acknowledged. Something sensible, protective, human — but unseen.

The real reason you’re still stuck is not because you’re incapable.
It’s because awareness hasn’t yet reached the place where change needs to happen.

And when it does, movement follows.

Not rushed.
Not dramatic.
But grounded, aligned, and true to you.

That’s the work of awareness.
That’s the heart of Gestalt coaching.
And that’s where meaningful change actually begins.