Stymied!
A Story of Personal and Professional Deadlock
The air in the room has fossilised. A stalemate where every sentence you start feels like it is being dragged through wet sand, and the only thing you seem to agree on is that we are indeed, quite spectacularly, losing.
You are standing there, that familiar flush stinging the back of your neck. A physical vibration of intense frustration, like steam whistling out of your ear tubes. Tight-chested, like someone has wound a heavy cord around your ribs and given it one final sharp tug. The knot in your stomach feels less like nerves and more like you have swallowed a bag of lead shot for breakfast.
You are watching your work and your life, which you have poured yourself into, hit a brick wall. You are watching the person you love and work with retreat into an amorphous defensiveness you cannot get a grip on. Every time you try to find a middle ground, they shrink back or blank out, seemingly terrified, in their turn, of rocking a boat that is already taking on water.
The insanity of it is enough to make you want to put your head through a window. You are left hopelessly stymied. It is a bizarre sensation for a seasoned adult, one that you simply cannot make sense of.
Patently ridiculous, you think. How is it that in almost any other area of your life: arguing a brief, navigating the uncharted territory of a new career, managing the chaos of a family, or keeping a room full of strangers entertained, you know exactly how to handle yourself?
“Hell’s teeth,” you utter, “I have a lifetime of experience, common sense, life skills, and professional expertise. What is going on here?”
And yet here you are, looking at a situation that has rendered it all useless: a total, grinding deadlock, a lose-lose for the two of you, and now a lose-lose-lose because the work itself is caught up in it too. You are a witness to your own drowning.
And as you stand there, it strikes you that none of this makes any sense at all. It is utterly illogical.
It is like thinking you cannot navigate a puddle if you’re not wearing wellies.
The absurdity of it is the first thing that breaks the spell. Finally, you have noticed it. What’s more, you realise, with that, you are stuck!
And when you are stuck, the first thing we try to do is fix the stuckness.
And the next thing you do is try to think your way out of it.
“But I’ve tried everything, it never works!” you squeak.
Exactly. But I must say, whoever you are, “Well done for getting this far!”
True as eggs are eggs and, as my mentor and trainer Jamie Smart said:
“People are always doing what makes most sense to them in the moment at their current level of understanding.”
Now stop a minute. Put that tea bag you are hovering over your mug into the mug and realign your lower jaw with your top teeth.
Does that sound like a bit of basic common sense or not? It should. It is as mechanical as gravity, yet here you are, trying to legislate against it. But let’s look at it through the lens of your lead-shot stomach. If your partner is doing what makes “most sense” to them, and what makes sense to them is to behave like a sentient pile of damp laundry every time a business decision looms… where does that leave you? It leaves you wallowing around in the laundry basket. So, if you weren’t so busy trying to navigate that, what would you be doing with your tomorrow morning?
You see, the insanity of the deadlock is built on a single, invisible premise: I can’t move until they change. But what if their “current level of understanding” is simply… that? What if they are perfectly content (in a terrified, amorphous sort of way) exactly where they are? If that is the case, then you are waiting for a green light from someone who isn’t in a car.
I wonder if you have accidentally made another person’s state of mind your professional speed limit?
Oops, sorry, that just fell out of my keyboard.
If we’re looking at this with total clarity, could it be that there’s a sneaky kind of comfort in the deadlock? As long as you believe you’re “stymied,” you’re still in control of the narrative.
You get to be the “capable one” waiting for the “incapable one.” Deep down, is there a fear that if you stop trying to manage their “current level of understanding,” you’ll lose your grip on the relationship itself?
You’ve been holding the boat together with your bare hands, and you’re terrified that if you let go and do the sailing, the whole thing might go under. But at least you’d be sailing.
Funny that. I’ll get my coat.
So, let’s go back to you, where we were dithering about in that puddle. You’ve convinced yourself you can’t possibly navigate it without wellies, or at the very least, a hand to hold.
But you’ve been wearing your own for years. You are already standing in the puddle, complaining that your feet are dry. Now that doesn’t make sense.
The reality is that your life and your work are not tethered to someone else’s level of understanding.
The deadlock only exists because you are treating their internal weather as a solid obstacle.
You stop shouting at the fog, and just start walking through it.
Ok, take a breath.
It’s time for sticky question for a sticky problem. I even suggest writing your answer, it might help, and it sure can’t hurt:
If you weren’t so busy managing the ‘mental weather’ (the weight, the sheer exhaustion of it all), what is the one truth you’ve been ‘polishing’ in your head for months that you are finally ready to own?
And here’s another and the last (I promise): If you knew, deep in your bones, that you were already fine, that the resourcefulness to meet whatever comes next is already in there, regardless of how the outside world rearranges itself, how would everything ahead of you look from here?
If you just felt a resounding ‘yes’ to those questions, you probably don’t even need to read the rest of this. Everything ahead of you is already looking different. But for the sake of picking up the pieces and rounding things off, I want to mention the ‘mess.’
Yes, the transition might be spectacularly uncomfortable. There is no neat way to disentangle the partner from the colleague when they’re the same person.
But remember: your resilience isn’t a theory; it’s your track record. That momentary coldness in the air? It’s just more weather. It’s not a sign that you’re doing it wrong; it’s just the sound of the gears finally shifting back into your own hands.
You aren’t ‘leaving’ anyone. You’re just stopping the impossible task of trying to run a business through the medium of someone else’s insecurity. It turns out, you don’t need them to see the light.
You just need to stop standing in your own shadow.
If something in this has landed and you’re sitting with a stalemate of your own, message me. Bring whatever you’re caught in and we’ll take a proper look at it together. It’s also a chance to see if we’re a fit to work together.
If any of this has landed and you want to sit with it a little longer, my short primer What No One Ever Told Us is in the paid tier. It’s a good next step for anyone ready to look at how all of this actually works. You can subscribe below.
And if you just want to ask me anything at all, message me in chat.