Therapy and Stagnation

Stagnation (in a career, a relationship, or in life generally) is often the result of elevating safety over every other value. Usually safety is over-valued when failure is over-feared. If a person is stagnating, it is probably because risk is seen as terrifying. To find out why that might be the case, it is vital for the person to feel safe with his or her therapist. Only then, in a situation of safety, can the thoughts, feelings, and fantasies be explored that are behind the fear of risk.

The stagnating person might view this as a Catch-22: only by taking the risk of entering therapy can you understand your fear of risk; therefore, you have to be cured in order to be treated. But the paradox is only apparent because the two kinds of risks are not equivalent. Entering therapy may be felt as a fearful risk, but it is one where each fear associated with the therapy can be addressed and allayed as soon as it arises. The fear of risk that underlies stagnation, on the other hand, is deeper and harder to expose. It yields to therapy more slowly and only after the safety of the therapeutic relationship has been established.