Book Review: The Science of Stuck
I heard Britt Frank on Mark Groves’ podcast a while ago. She is also an Instagram famous therapist and I’m sure I stumbled on her posts there some time a while back. On the podcast, I was struck by her personal journey with trauma, addiction, rebelling by joining a religious cult, and becoming a therapist after all that. I also recall her saying that many of people’s behaviors make a lot of sense, including when people are stuck in the off switch. This is how I operate as a human and therapist, so I felt intrigued enough to pick up her book. She has a weird, long chess analogy in one of the last chapters of the book. One part of this chapter was normalizing that we all have probably 1 or 2 categories where we feel stuck. I certainly do and was hoping to learn something from that perspective too.
In addition to being a therapist for 15 years now, I’m also a writer and an avid reader, meaning that I can be a bit critical of self help books. I’ll share more at the end, but despite myself, I would recommend the book. Everyone thinks they need to read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. I don’t think so. It is harsh and unnecessary for most to read among it’s other controversies. All the people that want to read the Body Keeps the Score would likely benefit from reading The Science of Stuck instead. Bold claim, I know. This book is much easier to digest and has practical, bite size steps to help people regulate and be able to move forward.
A basic premise of this book is that your brain is always motivated, either to move forward or to conserve energy. You’re not lazy, crazy, incompetent, or even necessarily depressed. You might be, but being stuck in itself doesn’t mean you’re depressed. Another basic premise of the book is that even if you’re feeling stuck, there is a lot right with you and your response to the world around you. There is a chapter on anxiety being a superpower, rather than something that attacks you or you have to push away at all costs. It is strange to think that in 2023, we’re still breaking the myths that the pharmaceutical companies told us about chemical imbalances, but we are.
A big theme of the book is listening to what is going on with us, including anxiety, rather than fighting or avoidng it. I suppose I enjoyed that because when I work with clients that create changes, it comes from a place of acceptance, listening, and working with the discomfort. Anyway, the next few chapters discuss the benefits and perks of staying stuck. Some examples include control, not changing your relationship by making changes, conserving energy, and staying safe. People so often just get upset with themselves for not changing or maybe because of the perks and benefits, they don’t really want to change.
The word trauma is getting a bit overused and I think the author described some things as trauma that may not be. Being stuck isn’t always a trauma response. I would say it is a nervous system response and there is fear involved when we feel stuck. I’m not sure it is always due to something bad that has happened. Either way, her description of trauma, dispelling the myths of trauma, and differentiating events from our responses are all spot on and helpful for the average person.
Overall, I think the book was a primer on a variety of different things that make people feel stuck and bring them into therapy. She covered the shadow self, the brain, trauma, grief, attachment styles, the nervous system, families, dating, friendship, habit change, meaningful apologies, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. It is like a mental health handbook from a trauma informed perspective. Rather than reviewing all of it, I will summarize a few things about being stuck in my own words.
If you’re feeling stuck, chances are that your body and brain do not feel safe enough to move forward. Rather than beat yourself up, wonder why you’re stuck, assume you’re depressed, etc, appreciate your system protecting you and find ways to feel safe enough to do the thing you want to do. Feeling safe enough to do the thing means regulating your nervous system meaning either calming the fight or flight response or getting moving if you’re in a freeze response. Another part of getting unstuck is breaking down your actions into bite sized steps. For example, Britt Frank was on a substance use bender and the tiniest step forward was a bite of soup. Sometimes, it is that small of a step.
Putting it that way, this book was a lot of words to say some simple things. By the end of the book, I was annoyed at all the quotes from other others. I swear, every other sentence, was a quote from some other author or psychologist. Hey, author, you read a lot of books too. We get it, but we’re reading your book. I also don’t think this book was all that heavy on science, at least not enough to warrant that in the title. My last not favorite part of the book was her examples or metaphors. She used a lengthy chess game metaphor and something about a flight manual. I admit my eyes glazed over and I don’t totally know what that chapter was about.
My small critiques aside, I still recommend this book for anyone learning about their mental health and especially for anyone feeling stuck in some way. Even though the quotes were a bit much, I learned a thing or two from the quotes and now have a longer list of other resources to check out.