Emotional Prison

There is a way out if we’re willing to see it.

“I’m reminded of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left it’s open, no bars. All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But he frantically shakes the bars.”

This passage from the book, “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” by Lori Gottlieb speaks volumes about our ability to feel stuck. In essence, we’ve created an emotional cell that makes us feel trapped. Very often it’s because we have become attached to a particular outcome or identity. 

We then become locked into a way of being or a way of seeing something that creates our own emotional prison. If the outcome or identity that we’ve constructed in our minds is in jeopardy, we begin to shake the bars in frustration.   

As the author states: “That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there is a way out—as long as we’re willing to see it.”

The key is to realize when we’re shaking our emotional bars and consider another way of getting out of our intellectual prison. The ability to walk around the bars may require letting go of our definition of success. Or redefining what success looks like. Or letting go of the outcome altogether. 

There are many ways to walk around the bars . . . but looking right and left may offer the most obvious way forward.