Attachment
Running to Stand Still: Why We Get Stuck in Inaction
When moving forward and turning back feel equally impossible, this may be why.
Posted April 21, 2025 Reviewed by Devon Frye
Key points
- Unaddressed attachment wounds can haunt us in adult relationships.
- We often compensate for contradictory parts of us that are at odds.
- Sometimes we fear both moving forward and turning back.
Tyler is a kind, caring, intelligent, motivated, and profoundly wounded man. He’s stuck in emotional quicksand. No matter what he tries, he can’t escape the muck that renders him immobile.
Oh, he wants to free himself, but try as he might, Tyler is stuck. He might as well be at the gym, walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike. No matter how hard and long he pedals or walks, he doesn’t get anywhere. He is, as U2’s brilliant lyricist Bono described in song, “running to stand still.”
Tyler is like many of us. He can’t move forward, and he can’t turn back. Catholics might describe this state as purgatory, but it’s pure hell for everyone stuck there. The feeling is often one of helplessness—and hopelessness.
Tyler is a study in contradictions. He’s afraid of taking the next step forward in his romantic relationship—and he’s equally afraid of turning back and being alone. He feels deficient, unlovable, and worthless, afraid that he could never be the man his partner and prospective children would want.
And yet he also feels that he deserves to be with the hot bombshell he saw yesterday at the grocery store. He muses, “Yes, there’s a lot I love about my partner, but I should be able to do better.”
Tyler compensates for his sense of incompleteness by idealizing others and vilifying himself. His anxiety can become crippling as he struggles to regulate his emotions. He feels smothered by the pressure of his partner’s yearning and timeline. She wants children in the very near future, and he doesn’t feel the least bit ready to make that commitment. His self-critic has convinced him that he’d be a lousy father and husband: “You can’t even take care of yourself! How are you going to take care of anyone else?”
Ouch. Tyler’s inner critic is a brutal SOB.
Where does this leave him? Stuck in inaction—frozen in fear of both doing and not doing.
In his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote about the contrast between what he calls once born and twice born people. People who hold innate optimistic views are considered by James to be “once born.” People like Tyler are “twice born”—that is, they are often exceedingly critical of themselves and others, see the glass as half empty, and fixate on the sour side of life. They fear the future based on disappointments of the past.
Author Elizabeth Lesser picks up on James’ notion in her book, Broken Open. She writes about coming to a crossroads “where the old ways of doing things are no longer working but a better way lies somewhere at the far edge of the woods. We are afraid to step into those woods but even more afraid to turn back. To turn back is one kind of death; to go forward is another. The first kind of death ends in ashes; the second leads toward rebirth.”
Why Is This Idea of "Rebirth" Scary?
Rebirth represents transformation—change. Why would Tyler or anyone else be afraid of that?
The answer often lies in childhood wounds. Real or perceived rejection of one’s personhood can generate incapacitating attachment wounds. And so Tyler stands squarely in the midst of those metaphorical woods, equally afraid to turn back as he is to move forward.
As a child, Tyler was left alone for long periods of time with limited parental engagement or supervision. He detached from the raw tumult of his emotions. Feeling rejected and abandoned, he would escape into a fictional world of video games and later, porn.
As a result of the neglect he experienced in childhood, his emotional needs went unfulfilled. Now, as an adult, he is haunted by those feelings of being unwanted, unloved, and unworthy.
Is It Possible to Break Free?
Tyler has made it his business to learn everything there is to know about attachment styles in hopes of understanding himself. He can recite chapter and verse about his insecure anxious attachment and how it hijacks his self-esteem, relational proficiency, sexual functionality, and ultimately, his happiness—or at least, contentment.
What Tyler has not yet accepted is research that has determined attachment is not a till-death-do-us-part proposition. Like all of us, he has the power to break free, move beyond his childhood wounds, pivot, and change the way he views himself and others. Tyler is perfectly capable of pulling himself out of that emotional quicksand, brushing himself off, and forging onward to the far edge of the metaphorical woods.
For it is there in the foreboding distance where he will learn what rebirth means to him. Maybe it will be finding the confidence and resolve to commit to his partner and her vision of a family. Maybe it will be to start over by rediscovering himself and exploring his personal and relational needs. Either way, Tyler can then stop “running to stand still.” He can take a deep breath, kindle his courage, and commit to living fully.
True, this expedition isn’t quite as simplistic as I’ve matter-of-factly portrayed it here, but it is wholly achievable. The key is to press forward slowly, patiently, methodically, intentionally, and persistently, one step at a time.
