When Your Mind Feels Like a Cage: The Struggling Mindset of a Writer & What It Taught Me About Healing

Have you ever sat down to do something you love? Writing, creating, or simply showing up, only to feel this tightness in your chest? Like the words are there, but your body is saying no?

You want to move forward, but something inside feels stuck and heavy. 

That feeling isn’t just in your head. It’s woven through your nervous system, your breath, your bones. It’s the silent language of a mind and body caught in survival.

When I decided to really lean into my writing career, I was lucky enough to cross paths with some amazing people who shared the kind of writing wisdom you can't find in books. And when I started splitting my time between writing and mentoring, I began to notice something that stuck with me, and eventually led me to the work I do now:

That familiar voice of doubt. Is this even good enough?

The heart aching with comparison. Why do they seem so much freer, so much better?

The body locked in tension. Shoulders tight, breath shallow, a constant feeling of not quite safe.

The women I worked with would say, I just can’t find the words, or I’m stuck. But what they really meant was: I’m afraid.

Afraid that if I try, I’ll fail.

Afraid that if I try, I’ll be seen. Really seen . . . and rejected.

Afraid that my story isn’t worthy.

All this is a mirror for the women who carry the weight of old wounds. Who learned early on to shrink, to silence, to hide pieces of themselves to keep peace or avoid rejection.

And here’s the truth that most healing conversations miss: This isn’t just a mental block. Not. At. All. 

It’s a body that remembers the times it was told to be small and invisible.

It’s a nervous system that learned to brace and protect itself from feeling unsafe.

It’s a mind trying desperately to keep the story known because the unknown feels too dangerous.

This is the real trap of the struggling mindset. It looks like hesitation, procrastination and inevitable perfectionism. It feels like overwhelm, anxiety and exhaustion.

But underneath it all, it’s a survival mechanism. It's a system locked in attention fixation on what hurts, and what doesn’t feel safe to release.

Just like the struggling artist caught in loops of self-doubt and hesitation, many women I've worked with carried this invisible burden in their healing journeys.

The story they told themselves: If I just try harder, if I just fix my mindset, if I just push through the pain, I’ll get better.

But pushing against the current only tightens the knot.

Healing isn’t about force or mental toughness. It’s about learning to listen. To the whispers of the body, to the rhythms of the nervous system, to the truths hiding beneath the stories.

It’s about noticing when your attention is caught in the old loop, the loop of shrinking, hiding, numbing and gently guiding it toward presence and safety.

This is why many women feel stuck, even when they know what needs to change.

Because healing isn’t just a shift in mindset. It’s a shift in where and how you hold your attention. It’s rewiring the body’s responses so the mind can finally follow.

So the next time you find yourself frozen, overwhelmed, or caught in that exhausting cycle of not enough, remember the struggling artist inside you. She’s protecting something precious. And she’s waiting for a different kind of witness. One that holds space for her to feel and to remember she is safe enough to begin again.

Remember that healing is not about rushing toward a new story. It’s about reclaiming the sacred space inside you where your true voice lives, beyond the fear, beyond the struggle, beyond the need to be fixed.

Because that voice is already enough.

And when you start to listen with kind presence, the healing you thought was so far away begins to flourish from within.