我们许多人都会浪费很多时间，以这样或那样的方式，陷入一种“既渴望进步，又想要保持停滞”的困境，我们想换工作，却被一系列的怀疑、犹豫、反驳和负罪感所阻碍，想要分手，却又害怕独自一人的处境。我们看着生命一点点地流逝，心里越来越焦虑，越来越讨厌自己。我们应该听从“你必须现实一点，梦想不会实现！”，还是忠诚于更重要的人：我们自己？

Many of us spend a large part of our lives, in one way or another, feeling stuck, in a state where a strong desire to move forward on an issue meets with an equally strong compulsion to stay fixed where one is. For example, we might at one level powerfully want to leave a job in finance in order to retrain in architecture, but at the same time, we remain blocked by a range of doubts, hesitations, counter-arguments, and guilty feelings. 

我们许多人都在进退两难的困境中浪费了大量的生命，以这样或那样的方式，被困在这样一种状态：在一件事上，想要进步的强烈冲动遇到了同样想要保持原地不动的强烈愿望。例如，我们可能在某种程度上强烈地想要离开金融领域的工作，去建筑领域深造，但同时，各种怀疑、犹豫、内心的反驳以及负罪感却让我们裹足不前，难以迈出改变的一步。

Or we might be impelled to leave our marriage while simultaneously unable to imagine any realistic life outside it. To act feels horrific, but doing nothing is killing us as well. Every avenue appears shut off. And so one ruminates, turns over the question late at night, tries the patience of therapists, and watches life go by with mounting anxiety and self-disgust.

或者我们可能想要结束婚姻，却又无法想象离婚后的生活。采取行动让人觉得可怕，但什么都不做也会害死我们，每条路似乎都是死路一条。因此，一个人在深夜反复思考这个问题，考验治疗师的耐心，看着生命一点点地流逝，心里越来越焦虑，越来越讨厌自己。

As an outsider, one might be tempted to ask questions to move things on: Why don’t you try to enroll on a course to see if you might like a new area of work? Why don’t you discuss your dissatisfactions with your partner? Why don’t you go to counseling? What about splitting up? But we’re likely to find that our friend can’t make any progress, whatever we say. 

作为局外人，我们可能会忍不住想出些主意来帮对方打破僵局。比如，“要不你去报个新课程，说不定能发现别的工作机会呢？”“要不跟伴侣好好聊聊，把心里的不满都倒出来？”“要不去咨询咨询专业人士？”“要不就考虑分开试试？”但问题是，不管我们怎么出主意，朋友可能还是没办法往前迈出一步。

It seems as if they are subject to a kind of law disbarring them from progressing, not as a law you’d find in the statutes of the country they live in, but some sort of personal law. These laws might go like this: “Make sure you don’t achieve satisfaction in your career” or “Make sure your relationship has no life in it, but cannot be abandoned” or “Make sure you aren’t happy in the place you live in.”

他们似乎被某种无形的规则束缚住了，没办法向前走。不是那种你在他们生活的国家法律条文中能找到的规则，而是一种内心的限制。就好像是给自己立下的规矩：“别让自己在工作上太顺心”“别让感情生活有起色，但又不能放手”“别在现在的生活环境里过得太舒心”……

In order to understand the origin of these laws, we have to look backwards. Difficult childhoods and the complicated families they unfold in might be the originators of a lot of these restrictive unspoken laws, whose impact echoes across our lives. Some of these laws might go like this: “Make sure you never shine, it would upset your little sister” or “You have to be cheerful to not let my depression break through” or “Never be creatively fulfilled, because it would remind me of my envy” or “Reassure us that we are clever by winning all the prizes at school” or “You would disappoint me if you became boisterous and one day sexual.”

要想理解这些“心结”的由来，我们必须往回看。那些不顺的童年，还有复杂得像迷宫一样的家庭关系，可能是这些无形束缚的源头。这些束缚就像阴影一样，一直跟着我们。比如，这些小时候可能被灌输的规矩可能是这样的：“别太出色，不然会抢了妹妹的风头”“要一直开开心心的，不然我的不开心就会暴露出来”“别在创作上太成功，不然我会嫉妒”“一定要在学校拿奖项，这样我们才有面子”或者“别太放纵，不然我会失望”。

Of course, no one ever directly says such things in a family. Laws couldn’t operate if they could so easily be seen. But the laws are there nevertheless, holding us into a particular position as we grow up and then, once we have left home, continuing to surreptitiously distort our personalities away from the path of their legitimate growth. It can be hard to draw any connection between adult stuck situations and any childhood laws. We may miss the link between our reluctance to act at work and a situation with dad at home thirty years before. But we can hazard a principle, nevertheless: Any long-term stuckness is likely to be the result of butting up against some sort of law inherited unknowingly from childhood.

当然，没有人会在家里直接说出这样的话来。如果这些规则如此容易被察觉，也就起不了作用了。可规则偏偏就存在，而且特别“顽固”-小时候，规矩像“紧箍咒”一样，把我们“定”在某个位置上；等我们长大离开家，规矩还不消停，继续在暗地里“作妖”，把我们原本该有的人格给“拽歪”了，让我们远离合法成长的道路。成年人的困境和童年时的那些“潜规则”之间，往往很难找到直接的联系。我们可能完全想不到，自己在工作上总是下不了决心，可能和30年前在家里跟爸爸的某次经历有关。但我们可以这样理解：任何长期的停滞不前，很可能是因为我们无意中触碰到了童年时期继承下来的某种“禁忌”。

We are stuck because we are being overly loyal to an idea of something being impossible generated in the distant past, impossible because it was threatening to someone we cared for or depended on a long time ago. Therefore, one of the main paths to liberation lies in coming to “see” that the law exists and then unpicking its warped and unnecessary logic. We can start by asking whether beneath our practical dilemma, there may be a childhood law at work, encouraging us to stay where we are. We can dig beneath the surface problem in search of the emotional structure that might be being engaged. For example, in the unconscious, architecture equals the creativity dad never enjoyed, or sexual fulfillment equals what hurt my lovable mum.

我们之所以进退两难，是因为心里一直死守着一个很久以前就形成的想法：“这事不可能”，而它之所以被认定为不可能，只是因为它曾威胁到我们很久以前在乎或依赖的某个人的底线。因此，解放的主要途径之一在于：先察觉到这种潜规则的存在，然后把它的荒诞逻辑一点点拆穿。我们可以先从表面的困境入手，去探寻背后是否有童年时期的某种“潜规则”在作祟，让我们难以迈出改变的步伐。就像一层层剥开问题的外壳，去寻找那些被触动的深层情感。比如，在潜意识里，我们可能会把“学习建筑”和“父亲从未实现的创造力”画上等号，或者性满足等于伤害了我心爱的妈妈。

We may discover that some of the reasons we can’t give up on finance and take up a more imaginative role are because throughout childhood, we had to accept a law that we couldn’t be both creatively fulfilled and make money in order to protect our volatile father from his own envy and inadequacy. Or we can’t leave our marriage because, unconsciously, we’re coming up against a law from childhood that tells us that being a good boy means renouncing one’s more bodily and visceral sides. The specifics will differ, but the principle of a hidden law from childhood can explain a huge number of adult stucknesses.

我们可能会意识到，自己之所以放不下金融行业的工作，去追求更有创造力的工作，是因为在整个童年期间，我们被迫接受了一种观念：为了照顾情绪敏感的父亲，为了免于父亲的嫉妒和不足，我们不能既追求创意满足又去赚钱。又或者，我们无法离开婚姻，是因为在潜意识里，童年时的某种观念告诉我们，做一个“乖孩子”就得压抑自己的本能和欲望。每个人的具体情况不一样，但童年时种下的那些“隐形规则”，往往能解释很多成年人的迷茫和困境。

The way forward is first and foremost to realize that there might be a law in operation when we get stuck, that we aren’t merely being cowardly or slow in not progressing. We feel trapped because we are, in our faulty minds, back in a cage formed in childhood, which we have to be able to see, think about, and then patiently dismantle. We can, along the way, accept that we are now adults, which means that the original family drama no longer has to apply. 

要摆脱困境继续前进，首先得明白，当我们卡住的时候，可能并不是因为我们胆小或懒惰，而是因为内心深处有一条“隐形的规则”在作祟。这种感觉就像被困在童年时形成的牢笼里，而这个牢笼是我们自己用过去的思维模式搭建的。我们必须能够看到、思考，然后耐心地一点一点地把牢笼拆掉。在这个过程中，我们得提醒自己，我们已经长大成人了，那些小时候的束缚和家庭的纠葛，其实已经不再适用了。

We don’t have to worry about upsetting parental figures; their taboos were set up to protect them, but they are making us ill. We can feel sad for the laws that these damaged figures imposed on us, often with no active malevolence, but we can recognize that our imperative is to move them aside and act with the emotional freedom that has always been our birthright. We may need to be disloyal to a way of being that protected someone we cared about or depended on in order to be loyal to a more important someone still: ourselves.