When You Keep Hitting the Same Invisible Wall: Heal Yourself Podcast
Sometimes the frustrating part of being stuck is that you are not confused.
You know what you want. You may even know what needs to happen next.
But the same pattern keeps showing up anyway.
I joined Kira Whitham and Denise Loutfi on the Heal Yourself Podcast to talk about Brainspotting, limiting beliefs, self-doubt, my path from paramedicine into coaching and the business struggles that eventually changed the way I thought about getting stuck.
This is an older conversation from before my work became centered around execution blocks and before I developed SCAN.
The language I use today is more precise, but the pattern underneath the conversation is one I still see constantly: when knowledge is present and the same action repeatedly fails to happen, it is worth figuring out what kind of problem you are actually dealing with.
Listen to the Conversation
Listen to Episode 27, Brainspotting for Emotional and Spiritual Health, on the Heal Yourself Podcast.
Being Capable Does Not Mean Every Action Will Be Easy
My professional background gave me plenty of evidence that I could handle difficult things.
I had worked in 911 paramedicine. I had made decisions under pressure. I had learned complicated medical material and worked in environments where the stakes were considerably higher than sending a marketing email.
And yet building my own business exposed a completely different kind of difficulty.
That is one of the things capable people often find confusing.
“I can handle all of this. Why can't I make myself do this one thing?”
The fact that you are capable elsewhere does not make the stuck point meaningless.
In fact, the selectivity can be useful information.
More Knowledge Does Not Always Change the Pattern
The episode description talks about the hurdles I experienced while building my coaching business.
Those hurdles were not caused by a complete lack of information.
I had researched. I had trained. I had invested in learning.
Yet knowing more did not automatically make execution easier.
This eventually became one of the most important distinctions in my work.
If the problem is genuinely lack of knowledge, education is useful.
But if you already know what to do and the same action keeps stopping, more information may simply give you more material to organize while the original problem remains untouched.
Limiting Beliefs Are Not the Only Possible Explanation
In this interview, I talked a lot about limiting beliefs and emotional blocks. That was the language I used at the time.
I still think those patterns can matter.
What has changed is that I no longer want to assume they are the explanation simply because someone is stuck.
Today I would first ask:
- Is the strategy actually appropriate?
- Is the next action specific enough to execute?
- Does the workflow fit the person?
- Is there enough time and capacity for what the plan requires?
- Is the person repeatedly stopping at one very specific point?
Those questions help separate a practical execution problem from a persistent internal block.
The Business Struggle Was Part of the Clue
One reason this older conversation still matters to me is that my own business was where the pattern became impossible to ignore.
I could coach other people.
I could understand the strategy.
I could see what someone else needed to do.
Yet there were places in my own business where knowing the answer did not translate into taking the action.
Eventually I stopped treating that as proof that I was simply bad at entrepreneurship and started getting curious about the interruption itself.
That curiosity eventually became much more central to my work than the original business niche I was trying to force myself to build.
Where Brainspotting Entered the Picture
Brainspotting is the main tool discussed in this episode.
At the time, I was primarily explaining my work through emotional blocks, trauma, limiting beliefs and the relationship between past experiences and present behavior.
I still use Brainspotting when it is appropriate.
But today it sits inside a broader diagnostic process.
I do not want to use a block-resolution tool for something that is actually a bad strategy or a vague task.
The tool should match the problem.
Why Visibility and Self-Doubt Can Become So Specific
The useful thing about these patterns is that they often are not global.
Someone may be confident in dozens of areas and then become strangely hesitant when they need to promote themselves.
They may speak easily with clients but freeze when asked to make a video.
They may confidently explain their expertise but hesitate when it is time to state the price.
That specificity is useful.
Instead of concluding, “I lack confidence,” we can ask:
“What happens at the exact point where execution changes?”
That gives us something much more concrete to work with.
The Question I Ask Differently Today
Older versions of my work focused heavily on identifying what was holding someone back.
Today I prefer to start one step earlier.
“Where is execution actually breaking down?”
Maybe nothing internal needs to be cleared at all.
Maybe you need a different strategy.
Maybe the action is too broad.
Maybe the system requires a way of working that does not fit you.
And maybe, after eliminating those explanations, we find a repeated execution block.
The distinction matters because different problems require different tools.
In This Episode We Discuss
- Jennie’s career path from paramedicine into coaching
- Her early business struggles
- Brainspotting and how she was using it in her work
- Limiting beliefs and emotional blocks
- Self-doubt and confidence
- How past experiences can influence current behavior
- The relationship between Brainspotting and EMDR
- Why understanding a problem intellectually does not always change behavior
- How getting stuck in business helped shape Jennie’s later work
Listen to the Full Episode
Hear my full conversation with Kira Whitham and Denise Loutfi on Heal Yourself, Episode 27: Brainspotting for Emotional and Spiritual Health.
About Jennie Hays
Jennie Hays is an Execution Block Specialist, Brainspotting Practitioner and business coach for coaches, consultants and service-based entrepreneurs.
She helps capable people figure out why strategies they already understand are not consistently turning into action.
Her work distinguishes between a true execution block, a strategy that does not fit the person and a plan that is simply too vague or poorly structured to execute.
When an actual execution block is present, Jennie combines rapid block resolution and Brainspotting with practical business strategy and execution design to help clients return to clear, measurable action.
