Claire, it sounds like you found some of your answers, and here's another thought to ponder. Everything goes in cycles. Activity/rest, awakening/sleeping, day/night, and so on.
Inner growth is no different--there are times of rapid advancement, and times when it SEEMS like nothing at all is happening, or, worse, that you're moving backward instead of forward. BUT!! Just like when you're sleeping at night, and it seems like nothing is going on, those "quiet" (or even backward) times are times of tremendous activity behind the scenes. When you emerge from this part of the cycle, you'll realize just how busy things were when you thought you weren't making progress.
Once I wrote an article for an astrology magazine (way back in the 80s) that went over the phases of the cycle for self-development--the Moon is a good model, although the timing for these cycles is not as regular as the one for the Moon. As we grow, we follow the same general phases. I use eight phases, but most people are familiar with four: New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, Last Quarter. Your episode sounds like a classic New Moon.
I mention all of this because a lot of the time we tend to think life should be ALL active progress, all the time. But it's natural to have cycles of apparent quiet along with all the forward movement. Understanding this helps in entering the flow, and having the Universe work with you, rather than struggling against the current.
Just relax into the flow. Life is good.
