At The Speed It Can Be Held

Lately, I’ve been noticing something in my own nervous system that feels both familiar and newly revealed at the same time. As things begin to shift and widen, I can feel my nervous system responding before my mind had words to articulate it. Not with fear exactly, and not only with excitement, but with a kind of internal check-in. A quiet question: Can this be held?

This noticing has slowed me down, but not in a resistant way. More like a listening. I’m not trying to stop growth. I’m paying attention to how it settles, or doesn’t, into the system that has to live inside it.

What’s becoming clear to me is this: growth doesn’t falter because it moves slowly. It falters when it moves faster that the nervous system can integrate.

I don’t experience this as an idea. I feel it. When expansion outpaces regulation, the body tightens, attention scatters, anxiety spikes and things that should feel meaningful begin to feel thin or overwhelming. There can be a lot of motion, but very little sense of being grounded inside it.

In my clinical work, pacing is never optional. We don’t move simply because something is available to work on. We move when the system is resourced enough to stay present. Stabilization isn’t a step to get through. It’s what makes real integration possible. Without it, intensity overwhelms rather than transforms.

I’ve been realizing how true this is far beyond the therapy room.

Growth, whether creative, relational, professional, or visible, activates the same underlying systems. The body doesn’t sort intensity into “good” or “bad.” It responds to speed, load, and containment. When those aren’t aligned, strain shows up, not because something is wrong, but because something is being asked to happen too quickly.

In my own experience, when my nervous system is supported and regulated, expansion feels spacious and open. There’s room to orient, to stay curious, to remain embodied. When it isn’t, even good things can feel destabilizing, as though the ground beneath hasn’t fully formed yet.

This has changed how I relate to momentum. Instead of asking, How far can this go and how quickly? I find myself asking, What allows this to stay? What allows growth to be lived, rather than simply achieved?

There’s an intelligence in the system that seems to know its own timing. When expansion respects that timing, it doesn’t need to be forced. It unfolds in a way that feels coherent and sustainable.

I’m sharing this not as a conclusion, but as something I’m still in relationship with. A reality I’m noticing as my world widens. Strengthening the nervous system hasn’t slowed growth. It has allowed it to settle, to root, to last.

Expansion that endures doesn’t arrive all at once.

It arrives at a speed that can be held.