Slow down… Even More
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” … Have you ever heard this saying? In processing emotions, traumas, and charged experiences, this guidance is essential. However, this maxim tends to confound the part common to all of us that says (or rather, screams…) that a problem must be solved RIGHT NOW.
Not only must an issue reach resolution immediately — says this part, and rather convincingly — but also in a specific way: through logic.
This part that convinces so many that its way is the only way to achieve peace and safety is a fierce protector. We all deserve fierce protection. Simultaneously, what actually happens is choppiness – not smoothness – which lends itself to misunderstandings, missed insights, and unprocessed important emotional content.
In other words: we forget our true selves and our nervous systems in urgent attempts for what that part believes resolution to be.
To smooth out the process, we must slow down (sorry, I know that can be frustrating). In this smoothness, your nervous system gets to come with you on the journey towards true resolution. You don’t have to feel dysregulated, sped up, urgent, overwhelmed, or overstimulated as you process. In fact, when these factors are present, we are not really processing – we are at the least reaching the edge of the Window of Tolerance (per Porges’ Polyvagal Theory), if not already outside of it. When these signs and symptoms arise, my guidance is not to run from them or shut them down. Instead, what I am advocating for is slowing down. Instead of leaving your body or escaping into logic, let your whole being – including those emotions that family members or society have shamed – be present in the conversation.
When outside of the window of tolerance – a moniker that describes when we are functioning from certain areas of the nervous system that turn on in response to threat and danger – we do not integrate information. This is not processing. This is discharging without digestion. Furthermore, it is potentially re-traumatizing to visit charged content without safety and resourcing in the nervous system.
Slowing down often is uncomfortable for people. We are fish swimming in societal waters of faster-faster-faster and more-more-more. Slowing down can feel like swimming upstream. Moreover, many people experience slowness as unsafe. Thus, when you are wanting to process, here are steps required, as part of the processing journey and as a means to get to process:
Internal resourcing
Learning to feel safe in slowing down
Building comfort in discomfort
Tracking your nervous system activation and/or breath
Connection with your body
Building a capacity to be in your body, and then safety to be in your body
Building safety in interpersonal connection (so that you’re not just doing the work by yourself once again)
To clarify: these features in themselves are processing, in addition to leading towards processing. The journey can feel long, tiring, and frustrating. But let’s not keep building houses on quicksand. Please – let’s not keep invalidating our emotions and truths in our bodies by speeding through the discomfort via forcing logic and a fast-pace on our valid internal experiences.
You deserve to get to slow down, to feel the relief of a big sigh, and to enjoy the present moment.
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.