Slower Is Faster: A Somatic and Psychodynamic Approach to Healing

In a culture that prizes productivity, speed, and instant results, the idea that “slower is faster” can feel counterintuitive, especially when it comes to healing. But if you’ve ever found yourself rushing to feel better, to understand a problem, or to “fix” yourself through sheer willpower, you may have noticed: forcing it often backfires.

In therapy and in life, true change rarely happens on a deadline. It happens in the spaces where we slow down enough to feel, to notice, and to connect.

What Does “Slower Is Faster” Mean?

In somatic therapy, the phrase “slower is faster” refers to the idea that the nervous system responds best to gentle, attuned pacing. When we try to push through discomfort or rush emotional breakthroughs, we often trigger more resistance, overwhelm, or shutdown. But when we slow down and honour the body’s signals, when we meet ourselves with patience rather than pressure, we create the safety needed for real integration.

This isn't about being passive. It's about respecting the pace at which your system can meaningfully process experience.

The Body’s Wisdom: Working at the Speed of Safety

Your body has its own internal pacing. It knows when something feels too much or too fast. This is often what we call “dysregulation,” a state where the nervous system becomes flooded or shuts down in response to overwhelm. Many of us override this pacing with our minds, trying to “get through it” by thinking harder or staying busy.

But healing doesn't happen through force. It happens through presence.

If you're processing grief or trauma, your body might only allow you to touch into that pain in short, manageable doses. That’s not avoidance. It’s regulation. It's your system saying: this is how much I can handle right now. When we respect this, the system begins to trust, and what was previously intolerable becomes more accessible over time.

The Psychodynamic Layer: Insight Takes Time

From a psychodynamic perspective, “slower is faster” also holds true. Insight, self-understanding, and emotional change don’t arrive on command. Much like the unconscious, they move in their own time, surfacing only when the psyche feels ready.

Psychodynamic therapy often invites us to linger in ambiguity, to sit with what we don’t yet understand. We might revisit the same relational pattern again and again, each time from a slightly new angle. To the impatient part of us, this can feel like going in circles. But in truth, we are spiraling deeper. Each return opens the door for integration.

When we slow down, we create space for curiosity, for wondering, for emotional texture to emerge. In this way, slowness allows not just safety, but depth.

Why Going Fast Can Actually Slow You Down

Whether in the body or the mind, speed often activates defences. When we rush, we move from a place of survival: pushing through, bracing, intellectualising. We may look “functional” on the outside, but underneath we’re disconnected from ourselves.

This is especially common for people who’ve learned that slowing down is unsafe, perhaps because stillness brought pain, or because achievement was their path to love and worth.

Slowness can feel vulnerable. But it’s also a pathway to reconnection.

Practicing “Slower is Faster” in Therapy

Here are a few ways to embody this principle in sessions or in your own self-reflection:

• Pause often. Notice when you feel the urge to move on quickly. Can you stay a moment longer with what you’re feeling?

• Follow the body. Is your breath tight? Are your shoulders tense? Let your body be the guide, even if your mind wants to push forward.

• Name what’s happening. “I notice I want to move past this.” “I feel a pressure to understand this right now.” Naming these impulses can slow them down.

• Let insight unfold. Trust that understanding will emerge in its own time. You don’t need to force clarity. It will come.

  
  

Final Thoughts

Healing isn’t a race. It’s a process of deep listening, to the body, to the unconscious, to the parts of you that have been waiting to be heard.

When we honour the wisdom of slowness, we make room for deeper and more lasting change. We regulate the nervous system. We allow the psyche to unfold. And in doing so, we find that what felt far away begins to come closer, not because we chased it, but because we created the space for it to arrive.

Slower is faster. Not because slow is better, but because it’s how we meet ourselves where we actually are.