Human beings are incredibly adaptive.
We learn how to function inside the lives we’re given. We develop strategies for navigating relationships, uncertainty, stress, belonging, work, family, and all the other complicated pieces of being a person. Some of those strategies become so familiar that we don’t even recognize them as strategies anymore.
They’re simply how we walk through life.
And then something changes.
Maybe we’ve spent months or years learning to sense ourselves more clearly. We’ve started to feel the edges of ourselves again, that place in the body where we end and the world begins. We recover differently after stress. We trust our own signals a little more. We aren’t organizing quite as much of our lives around anticipating everyone else.
There can be a point in this work where things begin to feel… surprisingly okay.
This is usually when the question changes. It’s less What’s going on with me? and more How do I keep this?
Not perfect. Not I have transcended the human experience and will never be dysregulated again. 😂
But steadier.
And I think that’s an important distinction.
Stability Doesn’t Mean Stillness
When I talk about stability, I don’t mean arriving at a place where nothing affects us anymore. We’re living organisms. We’re supposed to respond to our environment.
There will still be grief, excitement, conflict, disappointment, pleasure, uncertainty, exhaustion, joy, and Tuesdays when everything is just annoying. The waves don’t disappear.
What can change is our relationship to them.
We may have more room to feel something without immediately needing to fix it. More ability to recognize when we’ve reached our edge, that felt sense right before we’d normally override ourselves. More trust that we can move through something difficult and find our way back.
And when so much of our energy isn’t being used to manage what’s happening inside or around us, something really interesting becomes possible:
Our attention can begin moving somewhere else.
What matters to me? What do I want to create? Who do I want to be in my relationships? What feels alive? How do I actually want to spend this life?
The answers to these questions aren’t only something we think our way into. They can also show up as a lean in the body toward one thing and away from another, a felt yes or a felt no before the mind has caught up.
For me, this is one of the most exciting parts of somatic work. The goal isn’t to become endlessly better at working on ourselves.
At some point, hopefully, we get to use some of that capacity to live.
But New Can Feel Really Weird
Here’s the tricky part: our systems adapt through experience. Which means something can be healthier, more aligned, and deeply wanted and still feel unfamiliar.
This is where I keep thinking about the client who told me she felt like she’d gotten a new pair of shoes after we ended our container together.
The shoes fit. She knew they were hers.
But she didn’t quite trust herself walking in them yet.
I love that distinction because sometimes we assume that when something is right, it should immediately feel natural. But think about an actual new pair of shoes.
At first, you’re aware of them. Your foot lands differently. Something rubs somewhere it didn’t before. You wonder whether you bought the right size. You might even find yourself reaching for the old pair because you already know exactly how those feel.
The old shoes have shaped themselves around the way you’ve walked for years.
The new ones haven’t.
Yet.
This Is Where Trust Comes In
There is a particular kind of trust required when we’re living from a place that doesn’t have years of evidence behind it yet.
You may know the boundary is right and still feel your body brace before you say it. You may know you don’t need to explain yourself and still feel the urge to send the four-paragraph text. You may know you’re allowed to rest and still hear the old voice telling you to be productive. You may know what you want and still feel shaky choosing it.
The new way isn’t necessarily failing because it feels awkward. It may simply be new.
And we can’t think our way into making it familiar. We have to accumulate experiences of living there.
We say the boundary and discover what happens in the body afterward. Maybe there’s an exhale, a settling, or simply the recognition that we’re still here. We make the choice. We rest. We let someone be disappointed. We allow something good to remain good without immediately looking for the catch.
We walk in the shoes.
And slowly, our system gathers new information:
Oh. We can live here too.
Maybe This Is What Containment Is For
As we move toward Containment in the Rhythm of Engagement, this is the version of holding I’m most interested in.
Not gripping tightly to something good because we’re afraid we’ll lose it. Not trying to maintain one perfectly regulated state.
This is the stage where we begin living into a new shape, one that doesn’t need the old patterns to run the show anymore. The over-explaining, the over-functioning, the staying small so no one gets uncomfortable. None of it gets abolished in a single moment. It begins to soften as we feed those patterns less and practice something different in their place.
Containment gives what we’re becoming enough support to be practiced. It’s where we get to keep asking, in the body: Where do I end and the world begins? What does this look like for me? What does this feel like for me?
It’s the boundary that protects time for what matters. The relationship that can hold more honesty. The routines that support the life we’re actually trying to live. The community that reminds us who we’re becoming when we forget. The pause that gives us enough room to choose differently.
None of this holds because we decided it once. It holds because we practice it again and again, until the new shape becomes more available to us.
Containment gives the new shoes somewhere to be worn.
And eventually, something that once required enormous attention begins to require less. You don’t wake up every morning thinking about how to walk in your shoes.
You just walk.
That’s what I hope for in this work. Not that we become permanently calm, perfectly aligned humans who never get knocked sideways, but that more and more of what we’ve practiced becomes available to us without requiring all of our attention.
Because there’s a whole life waiting for that attention.
People to love. Things to make. Pleasure to experience. Risks to take. Curiosity to follow. A life that increasingly reflects what matters to us.
Maybe that’s the real question underneath How do I hold onto this?
Not: How do I keep myself exactly here?
But: Can I trust myself enough to live from here and see where it takes me?
The shoes will break in.
But first, we have to walk in them.
