Integrating Change: The Art of Slowing Down After Growth

Written by Bonolo Mophosho, Counselling Psychologist

So often, after a period of deep healing - whether through therapy, spiritual work, or simply surviving something that once felt impossible; we expect to feel lighter, steadier, and free.

And we do, for a while. We feel lighter, more open, and sure that this time, the shift will last.

But then, quietly, life tests the new.

An old thought returns, a familiar tension or old emotion resurfaces, and we wonder: Was that growth just a fleeting moment?

The truth is, it wasn’t. You’re not going backwards - you’re integrating. Healing is not a single leap forward but a dance between expansion and rest, between what you’ve learned and what your nervous system is still learning to trust.

The Science of Integration

In theoretical terms, this phase is known as neural consolidation; when new pathways in the brain begin to stabilise. Each time we experience insight, regulate differently, or choose a new response, our brain lays down a new connection.

But like any new growth, these pathways need time, repetition, and safety to strengthen. Just as soil needs time and stillness to let a seed take hold, so too do our brains and bodies. 

When we rest after emotional effort, we create the conditions for these new neural pathways to strengthen. Sleep, gentleness, and even slowing our pace of life allow the mind to weave the new into the old and to make the unfamiliar familiar.

Slowing down after a breakthrough is for this reason vital.

This “integration” after change is not an afterthought. Rest allows the nervous system to catch up to the new reality you’ve begun creating. It’s the bridge between transformation and embodiment - the sacred pause that turns insight into identity. Integration is not stagnation - it’s the phase where change takes root. 

When Regression Visits

Regression often feels like betrayal: “I thought I was past this.”

But in truth, it’s the nervous system’s way of testing stability. Under fatigue, uncertainty, or stress, our older neural pathways (the ones wired by past repetition) may flare up. They are the brain’s attempt at safety, not sabotage.

The principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offer quiet guidance for this.

Instead of tightening around discomfort, we learn to let it move through us. Notice the wave, name it, and breathe through it. The goal isn’t to stay perpetually balanced, it’s to remain willing, open, and trusting as the wave rises and falls.

Every time you allow the discomfort to pass without abandoning yourself, you affirm: The change is still here. I am still changing.

Regression, or what feels like “sliding back,” is part of the natural rhythm of change. Under stress or fatigue, old neural circuits may re-activate because they’re simply more familiar, not more powerful.

Trusting the New You

Self-trust grows when you see these fluctuations not as evidence of failure, but of humanness. This trust grows not from perfection, but from patience. When we meet our regressions with gentleness, we send a new message to the body: I am safe even when I waver. This is how neural pathways deepen into traits, and traits into character.

Healing isn’t linear because neither are we. It’s also not about never falling back. It’s about recognising that even in the fall, you land differently now. You land with awareness, with language, with breath. You land knowing what’s happening. Each time you meet the old with awareness instead of alarm, you reinforce the new neural patterns of safety and presence.

So trust that the change is real, even on days when you can’t feel it. Integration often whispers where transformation once roared. Even if you can’t feel it every day, your nervous system remembers.

A Mindfulness Practice: Taking Stock

It can be easy to forget how far you’ve come. The mind often fixates on what still feels unhealed, overlooking the quiet progress that has already reshaped you. Mindfulness invites us to pause and notice.

Take a few minutes each week to reflect gently:

• When distress comes, how do I meet it now compared to six months/a year ago? 

• How long does it take for me now to return to calm?

• How do I respond differently now compared to six months ago?

• What moments of ease or grace have slipped in unnoticed?

• Where have I become more compassionate- softer, kinder, more present, with myself?

These small recognitions anchor you in reality and in the lived evidence of growth; helping your mind see the change your body is already embodying. The more you notice the new patterns, the more your brain strengthens them.

Awareness, after all, is practice.

Closing Thought

Integration is the quiet side of transformation - the part that happens in the quiet, in the breath between breakthroughs.

It is the pause between what was and what’s becoming.

It asks for patience, for rest, for faith that change is unfolding even when nothing seems to be moving. Slowing down is not losing momentum; it’s deepening it. 

The rest is not resistance to growth - it’s how growth becomes part of who you are. Growth is not only about motion; it is also about absorption. It is letting the light of insight sink deep into the cells until it becomes how you live, not just what you know.

So, rest. Let the new become familiar. Trust that slowing down and resting is how transformation finds its roots.

If you want to read more about Bonolo and the services she offers, click here.