Moving Toward Resolution — The Gentle Return to Connection

"Trauma is not in the event but in the nervous system. Healing means completing the interrupted act of survival and coming back into the flow of life" Peter Levine

When something begins to soften

There’s often a moment in therapy or in our own inner work when something begins to soften. Not because we’ve forced it or analysed it enough, but because something deeper starts to feel met. For a long time, we may have felt as though parts of us were working against each other. One part striving to keep everything going, another that just wants to stop. One that protects, another that longs to rest. When these inner movements start to find one another again, something in the body exhales. This is what I think of when I hear the phrase moving toward resolution.

The intelligence of our survival patterns

Sometimes we look back at our coping patterns with frustration...... why can’t I stop over eating/drinking, why do I always isolate myself, why can't I say no? Yet every one of these movements began as a form of intelligence. The body knew what it needed to do to keep you connected enough to survive.

Healing, in this sense, isn’t a straight line or an arrival point. It’s more like a slow weaving together of all the places that got separated when we were just trying to survive. The strategies that once kept us safe, for example, the pleasing, the hiding, the staying busy, the keeping calm when inside we were in a storm. These were the most intelligent responses available to a nervous system that had to adapt quickly.

Over time, though, these ways of being can harden and we start to feel trapped inside them, as if the strategy became the whole of who we are.

Listening beneath the pattern

When we begin to work somatically, we start to listen for what lives underneath the pattern. Not to get rid of it, but to understand what it’s protecting. Beneath the anxiety there is often an alertness that once kept us safe. Beneath the collapse there’s usually a deep longing to rest in connection that never quite felt possible.

When we turn our attention inward, it’s not an analytical process, it’s a listening. We begin to sense where the body holds breath, where it wants to move or pause, where there’s a faint hum of life waiting to be felt. Sometimes that noticing alone is enough to begin a shift.

When the body feels safe enough to notice these layers, it begins to re-member what it lost contact with presence, breath, movement, the simple pulse of life returning to the surface.

In my practice, this is often the quietest and most powerful moment. Sometimes it looks like a client’s breath changing without them trying to do anything. Sometimes it’s a faint trembling or a cry that starts to well up that appears before words do. It’s rarely dramatic, but it’s deeply alive. The body begins to communicate again in real time, not from the frozen imprint of the past. Awareness and regulation start to move together, with one inviting the other into balance.

The adult self as a safe ground

As we grow the capacity to be with what arises, we also begin to meet these younger parts of ourselves with something new, not pity or frustration, but a kind of grounded tenderness. The part of us that’s been holding everything up can start to sense that it doesn’t have to do that alone anymore. There’s an adult consciousness, steady and present, that can hold what once felt unholdable.

The body begins to trust that there is someone here now, a more adult, present consciousness that can stay steady in the moments when those younger, frightened parts surface. This inner meeting between the part of us that once had to survive and the part that can now stay and listen, is where healing quietly begins.

When the adult self meets the younger self in this way, a bridge forms. The nervous system begins to register that what was overwhelming then is survivable now. The charge starts to soften. The younger part realises it no longer has to guard the gate; the adult can hold the reins with warmth and clarity.

This relationship between the body and awareness, between past and present, between the self that protects and the self that can now rest becomes the foundation for integration. From here, something in us starts to reorient toward safety, and safety itself begins to deepen into presence.

What resolution really means

Resolution, then, isn’t about erasing what was. It’s about allowing what’s been fragmented to find one another again - a quiet reclamation of what was never truly lost. It’s a quiet recognition that what was once survival can now be relationship that the body, the emotions, and the awareness that holds them are all part of one living system.

There is often a quiet surprise when this happens that the peace we’ve been seeking doesn’t come from fixing anything, but from allowing all of it to be here and to move in its own rhythm.

When this begins to happen, energy that was locked away in vigilance or withdrawal starts to return to movement, to curiosity, to aliveness.

This process can’t be rushed. It asks for time, and pacing, and a space where the body feels safe enough to unfold. Often it happens through micro-moments like a breath that feels a little fuller, a softening around the eyes, a sense that something inside you is finally being witnessed instead of managed. These are not small things. They are the beginnings of connection being restored.

A Gentle Path Forward

Moving toward resolution is really a movement toward relationship, toward being in touch again with the flow of life within us and between us. The patterns that once defined us become less rigid. There’s a sense of more choice, more space, more possibility. And even though life continues to bring its challenges, we meet it from a steadier place. A place where awareness and body, self and other, presence and protection, are no longer at odds but moving together.

This is the slow work of becoming whole again, not through effort or self-improvement, but through listening and allowing. And in that listening, something ancient in us recognises itself, that simple knowing that underneath all the layers of survival and striving, we were always connected, and that connection is still here, quietly waiting to be felt.

As you finish reading, perhaps take a small breath and notice what touches you. Feel your feet, your seat, the ground beneath you. There’s nothing to do with what you’ve felt — just notice that you’re here, and that’s enough for now.

If this resonates, you would be very welcome to book a call with me to explore how this work might support you.

Click here to Book a Free Connection Call with Laura Starky