55. Somatic Practice for Seasons of Transition: Finding Choice When Certainty Isn't Available

Written By Brittany Broderick

There are seasons of life where the old version of your world has already ended, but the new one hasn't really become familiar yet. Sometimes the transition is obvious. A relationship ends, you move, someone dies, you become a parent, you change careers. Sometimes it is quieter than that. A role you have occupied for years stops fitting. Your children need you differently now. Your values shift. You outgrow a version of yourself before you know who you are becoming next.

These seasons are disorienting, partly because we expect our nervous system to respond to change the way we consciously feel about it. If I wanted this, why am I so anxious? If leaving was right, why do I miss what I left? But the nervous system isn't sorting change into good or bad. It is responding to predictability, stress, attachment, available resources, and how much adaptation is being asked of the body at one time. Something can be deeply right for you and still be physiologically demanding.

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Transition is often a problem of competing impulses

Part of the organism may still be oriented toward what has ended, while another part is already mobilizing toward what comes next. Attachment pulls us backward toward what is familiar, and that shows up as protective responses that slow us down. At the same time, exploratory impulses try to move us forward into new possibility. All of it is happening inside the same body at the same time.

This is why "my nervous system doesn't like change" is an incomplete explanation. From a somatic perspective we are interested in what the body is actually trying to do, because emotions and nervous system states have action tendencies inside them. Grief carries a reaching quality toward what was lost. Fear organizes the body around withdrawal or stillness. Anger mobilizes toward protection. Curiosity pulls us toward contact. During a major transition these tendencies do not organize into one clean response. You can genuinely want the new life while your body still reaches toward an attachment connected to the old one. That internal conflict feels a lot like being stuck. Often you are not stuck. You are receiving several instructions at once.

Listening to your body is not the same as obeying it

I believe deeply in listening to the body. It is my first language and the foundation of the work I teach. And listening to your body does not mean treating every sensation as an instruction. A sensation is information. An impulse is information. An emotion is information. None of those things in isolation tells you what decision to make.

This matters most during transition, because different parts of your nervous system may be responding to entirely different pieces of information. When someone tells me their body is saying two completely different things, I don't hear a problem. I get curious about differentiation. What are the different impulses? Where are they moving? What happens when we stop forcing them to collapse into one answer? That is a very different question from "what is my body telling me to do."

Familiarity and safety are not the same thing

We can become very familiar with things that are not good for us. If chaos was normal in childhood, chaos becomes recognizable. If you spent years monitoring another person's moods, your system becomes practiced at that. So the body reaching toward what is familiar does not mean the familiar thing is where you belong. It means the nervous system has data for it. When you enter a new chapter, the nervous system may not have enough data yet.

This is why endings confuse people. You can leave something you knew was no longer right and still feel an enormous pull toward the life you had inside it. That pull is not automatically a warning. It might just be adaptation, and adaptation takes time.

The nervous system organizes around action

Mobilization prepares the body to do something. We move toward, we move away, we push, we pull, we reach, we stop. Those motor patterns are woven into the physiological response itself. So sometimes what stays unresolved during a transition is not a thought that needs understanding. Sometimes it is movement. A reaching impulse with nowhere to land. A pushing away that never got expressed. A desire to move forward paired with a protective response pumping the brakes.

When those impulses stay undifferentiated, the experience becomes "I don't know what I want." Sometimes the body isn't asking you to figure out what you want. It needs enough space to experience those movements separately. We do that by slowing the process down enough to distinguish impulse from action. I can notice that my body wants to reach without reaching. I can feel the preparation for forward movement without committing to the entire future. In that small space between impulse and action, something important becomes available: choice.

Certainty versus agency

During transition we become convinced that what the nervous system needs most is the answer. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I regret leaving? Certainty says "I know what happens next." Agency says "I have some capacity to respond to what happens next." The first depends on knowing the future. The second depends on having access to yourself.

If you have lived through experiences where choice was limited, where change happened without your consent, or where your needs and boundaries didn't meaningfully affect what happened next, of course uncertainty feels threatening. Of course the system tries to create safety by demanding an answer before it will move. But healing does not always mean becoming more certain. Sometimes it means becoming more capable of moving without certainty. We can gather information as we go. We can stop. We can reconsider. We can reach for support. We can change direction.

A gentle reminder

Your body does not need the whole map. It needs access to movement, momentum, and choice. Adaptation rarely happens through one enormous act of certainty. It happens by approaching something, gathering information, letting the system update, and then deciding whether more movement is available. One step at a time is not a lesser version of healing. It is how the body was built to move.

If you want support in your own nervous system work, you can always join Britt in the Body-First Healing Program.

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This blog and podcast are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical care, therapy, or crisis support. Please reach out to a qualified professional for support with your specific situation.

Brittany Broderick
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