The Impotrance of Pacing

The Importance of Pacing

by: Arini
posted on February 8, 2026

"Go at your own pace." This single sentence has been life changing for us, and possibly for many others. With a shared life, your pace is not always your own.

"Meet people where they are." Another important sentence for us. This one for orienting values, ethics, and interpersonal effectiveness.

For now, Arini will assume that you, reader, are many people, and will speak as such. If you are not, then perhaps consider this in the hypothetical, or consider it in the framework of a loved one.

Sometimes we grow up in situations where we are not allowed to set our own pace or notice our internal experiences. Perhaps we go too slowly for the adults, and they push us to go faster. "No time for that," "okay, I'm going to leave without you," and other such messages. Alternatively, perhaps the adults want you to slow down, but do not provide proper supports for you to slow down, or do not investigate why your pace is quicker than theirs. The adults teach you to match them, and to adapt to them, because they are in charge. Therefore your needs and internal experience are placed at lower importance, if they are considered important at all. As part of the responsibility of adults and other caregivers is to teach us how to partake in the wider culture, they teach us what the "correct" pace is. This can be traumatic for those whose pace does not match "the correct one."

Traumatic? Is this not dramatic? No.
Consider the cascading impacts:

Your pace is not correct.
Therefore, your needs are not correct.
Therefore, the needs of others, whose pace matches expectations, are correct.
Therefore, prioritizing their needs over yours keeps you safe and accepted.
Then, you pay more attention to their needs than your own, and try to fit yourself into those, to remain accepted (and therefore, safe.)
Alternatively, asserting or advocating for your own needs may be framed as combative or selfish, or inconsiderate of those around you. After all, they can fit their needs into the socially correct pace, so why not you?
When conflicts arise -- as is the nature of connection -- you may not know how to trust yourself or what you need, or your internal experience.
Or, when conflicts arise, you may try to make legible the other person's needs based on what you have been taught is correct, and not based on understanding them.
This is of course not an exhaustive list of possible consequences.

And so the relational ruptures feed themselves, mistrust and confusion grow, and alienation proliferates.

Those who have power over you benefit from you not knowing what you are internally experiencing, what your pace is, or what you need. "Those who have power over you" can refer not only to institutional power structures, but to any relationships, for all relationships have power imbalances, whether we acknowledge them or not.
Arini needs a long time to process and transition. It thinks, plans, and reasons at a slower pace than Zahi does. Zahi is accustomed to moving, planning, acting, and adjusting quickly. When Arini and Brick unfolded, our life was set up with this pacing in mind -- fast. There are many reasons for this, which Arini will not go into now.

So, when Arini could not keep up, it was trying to send somatic messages for Zahi to slow down. So Arini could process and then join, and be included. Somatic messages, however, can be difficult to notice or interpret, even for singular people who are trying to understand their own body signals. This is why many grounding exercises prompt one to "notice their breath," "find where there is tension," "do a body scan," and other such body-related reading. They are telling us to find somatic messages about our current state.

Arini could not even detect or read its own somatic messages. Therefore, of course Zahi also could not. By the time Arini had processed enough to communicate in a way Zahi could understand, things had progressed enough that Arini had to push urgently to be heard. This combined with its long-standing fears of losing agency and not being heard caused these miscommunication events to become events of conflict.

In addition, Zahi has had to relearn how to understand his own internal experiences after having to minimize or intellectualize them to survive. If he is not accustomed to honoring his own somatic messages about his own feelings, then of course he would not think to watch out for Arini's messages, either.

What is somatic knowing?

Somatic knowing is the knowledge that the body has and shares. If you have found yourself with "a gut feeling," or an intuition, then this is one example of somatic knowledge. If you experience somatic flashbacks, this is another type of somatic knowing, your body responding to stimulus that reminds it of a threat. Body tension, internal sensations of emotion, are also somatic knowledge and messaging. When one uses intellect as the primary way of understanding self and others, somatic messages are easy to miss.

Let us discuss systemhood now

Here, Arini can only speak from its own experience, and hope that you can glean some insight. If you find yourself in tension with some of your others, with patterns that are difficult to explain or interrupt, consider:

It is a pacing mismatch.
It is unheard communication breakdown.
In Arini's case, both.

Often since Arini unfolded, it would have urgent pushing for control onto its others. The word-based fears accompanying this were such sentiments as:

Do not leave Arini behind.
Do not steamroll Arini's wishes.
Do not forget about Arini.
Do not exclude Arini from choices.
Arini wants choices.
Arini wants to try that first/do that first.
Arini wants that to have been its idea.
Arini wants to be the one giving the gift.
Arini wants that flavor, not this one.

Arini would suddenly "pop up" in awareness of a fronting other -- often Zahi -- and express upset or displeasure. By this point, there would be little to no room for negotiation, since a decision has already been made or the events were in the process of occurring. Zahi, wanting to repair with Arini and include it, would immediately try to attend to this displeasure. Unfortunately, this caused tension in external relationships impacted by Arini's outbursts.

Even having traced recurring patterns, none of us could trace the root causes. We all only heard or remembered the escalation, and could only correlate it with certain situations, but not why. Further, it allowed tension and friction between Arini and Zahi to remain ever present, unexplained, and unnamed. Even Arini itself did not know why it was being so pushy or why it escalated this way. It respected and wanted to encourage Zahi to stand firm in his desires and choices, so the unknowns caused Arini to feel very awful, keep trying to stop having the wanting, and unfortunately, escalate more urgently when it could not stop.

After an incident of this in which the affected party explained their feelings in the moment, we reflected on our approach in trying to solve this issue. And then, it was in a moment of quiet, with Arini and Zahi together, noticing some body sensations and tension, that the pieces came together.

"Have you tried noticing the sensations without trying to change them?" Asked our friend. So we tried. We noticed that in observing them and maintaining our focus on them, without trying to change them, eventually, they would change. Tension, in particular, would soften. Deliberately relaxing the muscles was not lasting. But noticing the tension and maintaining focus until they relaxed on their own was.

"Like they're trying to tell us something, but I'm cutting them off before they can finish," Zahi said.

Somatic messages.

How do I apply this to me?

If you find yourself with recurring points of conflict, with identifiable patterns whose core commonality is obscured, consider the following:

Who is the one expressing upset, displeasure, or pushy behavior?
To whom?
In what situations?
Between these parties, which of them has set the pace for:
- Decision-making
- Planning
- Processing
- Traveling
- Working
- Literally anything
Whose pace has been historically prioritized up to this point? Including before system discovery. Why?
Whose needs have been historically deprioritized up to this point? Including and especially before system discovery. Why?
What has been the impact of #5 and #6?
What power imbalances between affected parties exacerbate this?
How is upset and displeasure expressed, and why has it been effective?
What need is not being met?

Why not just explain that system mates are going too fast/too slow?

Ah yes, "just explain." Communication is not always so straightforward. Even within the same individual person, emotional, somatic, and mental signals can be misinterpreted. Imagine the compounding effect with more people using the same emotional, mental, and somatic equipment, to communicate with each other, in their own ways that make sense to them. Add to this that Arini does not often think in words, while Zahi relies on words the majority of the time, and we have the concoction for repeated communication breakdowns. Add to this years or decades of possible repression of one another, conflict without knowledge of systemhood, and the effect is more severe.

Zahi's fast pace has been adaptive up to this point. Life moves quickly. He has learned that "finishing the task" is the route to safety, respect, and opportunity. "Race against the sensory limit" has been another strategy he has used until now. Brick as well has adapted "power through" for safety; finish now and feel later. But these strategies exclude Arini. This was fine when Arini was yet folded and concealed, but now that it is a realized self, it needs more accommodation. Fortunately, at this point our life, we benefit from a slower pace as we reflect and do internal work.

What's next?