When Momentum Returns (And Why It Can Feel Unsettling)

There’s a moment that often gets missed in conversations about change.

We talk a lot about being stuck. About burnout. About exhaustion and collapse. But we rarely talk about what happens after things begin to move again — when energy returns, clarity sharpens, and possibility re-enters the room.

Because for many people, that’s not the relief they were expecting.

In therapy, I often see this phase catch people off guard. They’ve done the slowing. The shedding. The honest reckoning. And then, when momentum quietly comes back online, something inside tightens rather than relaxes.

Anxiety flares. Doubt creeps in. Old habits resurface.

This is the fear of change — not change imagined in the abstract, but change that’s actually happening.

For nervous systems shaped by long responsibility, early adaptation, or chronic anxiety, movement isn’t always experienced as freedom. Sometimes it registers as a risk. When you’ve learned that safety lives in control, containment, or predictability, momentum can feel destabilising.

There’s a strange paradox here.

People will often say they want change, but when it arrives, the body hesitates. This isn’t because they’re sabotaging themselves. It’s because the nervous system doesn’t measure success in goals achieved — it measures safety in familiarity.

New energy means new territory. New territory means uncertainty. And uncertainty wakes old alarms.

This is why people sometimes find themselves longing for the very stillness they were desperate to escape a few weeks earlier. The quiet had limits, but it was known. Movement introduces choice — and choice introduces responsibility.

In the inner landscape, this can sound like: What if I get this wrong? What if I burn out again? What if I can’t hold what’s coming?

None of this means you’re going backwards.

It means your system is recalibrating.

In my work, I often describe this as a threshold wobble — the moment where your inner world catches up with external change. The body needs time to learn that movement doesn’t automatically equal danger anymore.

The mistake many people make here is trying to override this wobble with willpower. Pushing harder. Going faster. Talking themselves out of fear. But fear of change doesn’t respond well to pressure. It responds to reassurance and pacing.

What’s needed at this point isn’t restraint, but steadiness.

You don’t need to stop moving. You don’t need to retreat back into waiting. You don’t need to prove anything to justify your next step.

You need to move with awareness.

That might mean taking smaller steps than you expected. Letting momentum build gradually. Checking in with your body as well as your plans. Allowing excitement and fear to coexist without making either the boss.

Change doesn’t have to be dramatic to be real. Movement doesn’t have to be fast to be true.

When momentum returns after a long period of holding back, it asks for a different kind of courage — not the courage to leap, but the courage to stay present as things shift.

To let yourself feel alive without bracing for impact. To trust that you can pause without losing direction. To believe that growth doesn’t have to hurt to count.

That’s not a weakness. That’s integration.

If momentum feels unsettling right now, you’re not doing it wrong. Change asks more of us than stillness ever did. You don’t need to rush to prove you can handle it. Let your nervous system learn — step by step — that movement can be safe too.

— Sarah x