Why Does Change Feels So Slow? A Nervous System Approach to Healing Your Relationship with Food

Healing & Reconnection
Written By Emily Hahn

There is something about this work that can feel… a little strange, if I’m honest. There is rarely any goal setting. There are no prescriptive meal plans, no targets, no clear markers of progress.

Instead, there is time devoted to noticing things that don’t seem, at first glance, all that relevant - moments when your chest tightens, a shift in your breath, the build-up before an urge arises.

I remember, especially in the earlier days of practising this way, wondering: should I be offering more structure, more direction, something more tangible? Am I doing enough here?

There were moments when I really felt the weight of it all - the absence of something to point to, to say this is the work. And I certainly felt the eyes of colleagues, watching me wander so far off script.

And I could feel, at times, that my clients were wondering too.

Because from the outside, this journey doesn’t always look like much is happening, at least to begin with.

No dramatic breakthroughs.
No before-and-after photos.
No clear evidence that anything has changed at all.

And yet… over time, something does begin to change, yes quietly, but also unmistakably real, and powerfully deep.

When Something Subtle Begins to Shift

What I’ve learned to watch for, are the small, almost imperceptible moments: a pause where there used to be urgency; a flicker of awareness where everything once felt automatic.

I remember the first few times I noticed it - both in the room, and later when reflecting back - how easy it would have been to overlook them, or to dismiss it as not enough because it didn’t match what I had been taught to look for.

—

A woman sits with an urge to numb - something that, for a long time, has felt immediate, almost unquestionable.

And then, something new enters the space - a quiet noticing:

I don’t think I want to feel how I feel after this.

And without fanfare, there is an increased capacity to stay with the urge until it passes. Not through force or gritting their teeth or will-powering their way through, but just, for the first time, through there being a little more space around the urge.

—

Another notices the familiar pattern of waiting until the end of the day to eat - pushing through, disconnecting, overriding.

But this time, something feels different in their body - the recognition of faintness, and then, a small, unremarkable shift:

She eats earlier.

Not because she was told to, or because she set a goal… but because, in that moment, her body’s experience mattered enough to respond to.

—

Honestly, I used to find myself searching for something bigger in these moments, but, in truth, these are the moments. Quiet as they are. Easy to miss as they can be. These teeny tiny moments are each a precious sign that something is beginning to reorganise beneath the surface. And this matters, because that reorganisation is the fertile soil from which change emerges - a sign that the system feels safe enough to explore new possibilities.

Why This Kind of Change Is So Easy to Miss

I think part of what makes these moments so easy to miss is the way we’ve been taught to recognise change. Our culture is so visual, so loud… change has to be scroll-stopping, breath-taking, news-worthy… something we can point to and say, there - that’s different now.

And I can feel, even now as I write this, how deeply that conditioning lives in me too, particularly as a health professional in a system that tells us that the only valid change is quantitatively measurable that fits within a manual or a tidy, step-by-step framework.

And sure, often there are change that come into view in more familiar ways - in shifting patterns, in blood markers settling, in the body finding a different kind of steadiness over time.

But they tend not to arrive on command, and they rarely begin where (or when) we expect them to.

And I also think we need to name that so much of what we’ve been given - in healthcare, in wellness spaces, even in therapy - rests on the idea that change comes from doing… the right strategy, from implementing the right plan, from trying hard enough, consistently enough, for long enough.

And when that doesn’t seem to work, the conclusion often drawn is, I must not be doing it properly, or worse, there must be something wrong with me.

But what this lens misses, is a fundamental truth I’ve come to know without any shadow of doubt: that behaviour is a reflection of the state of the system it’s arising from.

And no amount of strategy can override a system that doesn’t yet feel safe enough to choose differently.

—

I think about how many times I sat with clients in the past, offering meal plans or other strategies that made perfect sense on paper…and watching, again and again, as they went unfollowed.

Not because people didn’t care, or because they weren’t trying or didn’t want to change enough.

It was because something deeper was organising their behaviour - something that no amount of education or cognitive reorganising could reach… because real, long-lasting change begins at a level we’ve never been taught to look at, the level of nervous system capacity: to stay; to feel; to remain in contact with an experience, even when it’s uncomfortable.

And when that capacity shifts, even slightly, change always follows.

Staying Long Enough for Something New to Emerge

What I am often witnessing, quietly, over months of work, is not a person becoming more disciplined, but a nervous system becoming more able to stay, with sensation, with urges, with an experience that once felt impossible to remain inside. And each time the body stays, it gathers new information: that this feeling, while uncomfortable, is survivable - and in that small widening of space, something else comes online: choice.

—

I’ve come to know this terrain in myself, too. There was a time when I smoked; not particularly heavily, but enough to take the edge off experiences a part of me wasn’t sure I could survive.

And at some point, without placing any particular pressure on myself to quit, I began to stay with each cigarette, from the first puff to the last… and with each one I noticed more: the feeling in my lungs after each draw; the taste that lingered; the subtle racing of my heart. I wasn’t judging it, or even trying to change it, really. I just… stayed.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the cigarettes I rolled became smaller, and then I couldn’t finish them, and then I rolled less, and less, until one day, I noticed that I had stayed with an uncomfortable experience and hadn’t needed a cigarette to help me through it.

I didn’t force out the cigarettes through white-knuckling my urges… my system just no longer needed them in the way it once did. My system, through (very) slow practice at staying and creating enough safety, was able to outgrow them.

And I experienced this same quiet unfolding in my relationship with food, too - I didn’t stop bingeing or restricting or over-exercising or purging through discipline. I learned, slowly, gradually, gently, tenderly, how to remain.

The Quiet Moments That Change Everything

What has felt so curious to learn over the years I’ve been doing this work, is that change more often arrives as a pause, rather than as some kind of cataclysmic breakthrough. A moment where something that once felt inevitable… no longer is.

A moment where you stay, just a little longer than before, because your system has begun, quietly, to trust that it can.

And while on the outside, these moments can feel so small they must be of no significance, they are, in fact, like the first green shoots in spring - evidence of something taking root beneath the surface.

And I believe even the smallest shoot is worth noticing, worth staying with. Just as they are.

IF YOU WANT TO KEEP EXPLORING...
Emily Hahn
Next

Why Do My Gut Symptoms Change? We Can’t Talk About Gut Health Without the Nervous System