We tend to think of stability and change as opposites — that the more rooted you are, the less likely you are to
move. In my experience, both personal and professional, it’s almost exactly backwards. We need a certain amount
of internal stability in order to purposefully unroot ourselves. To leave the familiar on purpose — a move, a
breakup, a job, a relationship — without the leaving itself becoming the thing that destabilizes us.
If we can’t access some baseline of internal resourcing, real change becomes almost impossible, because everything
already feels uprooted before we’ve even begun. A strong root system isn’t what keeps a tree from growing. It’s
what lets it climb higher and reach wider than a shallow-rooted one ever could.
What Attachment Theory Teaches Us About Stability and Risk
This isn’t just a metaphor I’ve landed on through my own life, though it is that too. It’s close to something well
established in attachment theory, going back to the concept of a secure base — the idea that a child with a
genuinely safe attachment figure explores more boldly, not less, precisely because they know they have somewhere
steady to return to. Security doesn’t produce caution. It produces courage.
Dr. Daniel Siegel’s work on the window of tolerance describes something related: the more internal capacity a
nervous system has, the more disruption, novelty, or discomfort it can move through without collapsing into
shutdown or spinning into reactivity. A wider window means more of life becomes available to you — including
the hard, expansive parts.
I want to be honest that expansion carries real discomfort, sometimes a tremendous amount of it. There’s no version
of meaningful growth that skips this. The question isn’t how to avoid the discomfort. It’s whether you have enough
internal ground to move through it on purpose, rather than being moved by it.
Two Ways We Respond When We’re Not Resourced Enough
Here’s where I want to go a layer deeper than the obvious version of this idea. When we don’t have enough internal
stability, we don’t only respond by staying stuck — though that’s the response people usually name. We choose the
familiar over the unknown because the unknown feels too destabilizing for the nervous system to metabolize, and
that is genuinely how a lot of people stay stuck in circumstances that no longer serve them.
But there’s a second response that looks like its opposite and often gets mistaken for freedom. An under-resourced
nervous system doesn’t only freeze — sometimes it thrashes. A sudden move made in a panic. An abrupt breakup,
a reactive career change, a relationship left in a moment of dysregulation rather than discernment. This kind of
change looks like the opposite of staying stuck. Often it isn’t. It’s frequently the same unrooted nervous system
relocating itself, still unresourced, just in new circumstances — which is part of why some people find themselves
repeating the same pattern, relationship to relationship, job to job, wondering why the same story keeps finding
them in a new setting.
Rootedness isn’t only what allows the courage to finally move. It’s what allows the move to actually go somewhere,
instead of simply being motion.
Roots for Climbing, Roots for Storms
Most of the time we talk about roots in service of reaching — the stability that lets you climb higher, explore
wider, choose something bigger for your life on purpose. That’s real, and it matters.
But roots do something else too, something less about ambition and more about survival: they’re what keeps a tree
standing when a storm arrives that it never chose. Not every destabilizing season in life is one we selected.
Sometimes it’s a diagnosis, a loss, a layoff — change that finds us rather than change we go looking for. The same
internal rootedness that gives you the courage to choose expansion is also what lets you withstand the growth you
never asked for. Both need the same ground underneath them.
Why I’m Teaching Rooted This November
I’ve lived both versions of this. I’ve stayed in situations far past when I knew they were finished, because leaving
felt like too much destabilization for a nervous system that didn’t yet have enough ground under it. And I’ve made
changes reactively, from a place of overwhelm rather than groundedness, and watched myself land somewhere new
while still carrying the same unresourced pattern with me.
What actually changed things wasn’t willpower. It was building real, embodied internal stability — slowly, through
practice, through community, through learning what it felt like in my body to be steady rather than just telling
myself I was fine. That’s the whole reason Rooted exists. Three days this November, close enough to reach without
upending your life to get there, built entirely around helping you build the kind of internal ground that makes both
kinds of courage possible — the courage to choose your own expansion, and the resilience to meet whatever finds
you that you didn’t choose at all.
If any part of what you’ve just read feels familiar, I’d love for you to join us.
Quick Answer
Why does stability make it easier to embrace change, rather than harder?
According to attachment theory, a secure internal base allows for more exploration and risk-taking, not less. Stability
provides the internal ground needed to tolerate the discomfort that real change requires.
What is the window of tolerance?
The window of tolerance, a concept developed by psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Siegel, describes the range of arousal within
which a person can function effectively without becoming overwhelmed (hyperarousal) or shutting down (hypoarousal).
A wider window allows a person to move through more stress and disruption while staying regulated.
What’s the difference between staying stuck and reactive change?
Staying stuck often comes from a nervous system avoiding change because it feels too destabilizing. Reactive change —
sudden, panic-driven decisions — can look like the opposite, but often stems from the same lack of internal resourcing,
just expressed as impulsive motion rather than freeze.
How can someone build more internal stability?
Internal stability, sometimes called embodied groundedness, is typically built through consistent somatic practice,
nervous system regulation work, and often through community and co-regulation with others, rather than through insight
or willpower alone.
