Thinking at Your Own Pace Is Also a Strategy

Slowing down is not falling behind. Sometimes, it is how you finally hear yourself think.

We live in a culture that rewards speed: answer quickly, decide quickly, move quickly, recover quickly. But the fastest response is not always the wisest one.

Sometimes the most intelligent thing we can do is create a little space between what happens and how we respond.

This idea sits surprisingly well with two different bodies of thought: Gabor Maté's trauma informed work and newer research on reflection, self compassion, psychological flexibility and the mind and body connection. But there is an important distinction: Maté's broader claims about trauma and physical illness are influential and clinically provocative, while some of those claims go beyond what current research can firmly establish. His work is most useful when treated as an invitation to ask better questions, not as a universal explanation for illness.

The space between trigger and response

When something happens, a criticism, an argument, a difficult email, a disappointing result, we often react before we understand what has happened inside us.

We defend.
We withdraw.
We please.
We attack.
We say yes when we mean no.

Maté's approach of "compassionate inquiry" asks us to become curious about those reactions: What am I feeling? What am I protecting? What have I learned to do in situations like this? What am I not saying?

That emphasis on curiosity rather than self blame is one of the more valuable ideas in his work. A 2024 clinical review of The Myth of Normal similarly highlighted Maté's focus on self-inquiry, boundaries and noticing bodily signals, while also illustrating why his ideas should be understood as a framework rather than a settled medical theory. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

And contemporary research gives part of this picture a scientific foundation.

Your body may notice before your mind has words

We often say, "I have a gut feeling," "my chest tightened," or "something felt wrong."

These aren't necessarily mystical signals. Interoception is the brain's processing of information about the body's internal state: heartbeat, breathing, tension, temperature, hunger and other bodily sensations.

A major review in Annual Review of Psychology describes interoception as closely connected with emotional experience and notes that altered interoceptive processing appears across several psychological conditions (Greenwood & Garfinkel, 2025). (annualreviews.org)

Even newer evidence is sharpening the picture. A 2026 systematic review and meta analysis found an association between poorer self reported interoception and greater depressive symptoms, although the relationship is complex and does not prove that one causes the other (Jenkinson et al., 2026). (sciencedirect.com)

So "listen to your body" does not mean believe every sensation.

It means: notice it before you automatically dismiss it.

That is a very different skill.

Slower thinking can reveal a different answer

There is also a cognitive reason to resist constant urgency.

Research on fast and slow thinking distinguishes rapid, intuitive responses from more deliberate forms of reasoning. A 2025 model of decision making and creativity suggests that effective thinking is not simply a matter of choosing "slow" over "fast"; the two modes can interact, with different strategies useful in different situations (Khalil et al., 2025). (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

That matters because slow is not automatically smart.

Sometimes intuition is excellent. Sometimes it is simply an old habit wearing the costume of certainty.

The useful question is therefore not:

Should I always think slowly?

It is:

"Is this a moment to react, or a moment to investigate?"

A recent 2026 study on cognitive reflection also found that reflection can improve rational decision making, although it did not suggest that every problem becomes better simply because we spend more time thinking about it. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

In other words, pace is a tool, not a virtue.

What are you protecting?

This is where Maté's work becomes particularly interesting for everyday life.

Imagine someone who cannot say no.

They may call themselves "helpful."
Their colleagues may call them "reliable."
Their family may call them "the one we can always count on."

But underneath the behavior there may be another question:

What would happen if I disappointed someone?

Or imagine someone who becomes defensive whenever they receive feedback.

The obvious question is: Why are you so defensive?

A more compassionate question might be:

"What does criticism mean to you?"

That small change, from judgment to curiosity, can open a completely different conversation.

Importantly, childhood adversity really is associated with later mental and physical health risks. A 2025 prospective systematic review and meta analysis found consistent associations between adverse childhood experiences and several adult mental health outcomes. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) A large 2026 umbrella review likewise examined associations between adverse childhood experiences and non mental medical diseases in adulthood. (sciencedirect.com)

But association is not destiny.

And trauma should never become a new form of self blame: "Something happened to me, therefore I am permanently damaged."

People are more complicated, and more capable of change, than that.

Compassion works better than an inner courtroom

Reflection can easily turn into rumination.

There is a difference between:

"Why am I like this?"

and:

"What is happening here, and what might I need?"

The first can become an endless prosecution.

The second creates room for learning.

Recent research strongly supports the importance of self compassion as a psychological factor. A 2026 multilevel meta analysis involving more than 107,000 participants found meaningful associations between self compassion and lower psychopathology across conditions including depression, anxiety, PTSD and eating disorders (Buric et al., 2026). (doi.org)

Another 2026 meta analysis connected compassion and self compassion with well-being and psychological distress, while a 2025 meta analysis found a substantial negative association between self compassion and psychological distress among people living with chronic illness (Chio et al., 2026; Baxter & Sirois, 2025). (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Self compassion does not mean letting yourself off the hook.

It means replacing:

"What is wrong with me?"

with:

"What is happening to me, and what would help?"

That is a much more productive question.

Flexibility is the real goal

The aim of slowing down is not to become endlessly introspective.

You do not need to analyze every text message, childhood memory or uncomfortable feeling.

The deeper goal is psychological flexibility: being able to notice what is happening inside you without automatically obeying it.

A 2026 meta analysis found a robust positive association between mindfulness and psychological flexibility. A separate 2026 review of workplace research found that psychological flexibility is increasingly studied in relation to well-being, burnout and psychological distress. (sciencedirect.com)

That gives us a useful definition of maturity:

I can feel something without becoming it.
I can notice an impulse without obeying it.
I can change my mind without losing myself.

A slower pace can make room for a truer answer

Perhaps the practical lesson is simpler than all the theories.

Before answering, pause.

Before defending yourself, notice what you felt.

Before saying yes, ask whether you mean it.

Before assuming someone else's intention, become curious.

Before calling yourself "too sensitive," ask what your sensitivity is telling you.

And before making a major decision, give yourself enough time to distinguish urgency from importance.

Thinking at your own pace is not passivity.

It is a form of attention.

It is how we sometimes discover that the answer we were rushing to give was not the answer we actually believed.

You do not have to react at the speed of the world.

Sometimes the most deliberate move is to pause long enough to become honest.

And sometimes, that pause is where the real decision begins.

References

• Baxter, R., & Sirois, F. M. (2025). Self compassion and psychological distress in chronic illness: A meta analysis. British Journal of Health Psychology, 30(1), e12761. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Buric, I., ter Avest, M. J., Helmond, P., et al. (2026). Self compassion as a transdiagnostic construct: A multilevel meta analysis of associations with psychopathology at overall, dimensional, and component levels. Mindfulness, 17, 2374–2394. (doi.org)
• Chio, F. H. N., Yu, B. C. L., Fu, Y., Chio, J. H. M., & Mak, W. W. S. (2026). The holistic view of compassion: A meta analysis on the association of self compassion, other compassion, well being and psychological distress. British Journal of Psychology. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Greenwood, B. M., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2025). Interoceptive mechanisms and emotional processing. Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 59–86. (annualreviews.org)
• Jenkinson, P. M., Leuzzi, R., Dean, C. E., Clarke, A. T., Mash, J., & Laws, K. R. (2026). The relationship between self reported interoception and depression: A systematic review and multilevel meta analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 205, 112632. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Khalil, R., et al. (2025). Adaptive decision making "fast" and "slow": A model of creative thinking. European Journal of Neuroscience. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Küçükardalı Cansever, B., Lamson, A., Sira, N., et al. (2025). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) screening in primary care settings for adults: A systematic review. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 18, 377–393. (link.springer.com)
• Maloney, E., Dowling, C., & O'Reilly, G. (2025). Adverse childhood experiences and interpersonal functioning in adulthood: A systemic review. European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 9, 100534. (sciencedirect.com)
• Thurston, C., Murray, A. L., Franchino Olsen, H., et al. (2025). Prospective longitudinal associations between adverse childhood experiences and adult mental health outcomes: Systematic review and meta analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)