We ask for calm and bring chaos – the gap between knowing and doing.

The other day, in the kitchen at that end-of-day hour where everything feels a bit louder than it should, I told my son to stop shouting.

By shouting, “STOP SHOUTING.” So, you know, a real masterclass in calm, regulated parenting there.

But hey, I think this is just one of those deeply, reliably human things. We try to create one thing while bringing the exact opposite energy. We want calm, so we arrive with urgency. We want connection, so we come in sharp. We want to be heard, so we just get louder and louder until no one’s actually listening anymore.

And underneath it, most of the time, it’s not actually that complicated.

For me, that evening, it wasn’t really about the shouting. It was that I was already full, that particular end-of-day full where there’s no room left for anything, not even a small person being a small person. Perimenopause has quietly relocated my threshold for overstimulation to somewhere just above zero, which is its own joy. What I needed to say was “I’m overwhelmed and I need it to be quieter,” which is a perfectly reasonable sentence, but somewhere between thinking it and opening my mouth, it came out as STOP SHOUTING instead. Ugh.

I see this all the time with my clients. They want more intimacy in their relationships but keep themselves just busy enough to never quite be present for them. They want more joy but they’ve scheduled it in for the third Saturday of next month, after the big thing at work is done. They want to trust themselves more but they’re still asking everyone else what they think before they allow themselves to have an opinion. They want to feel more at home in their bodies but they’re still treating them like a problem to be managed rather than something to live in.

It’s strange how often we reach for the very thing that keeps us stuck.

I’m not saying the goal is to become some endlessly serene, never-lose-it person. I don’t trust anyone who claims that anyway. Where are you putting it all?

But there is something genuinely useful in catching these moments as they happen, not to turn it into a whole thing, not to drag yourself over the coals about it, just to actually register it for a second.

Ah. I’m asking for calm but I’m bringing chaos. I’m asking for kindness but I’m not being especially kind. I’m asking for space but I’m holding on considerably tighter than I’d realised.

Even just noticing it like that, without immediately trying to fix it or explain it away, can shift something. Which is, quite frankly, the kind of change I find most interesting.

I did go back and repair it with my kid, by the way. I took a breath before I spoke this time, sitting down next to him instead of shouting across the kitchen. I told him I was overwhelmed and needed him to be a bit quieter. My voice was lower. Slower. He looked at me for a second, then nodded and turned the volume down without a fuss.

Phew.

Ongoing work. Always.