Before You Send the Message

What if your urgency isn’t about the other person?

If you’ve been following this series, we’ve been circling one distinction: meeting versus managing. First we named it. Then we explored what meeting looks like in relationship. Now I want to take you underneath it, into the body, into the nervous system, into the parts that mobilize before we even think.

Years ago, I was working with a mentor of mine named Katherine. She asked me a simple question.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel anxious.”

She looked at me gently and said,

“I can see that you feel anxious.”

Then she waited.

One. Two. Three.

Those three seconds felt almost unbearable. My jaw tightened. My chest buzzed. My mind searched for something sharper to say. I wanted to explain the anxiety, justify it, soften it, pivot into something competent. Anything but sit there and be seen inside it. Instead, she stayed…

“What else are you feeling?”

“I feel tired.”

“I can see that you feel tired.”

One. Two. Three.

At some point something in me softened. Not dramatically. Just enough. Like a guard lowering his weapon an inch. And that was the moment my eyes widened, because I realized I had almost never stayed inside an uncomfortable emotion without moving away from it.

What I learned growing up was not the pause. What I learned was performance or distraction. Move toward achievement, usefulness, competence, or move away into distraction. Either way, move. Staying still inside a feeling felt inefficient, almost dangerous.

Recently, I saw this pattern clearly. I read a post written by someone I deeply care about. It hit me hard. It felt like betrayal. My body reacted immediately, tight chest, heat, urgency. My first impulse was to reach out and initiate a conversation.

On the surface, that looks mature. Communicative. Responsible. I believe in talking things through. But when I slowed down, I saw something uncomfortable. My urge to reach out was not primarily about connection. It was about regulation. If I could talk to them quickly, clarify, get reassurance, understand their intention, then the dysregulation inside me would settle. The conversation would become the solution to my internal state.

That is management.

So I did something different. I stayed. I did not send the message. I did not initiate the call. I sat with the tightness and with my hand on my heart I said internally, “I can see that you feel hurt. I can see that you feel anxious.” I did not try to fix it. I did not try to override it. I waited.

Twenty-four hours later, I had the conversation. And it was fantastic. Clean. Connected. Generous. Not reactive. I was no longer trying to use the conversation to stabilize myself. I was relating from steadiness rather than urgency. The outcome shifted because the source shifted.

When Katherine said, “I can see that you feel anxious,” she was not trying to calm me down. She was signaling to the part of me mobilizing for protection, You make sense. You do not have to escalate right now. At the same time she was signaling to the rest of my system, You are okay. We are okay. You are safe here.

That is seeing.

Seeing is not agreement. It is not indulgence. It is not passivity. It is communicating safety to the part that believes it must stay vigilant. When a protective part feels seen rather than overridden, it does not have to escalate. The nervous system reorganizes.

Here is the humbling truth. For years I thought I was highly regulated because I was highly functional. I communicate. I process. I take responsibility. I do not suppress. But I can see now that at times I over-communicated to regulate. I processed anxiety out loud because it felt productive and relational, when in reality I was trying to settle something inside me by recruiting someone else into it.

Function is not the same as regulation. Communication is not always connection. Sometimes it is management dressed up as maturity. Management builds success. It rarely builds peace.

A child learns regulation in relationship. When a parent can say calmly, “I see that you’re scared,” and stay present, the child’s nervous system wires in something foundational: uncomfortable does not mean unsafe. If that experience was inconsistent or absent, the system adapts. It reaches outward through performance or distraction. Not because it is broken, but because it is intelligent.

Many of us built our identities on managing states we were never taught to meet.

So here is the quiet experiment. The next time you feel mildly activated, before you send the message, before you make the call, before you fix the misunderstanding, put your hand on your heart and say internally, “I can see that you feel ______” Then pause. Do nothing for a few seconds.

Notice what happens. Does your body soften? Does it resist? Does another voice appear saying this is inefficient or weak? That voice is protecting something too.

Meeting does not eliminate action. It transforms the source from which action comes. You still have the conversation. You still send the email. You still take the step. But you do it from regulation rather than reactivity.

If the first essay named the distinction and the second showed what meeting looks like in relationship, this is the mechanism underneath it. Meeting is not softness. It is nervous system repair. It is developmental completion. It is learning, sometimes for the first time, that uncomfortable does not mean unsafe.

You can build an impressive life on management. Many of us have. But if you want freedom, not just functionality, the work becomes quieter and less visible. It begins in moments no one else sees, when you resist the urge to perform or distract your way back to okay and instead choose to stay.

If this feels obvious, try it once in a moment that actually matters.

“I can see that you feel ______”

Then wait….and then wait some more.

Not to become passive. Not to avoid action. But to discover that safety may not require earning, explaining, or performing at all. You may already be okay.

And once you feel that in your body, even briefly, it is very hard to go back to living only from the neck up.

I would love to hear your thoughts,

From the heart,

Shasheen

📷 Taken by D.Morton, Morning Light at the top of Milk Run, Telluride CO 02/22/25 #morningswithbear

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Thank you for continuing to walk this journey with me. I recognize how tender many of these conversations are. They ask us to look at things that are subtle, foundational, and not always comfortable to name. The fact that you are here, reading, reflecting, and sitting with this work means more than I can easily articulate.

Even when I do not hear from you directly, I know you are reading. I feel it. And for those of you who have reached out through thoughtful texts, direct messages, and emails, please know that they have meant the world to me. They have deepened my commitment to keep sharing, to keep refining, and to keep telling the truth as I discover it.

If something in this post resonated, a simple like ❤️ or comment here on the platform genuinely helps more than most people realize. It allows these conversations to reach others who are also quietly doing this work. And if you prefer to reach out privately, I welcome that too.

Thank you for being part of this unfolding. Thank you for taking this below-the-neck work seriously. And thank you for staying.