What Were You Believing About Yourself In That Moment?

Think of the last small moment that knocked you off center. Not a crisis, something tiny. A shoe that wouldn't go on. A question asked for the fifth time. A tone you didn't love. And something in you got sharp, or cold, or tight, in a way that felt just a little bigger than the moment deserved.

Here's what most of us do next: we go straight to the fix. We rush to smooth it over, get the shoe on, get everyone out the door, and quietly file the moment away as "not my best," so we can move on and feel normal again.

What we skip, almost every time, is a question underneath it:

What was I believing about myself in that moment?

Not "why did my kid do the thing." Not "how do I fix this fast so I feel like a good parent again." Just, underneath the sharpness, what story was actually running?

Almost always, it isn't about the shoe. It's something more like: I'm behind. I'm always the one holding everything together and nobody sees how close to the edge I am. Or: If I can't get this right, what does that say about me. The shoe isn't the trigger. It's the final straw on a pile that was already there.

That's the thing about the moments that make us wince later, they're rarely about what they appear to be about. The snapping, the going quiet, the sharper-than-you-meant tone, it's almost never actually about the shoe, the homework, the fifth request to put on a coat. It's about whatever belief was already sitting there, waiting for something small to knock it loose.

I think a lot of us skip this question because it feels indulgent, or because we're in too much of a hurry to get to the fixing. We want the script. We want to know what to say so the moment resolves and everyone feels better and we can move on. That pull is real and understandable.

But here's what I've noticed, both in my own life and in every session I've sat in as a coach: the parents who actually shift, long-term, aren't the ones who collected the best scripts. They're the ones who got curious about what was happening in them first. The script only ever works if you know what you're using it to cover.

So I'm not going to tell you what to say the next time you snap over something small. I don't think that's actually the useful thing here, and honestly, it's not mine to hand you, it's yours to find.

What I'll leave you with instead is the question itself:

What were you believing about yourself, right before you snapped?

Sit with it before you rush to smooth things over. Sit with it even if the answer is uncomfortable, even if it has nothing to do with your kid at all. That's session work, and it's some of the most important work there is, but it starts with just asking.

If you're a parent who's tired of collecting scripts that don't hold up in the actual moment, and you're ready to get curious about what's underneath instead, that's the work we do together.