The Power of the Pause

The most powerful skill I’ve learned over the years isn’t how to argue well or even how to solve problems quickly. It’s learning when to pause.

Every workplace, every relationship, and every leadership role eventually presents the same moment: someone becomes overwhelmed, emotions surge, and suddenly a small issue becomes a crisis.

At first it can feel confusing. You try to reason through the situation. You explain the facts. You attempt to calm the person down.

Eventually, though, something becomes clear.

The problem is often not the problem.

What you are actually witnessing is emotional dysregulation.

Emotional dysregulation occurs when someone becomes so overwhelmed by their feelings that their ability to process information rationally begins to shut down. The brain shifts into a stress response. Logic moves to the background while the nervous system takes over.

When that happens, the conversation stops being about facts and becomes about emotional survival.

Certain patterns begin to appear.

The tone escalates quickly.
Small situations become catastrophes.
Blame is directed outward.
Clarification is interpreted as criticism.
Facts are rejected because they do not align with the emotional narrative.

In those moments, the person is not really looking for a solution.

They are looking for relief from the emotional discomfort they are experiencing.

And very often they begin searching—consciously or unconsciously—for someone else to regulate those emotions for them.

Modern workplace research suggests these patterns are more common than many people realize. Surveys conducted by the American Psychological Association have found that nearly 60 percent of employees report experiencing significant stress at work, and many say they feel unprepared to navigate difficult interpersonal conflict.

Stress alone does not cause emotional dysregulation, but it often exposes the coping skills—or lack of coping skills—that people bring into challenging situations.

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Seeing the Pattern

My understanding of this didn’t come only from textbooks.

I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and earlier in my career I worked in the mental health field with girls who had been removed from their homes and placed in DFS custody.

Those environments were anything but theoretical.

They were intense, emotionally charged, and sometimes dangerous. Situations unfolded in real time, often without warning.

Working with teenage girls already means navigating a stage of life filled with rapid emotional development and hormonal shifts. Adolescence is a time when identity and emotional regulation are still forming.

Add family trauma, abuse, and dysfunction to that already complicated developmental stage, and it often becomes the perfect storm.

Many of the girls we worked with were trying to process years of instability while still learning the most basic tools of emotional regulation. Their reactions were often big, immediate, and deeply connected to experiences that had shaped them long before they arrived in our care.

Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) helps explain why these patterns appear so frequently. According to the CDC, nearly two-thirds of adults report experiencing at least one significant adverse childhood experience, such as abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. Individuals with multiple ACEs are significantly more likely to struggle with stress regulation, emotional reactivity, and interpersonal conflict later in life.

Later, during my master’s program—where I completed 36 hours of graduate-level coursework in criminal psychology—the work centered on a fundamental question: what causes one person to act destructively while another, often facing similar circumstances, chooses a different path?

Much of the study focused on patterns—family trauma, environmental influences, and the subconscious motivations that shape outward behavior.

What people say on the surface is rarely the entire story.

Behavior is often the visible expression of something happening underneath.

Once you begin to see those emotional currents, it becomes difficult to stop noticing them.

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The Rescue Trap

There is a psychological framework often called the Drama Triangle, which describes a dynamic that appears in many conflicts.

It consists of three roles: the Victim, the Persecutor, and the Rescuer.

Someone who feels overwhelmed casts themselves as the victim. Someone else—often the person delivering information, naming a truth, or setting a boundary—quickly becomes the persecutor.

And then a third role appears: the rescuer.

The person expected to smooth things over.
To soften the message.
To repair the emotional fallout.

What often goes unnoticed is that the rescuer is frequently the same person who set the boundary in the first place.

You say what needs to be said.

The other person reacts.

And suddenly you find yourself managing their reaction—backtracking, clarifying, softening, or trying to calm the emotional wave that followed.

At first this can feel compassionate.

It feels like you are helping.

But over time it becomes exhausting.

Because when you repeatedly rescue someone from their emotional responses to boundaries, you unintentionally prevent them from learning how to regulate those responses themselves.

And eventually you come to a difficult realization.

You can speak honestly.
You can set boundaries.
You can offer care.

But you cannot be responsible for stabilizing every emotion that those truths awaken in someone else.

At some point compassion stops meaning “fix it” and starts meaning “allow them to feel what they feel.”

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When the Rescue Stops

At one point I found myself caught squarely in the rescue trap.

I had an employee who I also considered a friend. In many ways she was an excellent worker. She was helpful, willing to work hard, reliable, funny, and engaging.

But emotionally, she was constantly in crisis.

Every day there seemed to be some new cliff she needed to be talked down from. Situations that most people would see as minor inconveniences quickly became full-blown emergencies in her mind.

At first, I tried to help.

I listened.
I explained.
I reassured.

Without realizing it, I had slowly become her emotional landing pad—the place where every frustration, fear, and grievance was unloaded.

Eventually I asked something different of her.

Instead of immediately validating the emotional reaction, I asked her to look at the situation rationally.

That moment created a choice.

She could pause and reconsider.

Or she could double down.

She doubled down.

The messages grew longer. More emotional. The accusations more dramatic. The narrative drifted further away from the reality of the situation.

So I stopped responding.

As the younger generation might say, I simply left her on read.

Not out of cruelty, but because continuing the exchange would have meant stepping back into the rescuer role.

The messages became more indignant. More defensive. More irrational.

When others tried to calmly explain the situation, she insisted she was being attacked.

At that point the pattern became unmistakable.

Some people, when given the space to reflect, eventually step back and see the situation more clearly.

Others cannot.

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When Boundaries Are Misread

At one point she said something that revealed the dynamic more clearly than anything else.

“I thought you were my friend.”

For a moment I considered responding.

Part of me wanted to say that friends don’t treat each other the way she was treating me.

But I also knew something else.

That response would not lead to clarity.

It would lead to defensiveness.

The conversation would become a battle over who was right rather than an opportunity for reflection.

And I don’t do that.

So I left it alone.

I know what friendship looks like.

It includes respect, accountability, and the ability to hear difficult truths without turning them into personal attacks.

Someone who is deeply caught in emotional dysregulation rarely has the ability to hear that message in the moment anyway.

Trying to force the realization would only create more conflict.

So instead I did the thing that had become the central lesson of the entire experience.

I paused.

And I left her with her own words.

Where I Learned It

Part of the reason I eventually learned the value of the pause is because I grew up in an environment where it didn’t exist.

In my family, conflict was immediate and intense. If something was wrong, it was addressed right away. Voices were raised. Emotions ran high. Harsh words were sometimes exchanged.

Eventually there would be resolution.

But usually only after the emotional storm had already passed.

Once everyone cooled down, apologies were often made and the situation would seem settled. At least until the next disagreement surfaced and the old argument found its way back into the conversation again.

Nothing was ever truly let go.

Psychologists sometimes refer to this pattern as grievance collecting or scorekeeping. Instead of conflicts being repaired and released, they remain stored away—ready to reappear during the next moment of tension.

Over time, this kind of environment can teach people that confrontation must always be intense in order to be honest.

But what makes this interesting is that I did not grow up learning emotional regulation.

I learned it later.

Psychologists studying resilience have found something hopeful: roughly one-third of people raised in high-conflict or unstable environments consciously develop healthier coping and communication patterns as adults.

In other words, people are not doomed to repeat the emotional patterns they grew up with.

Some people repeat them.

Others learn from them.

Over time I began to notice the patterns around me. I saw how quickly conflicts escalated when emotions took control and how much unnecessary damage those moments could cause.

So I began teaching myself something different.

To pause.

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Emotional Regulation on the Field

Later in life, I saw another version of these lessons while coaching young girls in cheerleading.

Some of them joined because they imagined cheerleading as the world they saw from the outside—cute skirts, bright smiles, and the idea of being one of the popular girls. I understood that perspective. I had been a cheerleader myself in high school and made varsity my sophomore year.

But they learned quickly that a cheerleader is much more than the skirt she wears.

Cheerleading is a physical sport. Flyers and back spotters lift and support one another, and in many moments one athlete is literally placing her safety in the hands of another.

Before every stunt there has to be communication.

“Ready?”
“5, 6, 7, 8.”

That rhythm isn’t just about starting a routine.

It’s about synchronization.

Everyone has to move together. If one person is early or late, the stunt can collapse.

Because of that, the team had to learn emotional regulation just as much as physical coordination.

Conflicts happened—as they do with any group of young people. But the rule was simple: if something needed to be addressed, we handled it right there. It didn’t bleed into the next practice. It didn’t become hallway gossip or a topic of conversation weeks later.

We worked it out.
We repaired it.
And then we moved forward together.

I used to joke that my coaching style was somewhere between Mary Poppins and General Patton—firm expectations wrapped in encouragement.

Over time something beautiful happened.

The girls learned to communicate clearly, rotate leadership roles, and lift one another up—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

And I’ll admit, even now I get a little misty-eyed remembering those moments when they walked out onto the field ahead of me.

I didn’t lead them.

They led the way.

I walked behind them.

A leader sometimes needs to stay behind the flock, letting the most nimble move forward while quietly guiding the direction. From the outside it may look as if the group is simply moving together, not realizing that someone steady is helping hold the path.

Watching those girls step onto the field—confident, focused, and ready—was one of the greatest moments of my teaching life.

Because what they were really learning out there wasn’t just cheerleading.

They were learning trust.

Communication.

Leadership.

And the discipline of pausing long enough to move forward together.

Even years later I still receive messages from former students that simply say:

“Thank you, Coach Steph.”

Those notes remind me that emotional regulation is not just a psychological concept.

It is a life skill.

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Skills That Used to Be Taught

Recently I walked into a fast-food restaurant and stepped up to the counter.

The young woman behind the register simply stared at me.

No greeting.
No “hello.”
No “welcome in.”
No “can I take your order.”

Just silence.

It struck me in that moment that we may be living in a different world.

People often joke that each generation is gradually losing manners, work ethic, and moral values. It’s easy to laugh about that idea, but the moment stayed with me because it reflected something deeper.

Many of the small skills that once helped people navigate daily interactions are simply no longer being taught.

How to greet someone.

How to make eye contact.

How to communicate clearly.

Even simple practical habits—like counting back change from a bill instead of just staring at the number on a register—are becoming less common.

It isn’t necessarily a lack of intelligence or ability.

More often, it’s a lack of training.

Work ethic, communication, emotional regulation—these are not traits people are born with. They are skills that used to be taught by families, schools, mentors, and early workplace experience.

When those lessons disappear, people enter adult environments without the tools needed to navigate stress, disagreement, or responsibility.

And when that happens, even small conflicts can escalate quickly.

Which makes something as simple as a pause even more important.

Because sometimes the difference between chaos and clarity isn’t intelligence or authority.

It’s whether someone in the room knows how to slow things down long enough for reason to return.

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The Quiet Strength of Steadiness

Over time people begin to recognize steadiness.

When situations become tense—when emotions run high and something needs calm resolution—I often find that I am the person people turn to.

Not because I ask for that role.

But because calm is noticeable.

Organizations and teams tend to recognize people who can remain steady when others are overwhelmed. Those individuals are often entrusted with leadership not simply because of their technical ability, but because they bring stability into chaotic situations.

In my own work life, that steadiness has led to opportunities I am deeply proud of.

I was chosen to run the front of the house in my workplace—responsible not only for operations but for managing people, personalities, and pressure in real time.

I was also selected as a hole captain at a major PGA golf tournament, overseeing a team of seventeen people. Anyone who has worked around a major sporting event knows how quickly things can become stressful when the pace is fast and the expectations are high.

In those moments, what people need most is not someone who reacts.

They need someone who remains calm enough to think.

Leadership research increasingly confirms what experienced managers often observe: emotional regulation is one of the most important leadership skills a person can develop. Studies on emotional intelligence suggest that as many as 90 percent of top-performing leaders score high in emotional self-awareness and emotional regulation.

A steady presence slows the emotional momentum of a room.

It allows rational thinking to return.

Leadership is not about control.

It is about remaining grounded while others are overwhelmed.

And when people repeatedly trust you to hold that role, it becomes a quiet affirmation that the discipline of the pause matters.

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The Lesson

Helping someone does not mean absorbing the full weight of their emotional reactions.

You can listen.

You can clarify.

You can offer solutions.

But emotional responsibility ultimately belongs to the person experiencing the reaction.

Sometimes people learn.

Sometimes they don’t.

And sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is step back and allow the moment to unfold.

Because between reaction and response there is a small space.

And in that space lives something incredibly powerful.

Clarity.

Choice.

And the quiet strength of the pause.

Quick Pickled Vegetables

In the kitchen, I’ve learned that not everything needs to be fixed immediately.
Some things simply need a moment to settle.

Pickling is a lot like that.

The vegetables go in sharp and raw.
The brine is bright and intense.
But when you give it a little time, something changes. The edges soften. The flavors balance. What first felt harsh becomes something vibrant and alive.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is pause and let the moment transform itself.

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