Regulated Leadership

You Cannot Think Your Way to Safety

October 21, 2026 • 12 min • Julia LeFevre
Founder, Brave Restoration
You Cannot Think Your Way to Safety

You have always been the steady one.

You’re the one people approach when they are struggling. You are the calm voice in the crisis meeting, the person who says, “We’ll figure it out,” and then actually does.

And then, out of nowhere, it’s 2 a.m. Your chest is tight. Your mind won’t stop. Your heart is pounding like you’re about to give a speech, except you’re lying in bed in the dark.

And you think, This is not me. I don’t get anxious.

So you do what has always worked. You try to think your way out of it. You analyze it. You reframe it. You read the article. You tell yourself there is no real danger here.

But this time, it doesn’t work.

If that’s where you are, I want you to know two things. First, you are not alone. Second, there is a reason thinking isn’t working, and there is something that does.

Someone Has to Go First

Recently I was sitting with a small group of leaders. Smart, capable people who have carried a lot for a long time.

I did something I’ve learned to do on purpose. I told them about my own anxiety.

I told them how my body got stuck in fight mode, with adrenaline coursing through me all day long. How I had a hard time thinking straight, because all my energy went to just trying to relax.

Almost immediately, the room changed.

One person said, “Me too.” Then another. “I’ve been experiencing anxiety for the first time in my life.”

I see this happen almost every time. When I share my experience, leaders feel safer to share theirs. A kind of relief settles over the room.

They didn’t need a better strategy. They just needed someone to go first.

Then one of them asked the question I think many leaders are quietly asking: “So how do you fix this? What do you actually do?”

I love that question. Because by the time a leader asks it, they have already read the articles. They have tried the reframes. They have tried to out think it. And none of it helped longterm.

I know, because I was there too.

So I told them what I’ll tell you. The answer isn’t in your head. It’s in your relationships.

The Night Her Body Learned Something New

That’s when I watched the light switch on for one woman in the group.

“Wait,” she said. “I think that just happened to me.”

She had recently felt like a failure. For years she had pursued one dream, and she had come to the painful conclusion that she needed to change direction. She decided to tell her family.

She was anxious for days beforehand. She wasn’t sure how her family would respond. She wasn’t sure they would be okay. Honestly, she was predicting they would be frustrated and disappointed in her.

But that’s not what happened.

Her family leaned in.

Instead of disappointment, they communicated acceptance. They didn’t say, “Well, here’s what you should do,” or “Have you tried this?” They simply said, “We’re with you. We understand.” And they have been supportive ever since.

Here’s what I want you to notice. She didn’t get new information that night.

She had a new experience.

And her body felt the difference.

The most anxious moment is usually not the moment of failure. It’s the moment before you tell anyone about it.

Why Thinking Doesn’t Reach the Part of You That Is Afraid

If you’ve seen me teach, you’ve seen me use my hand as a model of the brain. (This comes from psychiatrist Dan Siegel, and it’s one of the most useful pictures I know.)

Your wrist is the brainstem, which runs your survival responses. Fold your thumb into your palm and that’s your limbic system, the emotional center that is constantly scanning for threat. Close your fingers over your thumb and that’s your prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of you that plans, reasons, and leads.

When the threat alarm goes off, your fingers lift. Your thinking brain loses its grip on your emotional brain. Your capacity to reason doesn’t disappear, but it stops being in charge.

That’s why you can know exactly what to do and still not be able to do it.

The part of you that decides whether you are safe isn’t listening to your analysis. It’s watching. It reads faces and tone of voice. It tracks whether people move toward you or away from you when you show them something real.

And for that part of your brain, relational threat is not a small thing.

In a well known study at UCLA, Naomi Eisenberger and Matthew Lieberman had people play a simple ball tossing game on a computer while their brains were scanned. Partway through, the other players stopped throwing them the ball. Being left out activated a region of the brain that also helps process physical pain, and the more distressed people felt, the more active that region became.

Your brain takes rejection seriously, because for most of human history, being pushed out of the group was dangerous.

So when that leader pictured telling her family, her nervous system made a prediction: If I show them I failed, they will reject me. Her body prepared for that pain before anyone had said a word.

That prediction didn’t change when she reasoned with it. It changed when it was proven wrong.

Therapists Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic, and Laurel Hulley describe this in their work on memory reconsolidation. An old emotional learning tends to stay locked in place until we have a lived experience that directly contradicts it. Not an argument against it. An experience.

Her family’s acceptance was that experience. It gave her nervous system real evidence that failure and belonging can exist in the same room.

You can think your way to a new insight. You cannot think your way to safety.

Your nervous system doesn’t learn from information. It learns from experience. And the most powerful experiences happen between people.

The Science of Not Holding It Alone

There is good research showing that safe people literally change how our bodies handle stress.

In a study published in Biological Psychiatry, Markus Heinrichs and colleagues put men through one of the most reliable stress tests in psychology: a mock job interview and a mental math task in front of a stern panel. Some of the men had their best friend with them for support beforehand. Those men had lower cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, and felt calmer than men who faced it alone.

Neuroscientist James Coan, whom I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, found something similar when people faced the threat of an electric shock. Holding the hand of someone they trusted quieted the threat response in their brain. Coan believes our brains expect to share the load with others. When we try to carry everything alone, the brain has to spend more energy doing it.

In other words, you were never designed to regulate alone.

So why do we try so hard to do life solo?

Because we overestimate the danger of being honest.

Researchers at the University of Mannheim studied what they called the “beautiful mess effect.” Across seven studies, people judged their own vulnerability, like admitting a mistake or asking for help, as more weak and less courageous than the very same behavior in someone else. When we picture ourselves being honest, we see a mess. When others watch us do it, they tend to see courage.

And Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake at Stanford and Columbia found that people consistently underestimate how willing others are to help them. In their studies, people expected to have to ask about 50 percent more people than they actually needed to.

Your nervous system is predicting rejection. The research says the people around you are often far more ready to lean in than you think.

The Higher You Climb, the Fewer People You Tell

Here is the part of leadership that traps so many of us.

The higher you climb, the fewer people you feel you can be honest with. The stakes get higher. Your team needs you steady. Your board needs you confident. Your family is counting on you.

So we fall into the belief that we have to hold it alone.

When RHR International surveyed CEOs, half said they experienced loneliness in the role. Of those, 61% believed it hurt their performance. Among first time CEOs who felt lonely, the number was close to 70%.

That loneliness is not a character flaw. It’s a structural risk of the job. And it can quietly turn a capable leader into an anxious one.

The Match, the Fling, and the Fire Pit

When your brain detects a relational threat, like someone’s disappointment, a hard conversation, or the fear of being seen as a failure, your emotional brain creates a literal chemical reaction. Stress hormones flood your body and produce real energy. Your body is preparing to fight or flee.

It’s like lighting a match.

That energy isn’t bad. It’s your body trying to protect you.

But many of us learned early that this energy isn’t welcome. Feelings were too much. So we learned to hold them. Push them down. Keep it together.

Here’s what happens when you hold a match too long. It burns your fingers.

So eventually, you fling it. And a flung match lands on things you never meant to burn. You snap at your team. You say the thing you can’t take back. You shut someone out.

Later, you look at the damage and think, See? Emotions are dangerous. So next time, you hold the match even longer.

And holding has a cost you might not see. In a study by Emily Butler, James Gross, and colleagues, pairs of strangers discussed an upsetting topic. When one person was instructed to hide their emotions, rapport dropped, and their conversation partner’s blood pressure went up. Holding it in doesn’t just burn you. The people across the table feel the heat, even when you think you’re hiding it.

Here’s the truth. It’s not the fire that causes the destruction. It’s what we do with it.

Holding the match isn’t good. Throwing it isn’t good either.

There is a third option. A fire pit.

A fire pit is a container built for fire. Inside it, fire can burn safely, all the way up and all the way down. And when it does, it becomes useful. It warms you without scorching you. You can cook on it. You can simply sit and enjoy the beauty of it.

That’s what we need as humans. People who will stand with us and contain the fire. People who aren’t afraid to let the emotion burn through. They won’t judge it. They won’t fix it. They won’t douse it with encouragement.

And when the fire burns down, something important happens. The extra energy meant for fighting and fleeing clears out of our body. Our thinking brain comes back online. We can see clearly again. We can make good decisions again.

All it takes is people willing to stand with us.

A Fire Pit for a Whole Team

This is not only true in families. It’s true in organizations.

I’ve watched a manager notice someone on their team having a terrible day. Instead of pushing harder or critiquing the struggle, they took that person aside and said, “Tell me what’s happening.”

That manager became a fire pit. And that team member will not forget it.

Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School has spent decades studying what she calls psychological safety: a shared belief on a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. To speak up. To admit a mistake. To ask a question without being punished or humiliated.

One of her early studies followed nursing units in two hospitals. She expected the units with stronger leadership and better relationships to have fewer medication errors.

They recorded more.

At first that sounds alarming. But as Edmondson dug in, she concluded those teams weren’t simply making more mistakes. They felt safe enough to report them. On the other units, errors were more likely to stay hidden.

What can be talked about can be learned from. What stays hidden keeps happening.

Psychological safety is a fire pit for an entire team. And as the leader, you are the one who builds it.

How to Build Your Fire Pit

This is step two of Connect the Dots: connect to someone safe. Here are four ways to start.

1. Find your circle.

A fire pit is small. You don’t need a hundred people. You need two or three.

Ask yourself: Who in my life doesn’t need me to be okay?

If no name comes to mind, that is not failure. It’s information. It shows you where to start building.

2. Go first.

Someone has to strike the first match in the open. Bring one true sentence: “Today I’ve been feeling anxious.” Or, “I’m not sure I’m handling this well.”

Remember the beautiful mess effect. It will feel riskier to you than it looks to them.

When you share, you give others permission to share too. And if you lead a team, they are watching you to learn whether it’s safe.

3. Be the fire pit.

When someone brings you their fire, your only job is to contain it. Don’t fix it. Don’t judge it. Don’t douse it with “You shouldn’t feel that way.”

Do what that leader’s family did. Lean in. Make space. Try saying:

  • “I’m so glad you told me.”
  • “I’m here.”
  • “This doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

4. Let it burn, then keep coming back.

Don’t rush the fire out. Let the energy move until it settles. People need to feel what they’re feeling before they can think clearly about it.

Then come back. Check in a week later. Schedule a monthly dinner. Join a peer group where people tell the truth.

Your nervous system learns safety through repetition. One good experience opens the door. Many good experiences rewire the pattern.

What to Practice This Week: Strike One Match

Before Friday, try this.

  1. Write down the names of two people who don’t need you to be okay. If you can only find one, start there.

  2. Pick one and bring them one true sentence. Not your whole story. Just one honest line about how you’re really doing.

  3. Notice your body before you say it, and again after. Where were you tight? What shifted when they leaned in?

That’s it. You’re not trying to solve anything. You’re giving your nervous system a new experience to learn from.

And if someone brings you their fire this week, try being the fire pit. Say, “I’m so glad you told me,” and then let the silence do some of the work.

You Were Not Meant to Lead Alone

This is exactly why I build peer cohorts into my coaching.

Leaders sit with other leaders from different organizations. People who don’t need them to be okay. People who don’t need anything from them except their presence and their honesty.

I’ll be honest with you. I see more change happen in those circles than in any slide deck or workshop I could ever give.

So if information doesn’t change us, what does?

Experience. Specifically, the experience of bringing our fire to someone and being met with acceptance.

You do not have to hold the match until it burns you. You don’t have to fling it and watch things catch. There is a third way.

Find the people who can hold the fire with you.

You were not meant to carry leadership alone. And you won’t change alone either.

If you’d like a fire pit of your own, I’d love to talk with you about joining one of my upcoming peer cohorts or about coaching for you or your leadership team. You can book a free 30 minute consultation at braverestoration.org, or simply reply to this email and I’ll write back personally.

And if you strike your match this week, hit reply and tell me what happened in your body afterward. I read every one.

Bravely on, Julia

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