The grand finale: why your mind braces for disaster

When I was young, I was painfully shy. I would rather go without sweets than walk into a shop and ask for them myself. I still feel a flicker of that now, as an adult, ordering something out loud in a restaurant I don't know. The rational part of my brain knows it's a ridiculous thing to feel, that I'm a confident, successful woman. The irrational part still gets there first, most of the time.

I see this constantly with the leaders I coach: the self-doubt, the spiralling thoughts, the need to prove themselves over and over. When we sit back and look at it together, they can usually see that their response is out of proportion to what is actually happening. Knowing that doesn't stop the pattern from running on its own.

A complaint, and the spiral that followed

I had a conversation recently with a client, a school leader, who received the almost inevitable end of term complaint from a group of parents. Her instant reaction was to spiral straight into the worst-case scenario, because she'd lived through something similar before. Weeks and months of trying to resolve it. Draining, frustrating and brutal.

I recognised this pattern in myself too, after my first year as a school Principal, when a complaint letter went not just to me or the board but straight to the General Teaching Council of Scotland. Weeks and months of paperwork followed, because with GTC Scotland, you're assumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

None of this starts with the complaint email or the difficult parent. It starts much earlier, with whatever we learned before about what happens when things go wrong. My body still remembers being the shy child too frightened to walk into a shop on my own. My client's body still remembers what her last complaint cost her. Our nervous system doesn't just react to what's happening in front of us now. It reacts to what it has learned to expect, based on everything that came before.

Why your mind reaches for the worst case first

What I learned that year was to expect what I now call the grand finale, that sense that disaster is about to arrive exactly as you're finally about to breathe out. When it did turn up, and more often than not it did, it no longer sent me spiralling the way it had that first year.

Our minds are built to spot danger before they look for reassurance. That was useful when danger meant survival. It's less useful when the threat is a complaint email arriving on the penultimate day of term.

Why this matters for how you lead

For leaders, this matters because the first reaction often feels urgent. You want to reply, explain, defend or fix it, right now. That's usually the worst moment to make a decision. Until your body settles, your thinking is being shaped by the threat, not the facts in front of you.

What sets leaders apart isn't whether they feel that instinct. Everyone does. It's whether they can think and act clearly once it arrives. The first job is to bring yourself back to a place where you can think, and that starts with noticing what's actually happening in your body.

Two things I come back to again and again with my clients.

Breath work. Consciously working with your breath is the fastest way to tell your body it's safe again.

Changing state. That might be getting up and going for a walk. If the reaction is particularly strong, sometimes it takes something more vigorous, such as a hard workout, or something calmer and more controlled, like yoga. For one of my clients, it's singing and dancing round the kitchen.

Everyone has their own way back. The point is knowing what yours is, so you can actually use it when you need it, rather than working it out for the first time in the middle of the spiral.

Finding your own way back

You don't need a perfect system for this. You just need to know your own signals, and your own way of answering them.

Notice where the spiral starts in your body, perhaps a tight chest, a racing mind or your shoulders creeping up towards your ears. Then have one thing you can actually do about it, whether that's three slow breaths, a walk round the block, or five minutes with music turned up loud.

The goal isn't to stop the instinct arriving. It's to know how to come back from it.

Reflection

What is the worst-case scenario your mind reaches for first, and how often does it turn out to be true?

What helps you return to a place where you can think clearly again?

Working with this pattern

This is one of the patterns we work with inside Stay Strong, Lead Well, my ten month group leadership programme, learning to recognise the spiral earlier, before it starts making your decisions for you. It's for leaders carrying the responsibility, decisions and private weight of holding everything together, and it supports them across a full year, not just one difficult week.

If you'd like to talk it through, book a free introductory call, or read more about Stay Strong, Lead Well.

You might also find When Did You Stop Trusting Your Own Judgement? or Five Protective Patterns Women in Leadership Carry useful reading on this same theme.

About Johanna Urquhart

Johanna Urquhart is a leadership coach and mentor for women in professional and senior leadership, and the founder of Resta Forte. She brings over 25 years of senior leadership experience, including 12 years as a school Principal, into a coaching and mentoring practice that holds leadership development and personal wellbeing together.