What If You (Almost) Can’t Keep Going - But Nothing Lets You Stop?

She didn’t come to me for answers. Not really. She came because her body had stopped listening to her mind. And because the questions she was asking herself - quietly, in the background - had started to feel heavier than the pace she was using to outrun them.

We’re sitting together on a bench. The sandwich has been ordered. We’re both hungry - I for the food, she for something far less tangible. She hungers for clarity. For a solution to the panic and the restlessness. To the blurry and unpredictable future that presses in on her like fog. When the sandwich arrives, it quiets my appetite. But her words only awaken a deeper curiosity in me - not just about what she’s feeling, but where it comes from. How she became this tangled inside. How I might help her find stillness again, somewhere in that overactive inner world.

This video is created with the help of AI so I can share this in languages I don’t speak natively.

She responds well to my calm. That alone seems to soothe her. She’s longing for peace - you can feel it in her posture, in the way her breath never seems to settle fully. I listen, but not just to the words. I listen to the way she uses them. The rhythm, the tone, the spaces between. Because that’s what I do as a coach. It’s never just about what someone says - it’s about the emotional fabric that holds their words together. Their energy, their emphasis, the emotional fingerprint behind their story.

With her, the emotion was close to the surface. Almost visible. It wouldn’t have taken many questions for her tears to spill — right there on the street, in the open. And honestly, that would’ve been completely understandable. So instead, I ask where her emotions are sitting in her body. You probably already know the answer. High. Very high - right up in her chest. And nothing is moving. Everything is stuck. Completely frozen in place.

As we walk back to the car for a short intake session at my place, she tells me that she often does yoga and meditation. She says it helps — but only briefly. It calms her in the moment, maybe a few minutes after, but then everything returns. The tension, the chaos, the pressure behind her ribs. I nod, not dismissively, but with quiet encouragement. Yoga and meditation can be powerful tools - they are, by nature, beneficial. But not always for someone in the state she’s reached. Not in the way she needs right now.

Because restlessness doesn’t start on the mat. It begins somewhere deeper - somewhere older. And when that root is still active, even the most peaceful practices can feel like trying to quiet a storm by closing the windows. Momentary stillness can’t hold back what the body hasn’t yet processed, what the mind still resists feeling. Her nervous system isn’t asking for calm techniques. It’s asking for understanding. It’s asking to be heard at the source.

Throughout the entire conversation, a few things stood out to me - but one stood above the rest: the restlessness. The constant urgency in her tone. And what many people don’t realise is how much our own language quietly feeds that urgency. Don’t get me wrong, her story had many layers, and there’s no single cause. But this pattern - this small habit of speech - revealed something powerful.

She used the word “just” in nearly every sentence. And often paired it with “quickly.” “I just quickly went to yoga,” she said. “Then quickly got home to just rest a bit. And then quickly went upstairs to just fold the laundry real quick.” It all sounded harmless on the surface - casual, almost efficient. But when you hear it out loud, in that rhythm, again and again, it’s like a drumbeat behind her nervous system. One that says: Hurry. Move. Don’t take up time. Don’t let anything matter too much.

Because here’s the thing — “just” is rarely neutral. It shrinks everything it touches. It makes your choices sound optional, disposable, insignificant. And “quickly” doesn’t just describe a pace. It becomes a way of being. Say it often enough, and your body starts to believe that slowness is selfish. That rest is indulgent. That presence is only allowed in small, manageable doses - never in full.

But what if she had said something else?

What if, instead of “I just quickly went to yoga,” she said,

“I made time to go to yoga.”

Instead of “just rested a bit,” she said,

“I gave myself space to rest - and stayed with it as long as I needed.”

And instead of “quickly folded the laundry,”

“I moved through the laundry at my own pace, and let it be enough.”

Feel the difference?

The first way minimizes. The second honours.

And that’s not just semantics - it’s identity.

Because the way we speak doesn’t just describe how we live. It shapes how we live. And more than that — it reveals what we believe we’re allowed to feel. So when your entire vocabulary is built on speed and smallness, the message you send yourself - and the world - is simple: I don’t deserve space. I don’t get to slow down. I don’t matter enough to take my time.

And that’s the real work.

Not correcting grammar.

But rewriting permission.

The moment she realised what those words were doing to her - not just how they sounded, but what they triggered in her body - something shifted. You could see it. Not big or dramatic. Just a pause. A stillness. Like she suddenly saw the machinery she’d been running all this time. Not because someone pointed it out, but because she finally heard it herself. That language wasn’t innocent. It was urgent. Not a way of describing her life - but a way of speeding through it without ever landing in it.

So I looked at her, smiled, and said what I meant without softening it:

“Would you NOW - just REAL quick - never use those words again?”...

She laughed. And then she paused again.

And this time, it was the pause that did the talking.