Check Your Footing
Am I Free-Falling?
Sometimes the first clue is not the problem.
It is what happens inside you when the problem arrives.
Your thoughts race. Your words might disappear—or multiply. You want to explain everything at once, prove your point, correct one more thing, get the last word, or escape before another word is said.
Maybe you cry, go quiet, get loud, become unusually certain about what the other person means, replay every sentence, or suddenly cannot tell what you actually think.
Free-falling does not always look like having no words.
Sometimes you have plenty of words and less access to choice.
You do not have to solve the problem while you are falling.
Jenny did not know she was free-falling
For a long time, Jenny did not have language for what happened to her during conflict.
She just knew she wanted out of it.
In her family, conflict was not something people sat down and worked through together. The process Jenny carried forward was closer to:
Get away from this as quickly as possible.
Then she built a life with Dan.
Dan arrived with a different process.
He could stay in a difficult conversation and keep talking.
Nobody had sat Jenny and Dan down before they met and said, “Excellent news. You have each been issued completely different conflict instructions. Good luck and Godspeed.” 😂
They were simply two Travelers carrying tools they had learned long before they knew each other.
And that meant Jenny kept running into something she did not yet know how to name.
Sometimes her words disappeared.
Sometimes emotion arrived faster than language.
Sometimes the strongest thing she could feel was the need to get away.
And sometimes there were plenty of words.
Too many, maybe.
More explaining. More urgency. One more thing that had to be said before the conversation could possibly stop.
Those can look like opposite reactions.
Years later, Jenny could see something they sometimes had in common:
She was having a harder time choosing what came next.
That was the discovery.
Not: When a person cries, they are free-falling.
Not: When someone gets quiet, they need a Parachute.
Not even: Jenny should have stayed and talked because Dan could.
Jenny was beginning to learn something much more useful:
What does losing my footing look like for me?
That question changed the trail
Looking back, Jenny can imagine what having a Parachute might have offered her then.
Not a different past.
Not a magically perfect conversation.
Not instructions for how long she was allowed to pause or what she had to do afterward.
Maybe just enough language to notice:
I cannot do this well while I am falling.
That sentence would not have solved the disagreement.
It would have named something Jenny did not yet know how to name.
And once something has language, sometimes another possibility becomes visible.
Maybe your footing looks nothing like Jenny's. Maybe you go quiet. Maybe you get louder. Maybe you start explaining. Maybe you desperately want out of the room. Maybe you can stay in the conversation just fine.
What changes in you when something becomes hard? Is there a moment when you still have thoughts, feelings, and words—but less room to choose among them?
You do not need to diagnose yourself.
You do not need to figure out where every reaction came from.
You do not even need to decide that you need a Parachute.
You are just checking your footing.
Your Mirror can offer another clue
Jenny has another thing she can notice now.
When she has her footing, she has a better chance of staying inside her own Mirror: what she knows, what she experienced, what she feels, what she needs.
When she starts falling, the story can get bigger.
Suddenly she may feel very certain about what another person thinks, feels, intends, or means.
Am I still talking about what I know, feel, need, and experienced? Or have I started deciding what the other person thinks, feels, intends, or means?
I do not have to answer perfectly. Noticing the shift may simply be another clue about my footing.
The first tool may be noticing
Jenny used to think the important question would be what to do once everything became difficult.
Now she sees an earlier question.
Maybe the first tool wasn't learning what to do when Jenny was falling.
Maybe it was learning how Jenny knew she was falling.
Your signals may be completely different.
Good.
This is not Jenny's process with your name written on it.
Her story is only borrowed belief:
A Traveler can learn their own footing.
Maybe something in Jenny's story sounds familiar.
Maybe none of it does.
Maybe it makes you think of something entirely different that happens to you.
That is where your process begins.
The cord is there if you want it
A Parachute creates space between reaction and choice.
The actual pause may eventually be one breath, an hour, a walk, sleep, a sentence, or something Jenny has never thought of.
We are not choosing that yet.
Right now, we are only noticing whether our feet are underneath us.
Someone else can point toward the cord.
They cannot pull it for you.
Pulling the Parachute is not failing the conversation. It may be how you stay capable of returning to it.