If this resonates with you, what follows may help you see something about yourself.
SeekerThere’s a guy on my team, Marcus. We got some bad news about the project Tuesday and his eyes just welled up in the meeting. In front of everyone. I felt this wave of disgust. Like, pull it together, man.
GuideDisgust is a strong word for a coworker’s wet eyes.
SeekerIt’s not just him. Anyone who cries that easily. It reads as weak. Or worse, like they’re doing it for attention, so everyone rushes to comfort them.
GuideYou’d want me to say he’s manipulative, or at least soft.
SeekerWouldn’t you have thought it? He barely held it together over a delayed launch date. It’s not a funeral.
GuideI don’t know him, so I can’t rank him. But I keep noticing it’s you sitting here Thursday still turning it over. The tears were his. The wave was yours. That’s the part I’m curious about.
SeekerFine, it bothers me. That’s not a crime.
GuideNo. I’m just wondering what the size of it is about. Disgust is a lot to carry out of a status meeting.
SeekerBecause it’s embarrassing to watch. It’s like watching someone lose control of themselves and not even try to stop it.
GuideNot even try to stop it. Say more about the trying.
SeekerWhat do you mean, say more. You feel it coming and you clamp down. That’s what you do. You don’t let it out in a room full of people who’ll use it against you later.
GuideThat sounds less like a description of Marcus and more like a rule you live by.
SeekerIt’s just how you function as an adult.
GuideWhere’d you learn to clamp down like that?
SeekerI don’t know. Everywhere. My dad, if I cried he’d leave the room. Wouldn’t yell, just walk out. So you learned fast.
GuideSo the message was, cry and you’re alone.
SeekerI mean, yeah, ok. You cry, nobody comes, so you stop crying. It’s efficient.
GuideAnd Tuesday, Marcus cried, and the room went toward him.
SeekerThat’s a cheap shot.
GuideMaybe. I might have that wrong.
SeekerNo. It’s, they all went to him. And I sat there thinking he was pathetic while some part of me was, I don’t even know.
GuideYou don’t have to finish it.
SeekerIt’s not that he’s weak. It’s that he could do it and nothing bad happened to him. That’s the thing I can’t stand, actually. He just did it.
GuideThe disgust might be older than Marcus.
SeekerI don’t want to make this some big childhood thing. He still cried over a delayed launch, that’s still ridiculous.
GuideSure. Both can be true. He’s still Marcus.
SeekerI haven’t cried in front of anyone in probably fifteen years. I didn’t even notice that until right now.
GuideThat’s a long time to hold something.
SeekerI’m not going to sit here and cry about it, if that’s where this is going.
GuideIt’s not going anywhere. You don’t owe me tears.
SeekerI just, I called him weak. And I’m the one who can’t do the thing he did without wanting to crawl out of my skin. That’s not, I don’t like how that sounds.
If you read back the conversation: notice where the guide quietly became the one who knows — naming things, settling them. That feels normal because it happens so often. It's also where your own sense of direction can go quiet. SelfChatter adds a second voice that just makes those moments visible, so the direction stays yours.