Name the pattern.

You are in a meeting, or at a dinner, and someone says something that lands wrong. You feel it in your chest before you have thought anything. What happens in the next ten seconds?

• I say something measured that isn’t what I think.
• It swamps me and I lose the thread of what’s even being said.
• I feel all of it and say none of it.
• I’m working out why it got to me while it’s still happening.