Six hours before a difficult conversation, your body has already started preparing. Cortisol is slowly rising. Your jaw has tightened. Your mind is running simulations — and it is running the worst ones on repeat, because that is what minds do when they are scared.
The Rehearsal Problem
By the time the conversation actually starts, you have already had it fifty times in your head. And in every one of those rehearsals, it went badly. You stumbled over your words. They reacted with anger. You lost your composure. The simulation engine of your mind has been training you, with great efficiency, to fail.
This is not a design flaw — it is an evolutionary feature called threat simulation theory. Your brain rehearses worst-case scenarios so you can prepare for them. The problem is that in social situations, this preparation is counterproductive. You do not need to dodge a predator. You need emotional steadiness, and that is precisely what fear-based rehearsal undermines.
Rehearsing State, Not Content
Erickson used a technique called mental rehearsal — similar to what athletes do before competition. But instead of rehearsing the content of what you want to say, you rehearse the state you want to be in when you say it. The words will come. What matters is the ground you are standing on internally.
Here is the practical version: find 10 minutes of privacy before the conversation. Close your eyes. Instead of rehearsing what you will say, imagine yourself in the room, and focus entirely on your body. Your feet are on the ground. Your breath is slow and even. Your spine is upright but not rigid. You are present. You are steady. You are not performing composure — you are composed.
Co-Regulation
Now, from that body state, imagine the conversation unfolding. You do not need to script it. Just notice that from this physical state, your responses will be different. Steadiness changes everything.
The other person's reaction is not in your control. Your nervous system state is. And your nervous system state will influence theirs — this is co-regulation, and it works in both directions.
Before the Difficult Conversation is a 20-minute guided session that takes you through this process in depth — replacing anxious rehearsal with centered preparation.