You're sitting in the meeting room. Your hands are shaking. The words you rehearsed a dozen times are swimming on the page in front of you. You'd planned exactly what to say—and exactly what not to say.

Then your mouth opens, and the one word you swore you wouldn't use comes out anyway.

"Sorry."

You sit there, feeling like you've just compromised everything. Your body betrayed you. Your brain failed you. The whole thing was awful.

If this sounds familiar—whether it's a difficult meeting with HR, a high-stakes presentation, or any situation where the pressure felt crushing—what you're about to discover might change how you see yourself entirely.

What Happens When You Ask What You'd Tell Someone Else?

Here's something worth asking: Imagine one of your team members came to you before a meeting like that. They're visibly shaking. They tell you afterward that their mind went blank, that they couldn't get through their prepared notes, that they said something they'd planned not to say.

What would you think about them?

Would you think they were weak? That they should have been able to control their body's response?

Most people, when they honestly consider this, realize they wouldn't think anything like that. They'd feel protective. They'd recognize this person was in an incredibly stressful situation. They'd want to help.

So here's the uncomfortable follow-up: Why the double standard for yourself?

The Self-Judgment Secret Nobody Talks About

Research has given this phenomenon a name: Solomon's Paradox. Named after King Solomon, who was supposedly wise about everyone's problems except his own.

Studies confirm what you might already sense—people genuinely reason more wisely about other people's situations than their own. When it's someone else's problem, we can see clearly. When it's ours, we're too close. The emotions cloud everything.

This isn't a character flaw. It's how human cognition works.

But here's what makes this useful rather than just interesting: research shows that self-distancing—deliberately creating psychological space between yourself and the situation—eliminates this gap. When people are taught to step back mentally, their reasoning about personal problems rises to match the quality of advice they'd give others.

The wisdom you'd offer a colleague? You can access it for yourself. It just requires a specific kind of mental shift.

Why Your Body Didn't Actually Fail You

Let's go back to that shaking in the meeting room.

When you're in a high-stakes situation where your job, reputation, or sense of fairness feels threatened, your body interprets this as danger. Not "this might be uncomfortable" danger—"this is a genuine threat" danger.

What happens next is predictable physiology, not personal failure.

Performance anxiety research shows that high physiological arousal—racing heart, trembling hands, difficulty thinking clearly—is the normal response when the demands placed on us feel greater than our perceived ability to meet them. Fine motor skills and cognitive resources are especially vulnerable. This is why you couldn't read your notes smoothly. This is why words came out that you hadn't planned.

Your body wasn't failing you. It was doing exactly what it's built to do when it detects a threat.

If one of your team members told you they shook during a meeting with HR, you'd tell them it makes complete sense. That it doesn't mean anything about them as a person or a professional.

You'd mean it completely.

The only question is why your own self-talk is harsher than what you'd tell someone who reports to you.

The Mind-Reading Mistake That's Hurting Your Peace of Mind

There's another pattern worth examining.

Imagine someone in that meeting says something accusatory about you. They express doubt. Their body language seems loaded. Neither the HR representative nor your manager challenges what they said.

What do you conclude?

"They believe her. They think I was trying to hurt her. The whole room agreed with her."

But here's the critical question: What evidence supports that conclusion?

If you're being honest, the evidence is: they didn't challenge her statement.

That's it. That's the only data point.

Now, what else might explain why they didn't challenge her?

• Maybe it wasn't the right moment.
• Maybe they thought it would escalate things.
• Maybe the ground rules meant they were facilitating, not taking sides.
• Maybe they were professionally managing the meeting rather than expressing agreement.

Those are four alternative explanations. There could be more.

Research on cognitive restructuring—a core technique in evidence-based therapy—makes a clear distinction: thoughts without evidence supporting them are nothing more than assumptions. They feel like facts. They carry the weight of certainty. But they're not facts.

The actual evidence might tell a different story. If the organization closed the matter, took no disciplinary action, and moved on—that's evidence. Silence in a meeting is ambiguous. Organizational outcomes are concrete.

The feeling of "everyone agreed with her" was real. But the conclusion was your mind filling in gaps with the worst possible interpretation.

Don't Try to Handle This Alone Until You Read This

Here's something that almost never gets mentioned in advice about handling workplace stress: the belief that you should handle it alone.

This thought feels like strength. It sounds like: "I shouldn't burden anyone else with this. I should be able to deal with this myself."

Research suggests this belief is one of the most significant barriers to recovery. Studies on help-seeking behavior show that people who believe they should manage difficulties independently delay getting support—sometimes by years, not months.

This isn't virtue. It's a cognitive trap disguised as self-reliance.

Consider your own experience as a manager. When your team members came to you with concerns about the colleague who accused you, did you think they were burdens?

Probably not. You were likely glad they trusted you enough to come forward.

And when you helped them navigate those concerns, what happened to your relationship with them?

It strengthened. They trust you more now. They know you'll support them.

Seeking support from you made your team members stronger in their roles, not weaker. Why would the same dynamic be different when you're the one reaching out?

How to Create Distance from Your Harsh Self-Talk

So what do you actually do with all of this?

The research on psychological distancing points to some remarkably simple techniques. Studies show that even the specific words you use in your internal dialogue can change how your brain processes a situation.

When you're spiraling—when the emotional side is overriding the logical side you know is right—try this:

Instead of thinking "I feel overwhelmed," ask "What's happening for [your name] right now?"

Using your own name instead of "I" creates distance. It sounds almost silly. But research on linguistic distancing shows that reducing first-person pronouns and present-tense verbs is associated with more successful emotional regulation. The language itself changes how your brain handles the situation.

Another technique: the council of advisors.

When you're stuck in harsh self-judgment, ask yourself concretely: What would my therapist say about this? What would a trusted manager say? What would I tell my best friend if they described this exact situation?

Don't just vaguely imagine it. Actually articulate the response. Write it down if needed.

This isn't a trick. Research shows this kind of perspective-taking has a measurable effect on reducing emotional reactivity. You're not manufacturing false comfort—you're accessing the wiser reasoning you already have but can't reach when you're emotionally close to the problem.

The Reframe That Actually Works

There's one more shift that ties this together.

When the thought "I should handle this alone" shows up, treat it as a red flag rather than a truth. Test it against your own standards.

Would you tell one of your team members to handle it alone?

You wouldn't. You'd tell them to reach out. You'd probably be disappointed if they didn't.

The challenge isn't information. You already know what the wise response looks like—you give it to others all the time.

The challenge is applying to yourself what you'd easily apply to someone you manage. The gap between how you advise others and how you treat yourself is the space where self-distancing does its work.

The Secret to Seeing the Whole Picture

There's an analogy that might resonate: board games.

When you're too focused on your own position in a game, you miss what's actually happening on the board. Sometimes you have to literally step back from the table to see the whole picture.

The board is the same. The pieces haven't moved. But your perspective changes everything.

What you're learning to do is step back from the table of your own life—to see the whole board, not just the piece you're worried about.

What Happens When You Apply This to Your Situation

Let's be concrete about what shifts when you apply this:

The shaking in that meeting wasn't evidence that you failed to hold it together. It was your nervous system responding to perceived threat—the same response you'd explain compassionately to anyone on your team.

The silence from HR wasn't proof they agreed with the accusations. It was ambiguous data that your mind filled with the worst interpretation—while the actual organizational outcome (case closed, no action) pointed somewhere different entirely.

The impulse to handle everything alone isn't strength. It's a belief pattern that research shows delays recovery and isolates people from the support that actually strengthens professional relationships.

And the wisdom to see all of this clearly? You already have it. You demonstrate it every time one of your team members comes to you with a concern.

The only work left is closing the gap between how wisely you see others' situations and how harshly you judge your own.

What Comes Next

You've glimpsed something important here: you operate in two modes. Wise when advising others. Harsh when evaluating yourself.

The distancing techniques—using your name instead of "I," asking what your council of advisors would say, treating "I should handle this alone" as a red flag—these create access to your wiser self.

But a fundamental question remains: Why does this split exist in the first place? And how do you close the gap consistently, rather than just occasionally noticing it?

That's worth exploring next.