Who Settles You? The Co-Regulation School Leaders Are Missing
School leaders often don’t notice when this begins. You’re still the calm one - the person staff knock on the door for, the one who steadies a room just by walking into it. But internally, something is becoming harder to access. The ability to actually switch off. To stop holding the room, even when you’re finally alone in it. And it’s starting to feel like you’re permanently on watch.
It usually starts small. A corridor conversation that needed your calm more than your answer. A parent meeting where you stayed level so no one else had to. A staffroom that settles the moment you walk in, because everyone has quietly learned that you’re the steady one. An inbox that expects you to absorb whatever’s in it before anyone else even sees it land.
None of this feels like a problem at the time. You’re good at it. You’ve built a career on being the person who doesn’t wobble, the one whose presence alone seems to lower the temperature in a room. Staff lean on that. Pupils lean on that. Parents lean on that. That capability is real, and it matters - which is exactly why it’s so easy to keep drawing on it without ever questioning where it comes from, or what it costs.
But underneath it, something else is happening. Your own nervous system is doing all the work of staying regulated, on its own, day after day, with no equivalent moment where someone does that for you. There’s no one matching your pace, slowing it down, or simply sitting alongside you while you process. So you do it alone, on the move, between meetings, in the thirty seconds before the next person walks in.
Decisions get made a little faster than they should. Thinking starts to feel reactive rather than considered, because there’s rarely a still moment to actually think in. Even small decisions - which cover to approve, which email to send first - start to take up more space than they should, simply because there’s no pause built in anywhere to process them properly.
It starts to feel like being the only one standing watch.
I came across an old photo recently of my dog and my pup, lying side by side, settled into the exact same curve, breathing in the same easy rhythm. Neither of them was doing anything. They didn’t have to. Just by being near each other, their bodies found calm together. No effort. No fixing. Just proximity.
It struck me how rarely school leaders get that. You’re capable of that same stillness - it hasn’t gone anywhere. But there’s no one lying down beside you to help you find it.
And here’s the part that often goes unseen: when there’s no one to settle beside, you don’t actually stop. You just get better at appearing to. Decision-making narrows to whatever feels most urgent rather than what matters most. Reactive leadership starts to feel like the only kind available, simply because there’s never the stillness needed for anything else. And it follows you home - not as a thought you can name, but as a low hum that doesn’t switch off, even on the sofa, even on a Sunday, even on the drive home with the radio on and nothing left to say.
You might still sleep. You might still laugh at the right moments. None of this looks like crisis from the outside, which is exactly why it’s so easy to miss - including by you.
At some point, it stops being about coping - and starts shaping the kind of leader you are able to be.
This is not a capacity problem. It’s a conditions problem. You haven’t lost the ability to settle. You’ve simply never had anyone, or anywhere, to do it with.
More effort isn’t working. Pushing harder, staying later, holding it together more tightly - none of that gives your system what it actually needs. Because what’s missing isn’t effort. It’s somewhere to put it down.
In coaching, something different happens. There’s no interruption. No performance. No need to be the calm one for anyone else’s sake. You get to follow a thought all the way through, out loud, with someone simply alongside you. Not fixing. Not advising. Just present, the way the pup settles next to the older dog - and your own system, finally, gets the chance to do the same.
If you’ve recognised yourself in this, this isn’t something you fix by pushing harder. Coaching becomes the space you’ve been missing
Here's What I've Learnt
You haven’t lost your capability - it’s simply been working without rest. Thinking returns, almost on its own, the moment there’s space for it. And clarity was never something you could force; it was something you needed somewhere safe to find.
This is something I often see in coaching with school leaders.
Carry This With You
When was the last time you felt properly settled, rather than just composed?
Notice today: who, if anyone, do you let see the parts of you that aren’t holding it together?
What would change if settling didn’t depend entirely on you?
Clarity cannot compete with noise.
The Whisper
You were never meant to settle yourself alone.
Who settles you, when you’re always the one settling everyone else?
I help school leaders who feel like they’re slowly disappearing into the job -
find their way back.
If this resonates, I offer a complimentary 30 ‑ minute session where we focus on one thing that’s on your mind.
A simple space to step back, think clearly, and begin to feel like yourself again.