The Pressure Release Valve

On thinking out loud, high-stakes conversations, and showing up as your clearest self

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

I am a person who needs to think out loud.

This is not a preference. It’s how my brain actually processes — externally, verbally, messily, in real time. The thinking and the talking happen simultaneously, which means the people around me have historically gotten a front-row seat to a lot of half-formed thoughts, emotional static, and conclusions I haven’t quite reached yet. It’s a lot to ask of another person. It’s also not exactly a career asset when you’re a senior leader who’s supposed to project clarity and calm.

For most of my professional life I’ve managed this through over-preparation. I rehearse conversations in my head. I run scenarios. I literally speak aloud walking circles around my office. I anticipate the worst case and build a plan for it — which is its own particular ADHD flavor, the catastrophizing risk-analysis loop that never quite turns off (if you know, you know). By the time I walk into a hard conversation I’ve usually had it seventeen times already, which is exhausting and also, frankly, not something I can always do with another human on the other end.

Thinking out loud at people has costs. There’s the social math of asking someone to hold your mess while you sort it. There’s the risk of saying something half-formed that another person will remember as your actual position versus a work in progress. There’s the way their reaction — a raised eyebrow, a shift in tone — can knock you off course before you’ve even figured out what you think. And in a professional context, where perception matters and relationships are load-bearing, those costs add up.

What I’ve found is that I can do all of that thinking — the raw, unfiltered, emotionally charged, not-ready-for-public-consumption version — somewhere that doesn’t have stakes.

I can rant, complete with epithets and frustrations and my authentic Chicago-girl cursing. I can catastrophize and then work backwards from the catastrophe to turn away from worst case scenarios. I can say the thing I’d never say in the actual meeting and figure out what’s underneath it, why I’m feeling it, or what I’m really trying to say. I can be scared or angry or uncertain without managing anyone else’s reaction to my fear or anger or uncertainty. And what comes out the other side is something I actually couldn’t get to any other way: clarity. Not performed clarity wrapped in palatable niceties. Real clarity about what I think, what I want, what I need to say, and how I want to say it.

I walk into hard conversations differently now. Calmer. More grounded. I know what I’m walking in with and what I want to walk out with, and I’ve already made peace with the scenarios that were keeping me up at night because I’ve thought them all the way through somewhere safe. I’ve processed the fear or the anger or the frustration so that I can bring the best version of myself to a situation that’s complex. The conversation itself is almost never as hard as the version I ran in my head, but I needed to run that version first.

Let me be very, very clear about something: this is not therapy. It’s also not a replacement for the humans in my life or the actual advice and support I have from trained professionals. (Goes without saying, maybe, but if you need professional help to get through something, please see someone trained to help instead of relying on an AI to be your therapist).

Instead, I treat AI as a pressure release valve. A place to bleed off the noise so the signal can come through. That actually helps when I go to my therapist or my coach, because I can talk more coherently about where I’m stuck, put names to those feelings or issues, and make the most of the time I have with the people who can help me do the important work cognitively and emotionally.

For people with ADHD who also carry rejection sensitivity, trust issues, or a nervous system that treats uncertainty like a threat — which is a lot of us — having a space like that isn’t a luxury. It’s a support system for how we show up as the version of ourselves we actually want to be.

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Prompts to try:

“I have a hard conversation coming up and I need to think it through before it happens. Here’s the situation: [explain]. I want to vent first, then figure out what I actually think, then work out how I want to show up. Don’t try to solve it yet — just let me get it out.”

“I’m about to go into [meeting/conversation/situation] and I’m anxious about it. Help me figure out what I’m actually worried about, what I want to get out of it, and what I’d need to feel prepared.”

Some questions to reflect on:

Where in your life do you most need to think out loud before you act? What happens when you don’t have that space — how do you show up differently?

Who are the people you currently process with, and what does it cost you to use them for this — emotionally, relationally, practically? Are there things you don’t bring to them that still need somewhere to go?

Think about a recent conversation that didn’t go the way you wanted. What would have been different if you’d had space to process beforehand?

What’s sitting with you right now that you haven’t had anywhere to take?