Hello, The Good Principal.
I’ve been reading some of the confessions here lately, and I keep finding myself thinking, “Okay, so it’s not just me.”
I’ve thought about sending something a few times but always ended up closing the page. I don’t know. It feels strange putting something so personal out there, even with a different name.
But today was one of those days when everyone kept telling me how calm I was.
And for some reason, that was the thing that finally made me want to write.
You can call me Michelle. That’s not my real name, obviously.
I guess I just want to know if anyone else feels this way.
I’ve always been the person people describe as steady.
Even before I became a principal.
I don’t raise my voice easily. I don’t like making decisions when I’m angry. I usually wait, listen, ask questions, and try not to make a tense situation worse.
That sounds like a good thing.
Most of the time, it is.
But there are days when being “the calm one” feels less like a strength and more like a job nobody told me I would be doing all day.
That happened recently.
By lunchtime, one teacher had cried in my office, another had been angry enough that I had to keep bringing the conversation back down, and a parent was waiting outside looking like she was about five seconds away from raising her voice.
And somehow I was the one everybody expected to stay calm.
Again.
I remember sitting there thinking:
Can somebody else be calm today?
Just once?
Because I was tired.
Not sleepy.
Not physically tired.
Tired of being the person who has to lower the temperature in the room every single time somebody else gets upset.
That morning started with two teachers disagreeing over something that honestly should’ve been simple.
It wasn’t.
By the time they got to me, it was already personal.
One was talking fast.
The other had that very controlled voice people use when they are trying very hard not to lose it.
And there I was in the middle.
“Okay. One at a time.”
Calm voice.
Neutral face.
Don’t react too much.
Don’t agree too quickly.
Don’t say anything that can be repeated later as:
“Ma’am said…”
Listen.
Ask.
Clarify.
Keep everybody from making it worse.
I was doing all of that while thinking:
I really don’t have the energy for this today.
But you can’t exactly say that.
So I stayed calm.
They left.
Maybe twenty minutes later, one of them came back crying.
Not dramatic crying.
Quiet crying.
Which somehow feels heavier.
She sat down and started telling me things that weren’t even really about the original issue anymore.
It had become about respect.
Feeling excluded.
Things people had said.
Things people had not said.
Things she had been holding for months, apparently.
So I listened again.
Calm voice.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
Inside?
I was irritated.
There.
That’s the part I wouldn’t normally say.
A person was crying in front of me and part of me was irritated.
Not at her exactly.
At the whole situation.
At having to absorb another person’s emotions when I could barely manage my own that day.
And yes, I felt terrible for thinking that.
Still thought it.
Then the parent came.
Different issue.
Student concern.
She was upset before she even sat down.
I could tell from the way she put her bag on the chair.
You know that kind of angry where the person is trying to be polite but every sentence is one step away from becoming louder?
That.
So now I’m doing it again.
“Let’s go through what happened.”
Calm.
“Tell me what you were told.”
Calm.
“I understand why you’re concerned.”
Calm.
Meanwhile I could feel myself getting annoyed because she kept repeating the same point.
Then she interrupted me.
Twice.
And for maybe half a second I wanted to say:
If you already know everything, why are you here?
Didn’t say it.
Obviously.
I smiled.
Kept my voice low.
Kept listening.
She eventually calmed down.
Good.
Great.
Another successful day of being the emotionally stable adult in the room.
Except I wasn’t feeling very stable.
That’s the weird part.
People assume the calmest person in the room is calm.
Sometimes she’s just better at hiding it.
By lunch, I had already talked three people down from three completely different emotional states.
And nobody knew I was in a bad mood too.
Nobody asked.
Not because they were bad people.
They had their own things going on.
And I’m the principal.
That changes the way people read you.
If I go quiet, someone thinks I’m upset with them.
If I look tired, someone asks if something happened at school.
If my tone changes, people notice.
So sometimes it feels easier to stay neutral.
Fine.
Steady.
Professional.
Whatever word you want to use.
But there are days I really hate being the calm one.
Because being calm doesn’t mean you’re not angry.
Sometimes I’m angry too.
Being calm doesn’t mean you’re not hurt.
Sometimes something somebody says gets to me and I still have to finish the conversation like it didn’t.
Being calm doesn’t mean you know what to do.
Sometimes I’m buying time with a slow voice because I have absolutely no idea what the right answer is yet.
I’ve had meetings where everyone was looking at me waiting for the next sentence and my brain was basically saying:
Do not make this worse.
That’s it.
That was the whole strategy.
Do not make this worse.
Sometimes it works.
Apparently that counts as leadership.
Later that afternoon, one of the teachers stopped by and said:
“Ma’am, I don’t know how you stay so calm.”
I laughed.
Actually laughed.
She meant it as a compliment.
And I know it was kind.
But for some reason it hit me wrong.
Because I wanted to say:
I’m not calm.
I’m just not allowed to fall apart in front of you.
I didn’t say that.
I said:
“You get used to it.”
Another lie, maybe.
I don’t think you get used to it.
You just get better at delaying your reaction.
You wait until the meeting is over.
Until the parent leaves.
Until the teacher closes the door.
Until everyone goes home.
Then maybe you sit there for a minute and realize your jaw hurts because you’ve been clenching it.
Or you get in the car and suddenly you’re angry about something that happened five hours ago.
Or someone at home asks you a completely normal question and you answer too sharply because apparently that’s where the emotion finally decided to come out.
That part makes me feel awful.
Because the people who get the calm version of me are often the people at school.
The people who get whatever is left sometimes are the ones at home.
I don’t like that.
But it happens.
There have been days when I’ve sat in the car before driving home just because I knew I wasn’t ready to talk to anybody yet.
Five minutes.
Ten.
No music.
Just silence.
Trying to come down from being “fine” all day.
And maybe that sounds dramatic.
It really isn’t.
Nothing terrible happened.
That’s the point.
Sometimes nobody screams.
Nobody threatens anybody.
There’s no crisis.
It’s just eight hours of staying measured while everybody else gets to have feelings in your office.
That can wear you out too.
I don’t want people to stop coming to me.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I don’t want teachers to think they have to hide when they’re struggling.
I don’t want parents to feel they can’t be upset.
I don’t want staff walking on eggshells around me.
I just sometimes wish there was somewhere I could go and not be the person who has to hold the room together.
Because there are days when I’m tired of being reasonable.
Tired of lowering my voice.
Tired of saying:
“Let’s look at this calmly.”
Tired of being the one who has to wait before reacting.
Sometimes I want to be the upset one.
I want somebody else to say:
“Okay, Ma’am. Sit down. Tell me what happened.”
And maybe I wouldn’t even know what to say.
Because I’ve gotten so used to being the one listening.
That is probably why I’m sending this.
I don’t really need advice on how to stay calm.
I know how to do that.
Maybe too well.
What I want to know is what other school leaders do with everything they hold back during the day.
Where does it go?
Who gets the version of you that is not composed?
And what happens when you have spent years being the person everyone else expects to stay steady?
Thank you for giving us somewhere to say the part that does not look very impressive from the outside.
Sometimes the hardest thing to admit is that the calm person is not actually calm.
— Michelle
FROM THE GOOD PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE
Michelle, I think the sentence that says almost everything is this:
“I don’t really need advice on how to stay calm. I know how to do that.”
Exactly.
The problem is not that you lack emotional control.
You clearly have a lot of it.
The question is what happens to everything you control.
Because staying calm is not the same as not feeling anything.
You can lower your voice while being angry.
You can listen patiently while feeling irritated.
You can look composed while your body is tense.
You can help someone regulate herself while quietly struggling to regulate yourself.
From the outside, all of that can look like strength.
And sometimes it is.
But strength has a cost when it becomes the only version of you people are allowed to see.
That is where I would start.
Not with:
“How can I become even better at staying calm?”
But:
“Where do my reactions get to go after I postpone them?”
Because postponed emotion does not always disappear.
Sometimes it waits.
You described that very clearly.
The meeting ends.
The parent leaves.
The teacher feels better.
You move on.
Then hours later, your jaw hurts.
You sit silently in the car.
Someone at home asks an innocent question and suddenly your response is sharper than the situation deserves.
That is not random.
Sometimes the safest people in our lives get the emotion that did not feel safe to express anywhere else.
That does not mean you intended to take it home.
But delayed emotion often looks for an exit.
So one of the first things I would pay attention to is the transition between school and home.
Not some elaborate wellness routine.
Something realistic.
Maybe the ten minutes you already spend sitting in the car become intentional instead of guilty.
No calls.
No emails.
No replaying tomorrow yet.
Just:
What am I carrying right now?
Am I angry?
Embarrassed?
Frustrated?
Sad?
Still thinking about something someone said?
Sometimes naming the feeling before you walk through the next door can stop it from choosing its own place to come out.
You may even need a simple rule with the people close to you.
Something like:
“I had a heavy day. Give me fifteen minutes before we talk about anything complicated.”
That is very different from bringing the whole school home with you.
It is simply acknowledging that you need to come down from the day before expecting yourself to switch roles instantly.
There is also something else happening in your confession.
You are doing a lot of emotional regulation for other adults.
A teacher gets angry.
You slow the room down.
Someone cries.
You create space.
A parent becomes confrontational.
You keep your own tone steady so the conversation does not escalate.
That is real work.
It requires attention.
Judgment.
Self-control.
And restraint.
But because there is no report at the end of it, leaders sometimes do not count it.
They simply wonder why they are exhausted.
Count it.
If you spent an hour containing tension between adults, that cost something.
If you spent thirty minutes listening carefully while suppressing your own irritation so you did not make someone feel dismissed, that cost something too.
You do not need to dramatize it.
You just need to stop pretending it was nothing.
Another part I would examine is the belief underneath this line:
“I’m just not allowed to fall apart in front of you.”
There are situations where, yes, the principal cannot simply unload emotionally in the middle of someone else’s crisis.
That would not be fair.
If a teacher is crying in your office, that is probably not the moment to say:
“Actually, let me tell you about my day.”
But professional steadiness does not have to become emotional invisibility.
There is a lot of space between being appropriately composed and pretending you never struggle.
A leader can say:
“This has been a difficult day for me too.”
A leader can say:
“I want to think before I respond because I’m feeling frustrated right now.”
A leader can say:
“I need ten minutes before we continue this conversation.”
Those statements do not necessarily weaken authority.
Sometimes they make your regulation more honest.
You are still responsible for what you do with the emotion.
But you do not have to pretend the emotion is absent.
That distinction matters.
Because if “good leadership” starts meaning:
Nobody should ever know that anything affects me,
you are building a very lonely standard.
And it is probably impossible to sustain.
There is another question in your letter that I would take seriously:
Who gets the version of you that is not composed?
Every leader needs an answer to that.
Not everybody.
Definitely not everybody at work.
But someone.
A trusted friend.
A partner.
A mentor.
Another school leader who understands the role.
A professional space where confidentiality is respected.
Somewhere you do not have to be useful.
Somewhere you can say:
“That parent made me furious.”
“I handled the meeting well, but I hated every minute of it.”
“I don’t know if I made the right call.”
“I’m tired of being the reasonable one.”
without the listener immediately needing you to solve something.
Because if every relationship in your professional life depends on you being the regulated one, then eventually leadership starts becoming emotionally one-directional.
Everybody comes toward you.
Very little comes back.
That is where loneliness can enter even when you spend the entire day surrounded by people.
And yes…
this is one of those moments where I can genuinely say:
there is a book about that part.
The Lonely Office is not a conflict-management book.
It is not about becoming tougher.
It is not a guide to staying calm under pressure.
You already know how to stay calm.
It is about what can happen emotionally when you become the person other people lean on while slowly realizing there are fewer places where you can lean too.
The emotions you postpone.
The conversations you carry home.
The things you cannot casually repeat.
The strange feeling of being needed by people all day and still feeling alone with your own experience of the job.
It explores the part of leadership that can remain invisible precisely because you are handling it well.
And maybe that is what makes this confession fit so closely.
Everyone around you sees:
Michelle stayed calm.
The book is interested in what happens after everyone leaves and Michelle no longer has to.
Not because you should become less professional.
Because you are still a person underneath the professionalism.
So if you have become very good at being the calm one…
but you are starting to wonder where all the things you do not show are supposed to go…
The Lonely Office may feel familiar.
Maybe the first question is not:
“How do I keep holding everything together?”
Maybe it is:
“Who holds space for me when I don’t want to?”
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