We often describe it as anxiety. But for many people, that word doesn't go far enough. What they’re experiencing isn’t just worry or nerves, it’s something deeper, older, more embedded. It’s courtroom logic.
This is the term I use to describe what happens when the nervous system is constantly preparing for punishment. It’s not about being afraid of a specific situation. It’s about the chronic internal state of bracing. It’s the feeling that if you don’t check, re-check, rehearse, soften, or explain yourself, something bad will happen. And worse, that you’ll be blamed for it.
These aren’t personality quirks. They’re not signs of overthinking. They are survival adaptations.
Courtroom logic is shaped in environments where safety was conditional, where mistakes carried consequences beyond the moment, and where being misunderstood meant emotional, or sometimes physical danger. For many people, these patterns begin early in life and become so normalised that they no longer recognise them as protective. They just feel like “how am I?”
But at some point in the healing process, quietly, without fanfare, the courtroom begins to go quiet. You’re no longer rehearsing every sentence before you speak. You stop scanning conversations for what you might’ve missed. You write the email and press send once.
This shift isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t come after a breakthrough or a perfect morning routine. In fact, it often goes unnoticed at first. What people describe is a strange kind of stillness. A moment where they realise they haven’t been on edge. They haven’t been checking. And for a split second, they feel exposed.
Because when the courtroom goes quiet, the first thing you feel isn’t peace. It’s grief.
Grief for how long you had to be on alert. Grief for how young you were when the trial began. Grief for all the times you explained yourself to people who never understood you. Grief for how much of your life was spent proving you were safe to be around.
This grief matters. It’s not a weakness. It’s not regression. It’s integration.
The body doesn’t update on logic’s schedule. You can understand your past, map your patterns, even rewrite your beliefs—but if the nervous system still expects danger, it will act like it’s still on trial. True change happens when the body experiences something different: saying no and staying safe, being misunderstood and remaining intact, resting and not being punished for it.
As this begins to happen, your system no longer sees safety as something to earn. It begins to register as a possibility. You stop performing worth. You stop begging to be believed. You no longer need to explain your history to people who were never in the room where it happened.
And in that stillness, you find something clean. Not performance-based confidence, but quiet presence. You stop asking to be safe. You start recognising that you already are.
If any of this feels familiar—if you’ve lived under constant internal trial without knowing why—you’re not broken. You’re a nervous system doing its best to stay intact.
And you’re allowed to walk out of that courtroom now.
If any of this feels familiar, if you’ve lived under constant internal trial without knowing why, you’re not broken. You’re a nervous system doing its best to stay intact. And you’re allowed to walk out of that courtroom now.
Read the full article here: https://rogerhughes.org/2026/01/29/the-day-the-courtroom-goes-quiet/
