How many times have you told yourself, ‘If I could just…’?

If I could just get up earlier. If I could just get organised. If I could just finish that thing. If I could just go to bed when I’m tired. If I could just do the things I know would make me feel better.

If I could just.

There is something about that phrase that makes me think of all the stuff we can see just beyond the glass. It’s just there. We can see it. We can practically touch it. It feels completely tangible and yet, somehow, it exists in a different dimension.

If I could just find the formula. If I could just find the key. If I could just work out the right abracadabra.

And the thing on the other side of the glass can be tiny. If I could just answer the email. If I could just eat the food that is already in my fridge. If I could just get out of bed when the alarm goes off. If I could just wear the fucking bra/ socks/ tights/ shoes.

But follow ‘if I could just’ far enough and it can take us somewhere much bigger.

If I could just not be so sensitive. If I could just cope better. If I could just do things like other people seem to do them. If I could just be normal. If I could just be different from who I am.

If I could just not be myself.

If I could just be somebody else.

Pulling those four little words apart made me realise their enormity… ‘if I could just’ is an absolutely exquisitely refined instrument of torture. Because there is a ridiculous amount going on in there.

‘If’ has already taken us out of the present and into that different dimension. It has placed the thing we want somewhere just beyond reach, in a hypothetical future where everything might finally be different.

‘I’ has made whatever is happening entirely ours to solve. The responsibility has landed squarely on our shoulders, as though the answer must be hidden somewhere inside us if only we could find it.

‘Could’ introduces the question of why we apparently aren’t capable of doing it. It suggests that this is within our capacity, so if we aren’t doing it, there must be something wrong with us.

And ‘just’ gives us that final little pinch of judgement. Come on. It’s not that fucking hard now, is it?

If = hypothetical
I = all down to me
Could = questioning capacity
Just = it shouldn’t be this hard

No wonder it packs such a punch.

Once I started noticing it, I realised how much ‘if I could just’ belongs to the Judge.

The Judge is the part of us that is forever monitoring the distance between where we are and where we think we should be. It isn’t necessarily trying to be an arsehole. A lot of the time it is trying to keep us safe. Getting things right feels safer than getting things wrong, and so it keeps pointing at the other side of the glass.

Surely there is something I could do. Something I could change. Maybe I could amend the way I say it, or the way I behave. Maybe I could try harder. Maybe I could find the right routine, the right system, the right way of working. Maybe if I could change something about myself, I could finally find the abracadabra that opens the door.

And I think this is where ‘if I could just’ gets tangled up with control.

Not control in some nefarious, power-hungry sense. Control as an attempt to find safety. Because if I believe there is something I could do to make this different, then I still have some control over the outcome.

Even guilt and shame can give us that illusion. ‘I should have done better’ hurts, but it also allows us to believe that we could have made everything turn out differently. Sometimes it is strangely safer to make ourselves responsible than to accept that there are things we cannot control.

Of course, sometimes there absolutely is something we can do differently. This isn’t an argument for shrugging our shoulders, blaming the universe and going back to bed.

It is about noticing when we are standing at a door for which we simply do not have the key.

We cannot control somebody else’s behaviour. We cannot make an organisation change because we finally find exactly the right way to explain what isn’t working. We cannot guarantee ourselves a good night’s sleep. We cannot know what capacity we are going to wake up with tomorrow. We cannot think our way out of uncertainty.

And yet we can spend an extraordinary amount of energy trying.

This is why I keep coming back to the distinction between control and agency.

The opposite of control isn’t chaos. It’s agency.

Control keeps me staring through the glass, trying to work out how to make what I can see on the other side happen. Agency brings me back to this side, to what is actually happening here, what the conditions are, what is within my control and what isn’t, what capacity I actually have and what the fact that I am finding something difficult might be telling me.

That can be a much less satisfying place to start, because sometimes the answers are inconvenient.

Sometimes I have less capacity today. Sometimes the environment is part of the problem. Sometimes I don’t know yet. Sometimes the thing I keep trying to make myself do really does feel fucking horrible to me. Sometimes what worked for me for twenty-five years worked at an enormous cost.

Sometimes there isn’t a key.

And I think ‘if I could just’ can have a particular sting for neurodivergent people because so many of our versions of it have accumulated over years of watching other people apparently do things that we cannot understand why we find so difficult.

If I could just remember. If I could just start. If I could just be consistent. If I could just tolerate the socks. If I could just wear the fucking bra like a normal person. If I could just stop finding all of this so hard.

It starts with the socks and somewhere along the way it becomes: if I could just not be myself.

Which is why I don’t particularly want to ban ‘if I could just’. That would be wonderfully ironic, turning this into yet another rule to get right.

I want to notice it.

Because perhaps hearing myself say ‘if I could just’ can become a little warning that the Judge has put their robe on. Instead of immediately trying harder to get through the glass, I can get curious about why the glass is there.

What am I trying to control? What am I assuming is mine to fix? What conditions am I leaving out? What is my actual capacity here?

And, perhaps most usefully of all, what is making this hard?

Because ‘if I could just’ starts from the assumption that the difficulty shouldn’t be there.

‘What is making this hard?’ allows for the possibility that it has something to tell us.