The Man on the Tube On fear, hope, and what happens when we stay curious

It was late. We were heading home after a concert, my daughter and I. She's nine. And I'll be honest with you when I'm tired, really tired, I'm nine too.

The noise, the crowds, the speed of it, the unpredictability. Sometimes the tube does something to me that I can't entirely reason my way out of. My body just decides it doesn't like it, and that's that. So we got on, and the carriage was busy. And then I heard it... loud, heavy, angry music, filling the entire carriage. Not just the seats nearby. Three sets of doors down. The whole space saturated with it. My first instinct was simple: I didn't feel safe. I walked my daughter to the far end of the carriage and stood there, aware of how my body had closed, tightened, readied itself. And then I noticed something almost more uncomfortable than the fear - the anger.

Because nobody was saying anything. The whole carriage, quietly absorbing it. And I was furious.

I started having a conversation in my head. The hero version of me.

Hey mate, turn it down. There are other people here. I've got a child with me.

I played it out in full. The confrontation, the moment, the dignity of it. And then, somewhere in the middle of my imaginary heroism, something shifted.

I found myself wondering, what if instead of asking him to turn it down, I asked him to play something fun? Something lighter. Something that might catch him off guard. And in this little film I was making in my head, he looked up. And I asked him what the music was actually about. And he told me it was about hope. That he was rapping about hope. And I thought..I can't feel it. All I can feel is the anger and the despair. That stayed with me.

Because there is a profound difference between wanting things to change and actually feeling hopeful. Between living in anger at what is, and being able to imagine, and move toward, something different. And that difference, that gap between despair and hope, shows up everywhere. In how we communicate. In how we relate. In whether we reach toward people or away from them.

In my little daydream, as I started to think about hope rather than threat, something happened. I softened. Toward him. Toward the carriage. Toward the whole impossible situation. Not because anything had changed, the music was still loud, my body was still uncomfortable, but because I had shifted what I was holding in my mind. And then I started thinking about choice. Because in that carriage, this person was making a choice that meant nobody else had one. Nobody could opt out of his music. Nobody had been asked. And that felt important, not just as an inconvenience, but as something worth sitting with.

Because so many people move through the world without much choice. And I found myself wondering, how many times had this man been on the receiving end of that? How many times had his environment, his circumstances, his story, made the choice for him before he even got a say? I don't know his life. I'm speculating. I'm projecting, probably. But I think that's allowed, as long as we know that's what we're doing.

Here's the thing I didn't expect.

When I came back to the memory of it the next day, I realised something. In my hero fantasy, the one where I say the right thing, the carriage softens, we're all dancing to my favourite song, I had told myself a story about bravery.

But it wasn't bravery. Not really.

It was fear.

I was frightened on that tube. I often am. My nervous system, my neurology, the part of me that is still sometimes nine years old in loud and unpredictable spaces, that part was scared. Stephen Porges, who developed polyvagal theory, would recognise this instantly. When our nervous system detects threat, it doesn't wait for permission from our rational mind. It acts first. The body closes, tightens, prepares. For those of us who are neurodivergent, whose nervous systems are already finely tuned to unpredictability and sensory overwhelm, that response can be even faster, even stronger. It isn't weakness. It's biology. And understanding it.... really understanding it is one of the most important things I've learned both as a therapist working in North London and as someone with lived experience of ADHD.

And what I was doing, in my head, was trying to find a way through that biological response that felt like agency rather than shutdown. And I think that's actually the choice. Not bravery versus cowardice. But this:

When I am frightened, do I close? Do I keep people at a distance, make them into threats, stay defended and small?

Or do I open? Do I get curious? Do I try to understand something more about the humans around me, even the ones who are making my body want to get off at the next stop?

I don't always manage the second one. I want to be honest about that. But I think it matters enormously that we try. That we ask the questions even when we can't answer them. That we wonder about the person in the corner with the angry music and consider, even briefly, even imperfectly, what might be going on for them.

There is a wisdom in doing this carefully, thoughtfully. Not every situation calls for engagement. Not every moment is safe to open into. We have to use judgment. But I think there is always a point in trying to understand each other. Even when we're tired. Even when we're nine. Even when the music is too loud and the carriage is too full and all we want is to get home.

Maybe especially then.

When fear shows up, yours or someone else's, what does it make you want to do?