You’ve probably heard a lot about how to be present for someone else. How to listen well, hold space, sit with someone in their hardest moments. But there’s a question that doesn’t get asked nearly as often: what happens afterwards?
After the conversation ends. After the person walks off and goes back to their day.
Here’s a scene you’ll probably recognise, in one shape or another. You’re walking to your car at the end of the day and a staff member catches you for “just a quick word,” and twenty minutes later you know a lot more about what they’re going through at home than you did an hour ago. Or it’s a parent who breaks down in the doorway during pickup. Or a colleague opens up in the lunchroom. Or it’s not work at all — it’s your sister on the phone, or a friend who finally says the thing they’ve been sitting on.
These conversations don’t wait for the right time or the right person. You can have them anywhere, with anyone — a staff member, a client, a family you support, someone you manage, or someone you love. And whoever it is, the pattern afterwards tends to be the same. They walk away looking lighter. You say something like “call me anytime” and mean it. And then you’re left standing there, and whatever they handed you doesn’t just evaporate. It’s still sitting in your chest an hour later. It’s still there when you’re trying to fall asleep that night.
What do you do with that?
If you don’t have an answer, presence turns into depletion. And depletion doesn’t help anyone — not you, and not the next person who needs you to show up.
Feeling something afterwards isn’t weakness
Emotion is meant to move through us. When you support someone through something hard, it’s normal to feel it afterwards. That’s not a sign you’re not cut out for this. It’s just what happens when you actually care.
The question isn’t whether you feel it. It’s whether you know how to let it move through you instead of getting stuck with it.
That’s what the AAA Sequence is for. Three steps. I think of it as self-compassion in practice, not another thing to master.
The AAA Sequence
Aware. Notice what’s there. Name it. Find where it sits in your body. Don’t attach a story to it yet — not “this is because I always take on too much” or “I should have said something different.” Just notice it.
Accept. Breathe into it. Not to push it away — to make room for it. A physiological sigh helps here: two short inhales through the nose, one long exhale through the mouth. Or the 4-7-8 pattern, if that’s more your thing — in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8. You’re not suppressing anything. You’re just letting it be there for a moment.
Allow. This is the part people usually skip, and it’s the part that actually finishes the job. Allow means giving the emotion somewhere to go instead of gripping it, picking it apart, or white-knuckling through the rest of your day. Sometimes that happens on its own — a walk, a good cry, telling a colleague what happened. The technique I use and teach is called intention tapping, developed by my friend Steve Wells. It gives the leftover emotional charge an actual pathway out, rather than leaving it to sit in your body until the next hard conversation adds to the pile.
Aware. Accept. Allow. Three small movements, and the emotion has somewhere to go.
Bad day, or a pattern?
One thing worth being honest about: sometimes this isn’t enough, and that’s not a failure.
The distinction I’d ask yourself is whether this was a bad day or whether it’s becoming a pattern. A hard conversation that leaves you rattled for an evening is a bad day — normal, human, expected. But if it’s the same heaviness showing up again and again, if it’s starting to affect your sleep, your patience, your relationships, or your ability to switch off — that’s not something the AAA Sequence, or any self-help tool, is meant to fix on its own.
That’s the point to bring it to someone else. A debrief, supervision, a professional. Carrying it alone isn’t presence. It’s just depletion with a better story attached.
Where to go from here
The AAA Sequence is one part of a bigger framework I teach called the H.A.R.T. Model — what to do before, during, and after a hard conversation. If you want the fuller picture, I’ve put together a free session walking through it, recorded from a recent Power of Presence talk — and there’s more on this whole topic, including the “before” and “during” parts, over on our other Power of Presence article.
Being present for someone else will always ask something of you. It doesn’t have to cost you your own wellbeing. Learn to let what you carry move through you, and you’ll find you can keep showing up — for other people, and for yourself — a lot longer.
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Rocky Biasi is the founder of Human Connections and creator of the Accidental Counsellor Training program, which has equipped more than 20,000 people across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia with the skills to respond when someone brings a difficult moment to them.