About
There is a voice in your head that never stops talking.
It wakes before you do. Scans for threats. Rehearses conversations you haven’t had yet and replays ones you had years ago. It tells you to keep going when your body says stop. It tells you to stay quiet when something in you wants to speak.
I call that voice the Rat.
Not because it’s bad. Not because it’s your enemy. But because it moves fast, it lives in the walls of the mind, and it is always watching for danger.
The Rat is not you. But it has spoken on your behalf for so long that it can feel like it is.
When it says, “Don’t let them see you struggle,” you don’t hear fear. You hear common sense.
That’s the problem.
Grief
My father died when I was sixteen. I learned early that the world doesn’t wait for you to grieve. You just keep going.
So I kept going.
From the outside, everything looked fine. I worked hard. I led teams. I built a life. Inside, something stayed tight — alert, guarded, unwilling to let go. Even when things were going well, I felt as if I had to hold everything together.
At forty-two, my wife said, “You’re not really here.”
She was right.
The armour that had helped me cope was now keeping me distant — from her, from our children, and from myself.
When my brother died in 2022, that armour cracked. Not gradually. Completely.
I began walking by the Vltava River in Prague. No plan. No technique. Just movement, space, and the sound of water.
Nothing dramatic happened.
But something quieted.
The Pattern
Working with leaders under pressure, I began to recognise the same pattern. Capable people who weren’t tired from effort alone, but from defending. Performing strength long after it was needed.
Over time, I started to notice four presences in those conversations.
A part that carries responsibility.
A part that protects.
A part that asks the question.
And a steadier place underneath it all.
I call them the Stag, the Rat, the Wren, and the River.
Not characters to believe in — simply a way of noticing what was already happening.
Love
Taming the Rat sounds like control. Techniques. Willpower. A system.
That’s not what this is.
The way to tame the Rat is not to fight it. It is to love it.
I know how that sounds. Especially to a leader who has spent his life solving problems through force and discipline.
But the Rat got loud because it was frightened. It built walls because something once broke through. It told you not to feel because feeling once cost you something you couldn’t afford to lose.
When you fight the Rat, it fights harder. When you try to silence it, it gets louder.
But when you turn toward it — when you say, I see you, I know why you’re here, and I’m grateful — something changes.
It gets quiet.
Not because you overpowered it.
Because it no longer needs to shout.
The Dialogues
I created this for leaders who carry responsibility — founders, executives, professional athletes — and who have learned to stay composed at a cost.
If you recognise yourself in any of this, you’ll recognise yourself in what I share in my writing and coaching.
These are stories. Eight short dialogues between the Stag, the Rat, the Wren, and the River. There is also one longer story — The Stag's Journey, where he walks away from his herd, finds the River, and discovers that the voice he’d been obeying all his life was not the truth.
There are no exercises here. No worksheets. No seven-step frameworks.
Only recognition.
If the stories do their job, you will hear the Rat. Notice the Stag. Feel the Wren. Remember the River.
That loosening is the beginning.
Walk with Me
I live in Prague now. I walk along the Vltava most mornings. The river doesn’t push. It doesn’t rush. It has been flowing through this city for longer than anyone can remember, and it will keep flowing long after we’re gone.
When leaders come to see me, I take them to the river. We walk. We talk. And somewhere along the water, the Rat gets quieter, and the real conversation begins.
Andrew Sillitoe