When You Can’t Calm Down

by Lillian Daniel | published on Dec 17, 2025

The peace of God, which passes all human understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:7 (NRSV) 

Have you ever told someone to calm down and had it work? I really haven’t. As much as I would like for my words to cast a magic spell, the incantation “Calm down” seldom has any long-term calming effect on the person I am talking to.  

Have you ever been instructed to calm down and had it work on you? I definitely haven’t. When someone tells me to “Calm down,” I may appear to become more peaceful—as I stop, take a breath, self-edit, hold back my opinions, sit lower in my seat, or suddenly remember an errand I have to run and flee the premises—but I’m about as peaceful as a mouse caught by a cat in the middle of a bright room. What looks like inner peace may in fact be checking out, shutting down, trying to become invisible, or looking for an escape. “Calm down” puts me on high alert, and while there are times when that is a good and necessary thing, it is never actually calming.  

In all my time as a pastor, no one has ever come back to me ten years later and said, “Thank you for telling me to calm down that day. It fixed everything and I just wish I had thought of it myself.” 

But I have had many cases in my own life where I have come back years later to thank someone for listening to me without trying to fix me, giving the Holy Spirit more room to work. When I’ve been loved and listened to, in or after a heated moment, I have felt the peace of God that exceeds all human understanding, shifting my story in the midst of telling it from a rant to a redemption, from a conquest to a confession, from a temper tantrum to a tale tempered by grace. The state of calm is not a commodity we control or command, but a gift from God, shared through people and delivered through storms.  

Prayer
When calming down won’t do it, open me up, God.

Lillian Daniel About the Author
Lillian Daniel serves as Conference Minister with the Michigan Conference UCC. She is the author of Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To and When “Spiritual But Not Religious” Is Not Enough.