I Believe in You, but You’ve Got to Want This Moment

When Toughness Builds — and When It Destroys

The Crossover Project — Where Ideas Collide

In March 2026, during the second round of the NCAA Tournament, ESPN cameras captured a moment that split the internet in two. Brenda Frese, head coach of the University of Maryland women's basketball team, walked up to her player Oluchi Okananwa in the middle of the third quarter. Maryland was losing to North Carolina. Frese spoke to her with an intensity that could be felt from the stands. She pointed at her. Lip readers interpreted what she said: "I believe in you, but you've got to want this moment."

Okananwa finished the game with 21 points.

After the game, Okananwa was asked what she had felt in that moment. Her response shut down the debate — at least temporarily: "Coach understands I'm a competitor at heart. I love to be coached hard. That's what she does with me every single day." She called it a "regroup moment."

The internet, of course, was not nearly as settled. One side celebrated: "That's how you build character." The other condemned: "That's emotional abuse." The polarization was immediate, massive, and completely predictable. But the question that neither side thought to ask was the most important one: What made that moment work? Not the toughness. Not the softness. Something more precise and harder to name.

It is the same question every parent, every boss, every coach has asked at least once: is it okay to be tough? And the honest answer — the one nobody wants to hear — is: it depends. It depends on what, on whom, and on when. That answer is unsatisfying because we want rules. We want to know whether to be firm or empathic, demanding or nurturing. The internet has trained us to pick a side and defend it. But what clinical psychology suggests — and what philosophy already intuited 250 years ago — is that the question itself is poorly framed. The point is not choosing between toughness and tenderness. It is something prior: the relationship you have built before the difficult moment arrives.

Think about it this way: how many times have you said exactly the right thing at exactly the wrong time? How many times have you given impeccable advice that landed nowhere — not because it was incorrect, but because the other person was not ready to hear it? The precision of the message matters less than we think. What matters is the foundation from which you speak, and whether that foundation, built day after day, allows intensity to be sustained without destruction.

This tension between intervening and letting be is not new. In 1750, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published his Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, where he argued that civilization corrupts man and that the natural state produces more authentic beings. Let the child be. Twelve years later, he published Emile, or On Education, where he designed in precise detail how a child should be raised. A careful plan. A firm hand. The easy reading says that Rousseau contradicted himself. The more interesting reading is different: Rousseau offered two tools for two contexts. Sometimes the child needs to be left alone. Sometimes the child needs to be guided with firmness. What determines which tool to use is not an ideology — it is a reading of the moment. Rousseau understood that different children require different approaches, and that the parent's job is not to choose one philosophy, but to read which one the moment demands.

That philosophical intuition has an empirical validation that has been accumulating for over a century. The Yerkes-Dodson law describes something that any athlete, musician, or student recognizes intuitively: performance does not improve linearly with more pressure. Too much calm and you are disconnected; too much activation and you freeze. In the middle lies an optimal zone — a level of arousal where you think better, react faster, and access the best version of yourself. What Frese did was something that good coaches do without necessarily naming it: she graduated Okananwa's arousal. She read her. She felt that Okananwa was low. And she ignited her.

But — and this is the point that the internet's polarization completely misses — she would not have done the same with every player. A smart coach calms one player and fires up another. Not because she has a style, but because she has a reading. That is not toughness or softness. That is graduation: the ability to adjust the emotional intensity of your intervention to the state of the other person.

But there is something crucial to clarify: that graduation is not a deliberate technique that one "decides" to apply coldly. Most of the time, it happens from right hemisphere to right hemisphere — it occurs, it is not planned. Frese did not make a rational calculation of how many decibels to raise her voice. She synchronized with Okananwa. She felt what the player needed before she could put it into words. And that is only possible when there is a relational history behind it: shared training sessions, accumulated moments of trust, a foundation built over time that allows intensity to flow without destroying. You synchronize first. Then you can graduate. Synchrony is the relational foundation; graduation is its behavioral expression. One without the other is noise.

It is not that you read the other person well and therefore you can be tough. It is that you treat the other person well, you give them security, and that increases the probability that when intensity arrives, it works. You cannot control the moment. What you can build is the relationship that holds it.

Ask yourself honestly: the last time you raised your voice at your child, a colleague, someone who depends on you — did you do it from a relational base that could sustain that moment? Or did you do it because you could no longer contain yourself? The difference between graduating and discharging is, more often than not, invisible from the outside. But from the inside, you know it perfectly well.

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If this essay made you doubt a moment you thought you had figured out — one with your child, with your team, with someone important — don't dismiss it too quickly.

That kind of doubt is not weakness. It is raw clinical work.

At The Crossover Project, I write for that exact moment: when something no longer quite fits, but you don't yet know why. If you want to keep thinking from there — not from comfortable certainties — subscribe.

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This constant need for adaptation does not belong exclusively to parenting or sports. There is a model in the business world — Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership — that proposes something simple but powerful: a leader who uses the same approach with all subordinates is not leading; they are repeating. The effective leader adapts their style to the context and maturity of the follower. What I am proposing here is that the same principle applies to emotional intervention. A parent who is always firm is not being strong; they are being rigid. A parent who is always soft is not being empathic; they are avoiding conflict. The parent who works has a capacity for synchrony: they know when their child needs a hug and when their child needs an uncomfortable truth. Let us call it, for now, situational emotional leadership.

But there is a crucial difference between that synchrony on the court and at home. In sports, what matters is adaptation: that the player performs. If Okananwa scores 21 points, the mechanism worked — whether it was authentic or performative. In parenting, the goal is different: we seek authenticity over adaptation. We do not want children who perform under pressure at the cost of losing themselves. We want children who can respond to the world without ceasing to be who they are. A defined but flexible identity. Frese needed Okananwa to play. A parent needs their child to live.

The Moment Where Everything Is at Stake

It is precisely in the pursuit of that vitality that the real frictions occur. Daniel Stern, psychoanalyst and developmental researcher, spent decades studying the micro-moments that produce real change in human relationships. He identified a special type of instant that he called a now moment: a moment of heightened affective intensity that disrupts the usual dynamic. A relational crisis in miniature. An emotional inflection point that can go either way.

The now moment is not therapeutic on its own. It is dangerous. It is the instant where everything can open or close. What determines the outcome is not the moment itself — it is what happens inside it. Whether there is a bond that can hold it. Whether two people can synchronize within the crisis. Whether the intensity comes from care or from contempt. Frese created a now moment with Okananwa. The intensity was visible, uncomfortable. But inside that moment was something that Frese's lips revealed: "I believe in you." The toughness did not create connection — it created the crisis. And inside that crisis, a prior bond held together what would otherwise have been plain aggression. Without that bond, the exact same words would have been abuse.

And a necessary clarification: "reading the other person" is not the same as "believing you read them." Genuine reading includes the possibility of being wrong. Anyone who is certain they read the other person well has probably stopped reading them.

Exactly what Stern describes in the consulting room can happen in a kitchen on an ordinary Tuesday. Imagine a father who rarely raises his voice. One day, his child crosses a serious line — mistreating his mother over something trivial. The father tries softness first. It does not work. Then he shifts registers and speaks with an intensity the child has never heard from him. The child cries. He says his father is unfair. He lashes out. He shuts down.

And later, when the storm passes, something shifts. There is no memorable phrase. But the father notices that his child stops attacking. There is a different kind of silence — not submission, not fear. Something closer to recognition. As if the intensity had cut through a layer that soft words could not reach.

That is a now moment. Charged, dangerous, painful. An instant that could have broken something — but which, inside a bond secure enough, did not destroy: it reorganized. The toughness worked precisely because it was exceptional. Because the child knew it came from someone who normally treats him with patience. The intensity carried weight because it was rare, and that is only possible when a history of care stands behind it.

Does that sound familiar? Have you had a moment like that — as a parent, as a child, as a boss, as a subordinate? An instant when someone spoke to you with an intensity that hurt but reorganized you? If the answer is yes, ask yourself what relationship you had with that person. It was probably someone whose reading of you — however harsh — felt like it came from a real place.

But there is a problem with everything you have just read, and it is important not to ignore it. Because even when there is a bond, even when there is history, even when the parent tries to synchronize rather than discharge, the intervention can fail all the same. A parent can know their child, can have built a solid foundation over years, can choose the moment carefully — and still get the intensity wrong. They can overestimate what the child can sustain. They can touch a zone more fragile than they imagined. They can believe they are generating a now moment that reorganizes, when in reality they are generating a moment the child learns to tolerate — but not to integrate. And the most uncomfortable part is this: from the outside, both moments can look exactly the same. The difference — reorganization or withdrawal — is not always visible in the act. Sometimes it only appears weeks later. Sometimes years. This does not invalidate synchrony. But it makes it more honest: it is not a guarantee. It is a wager — the best you can make, but a wager.

Here a clinical distinction is vital. There is a function that parents, coaches, and bosses fulfill that a therapist deliberately must not: dosing the experience of reality within the bond. A psychologist does not get tough with their patient — that is not their role. But a parent, a coach, or a boss can, because their function is not only to contain you — it is to prepare you for a world that will not always do so. Life imposes its intensity without asking permission: "Improve or I pull you from the team." "This is your last chance." Those phrases exist outside your safe zone. Someone has to teach you, inside a context where the bond is present, that intensity exists, that you can survive it, and that it does not mean the other person stopped caring about you. That is the difference between toughness in a vacuum and toughness inside a bond. The first destroys. The second prepares. The border between them is not in the intensity of what is said — it is in the relationship from which it is said.

The Paradox of the Parent Who Doubts

Peter Fonagy, one of the most influential researchers in developmental psychology, described something that at first glance seems contradictory: when you doubt whether you are mentalizing — that is, whether you are truly reading your child — you probably are mentalizing. When you are absolutely certain you know what your child needs, you have probably stopped reading them.

Reflective doubt is a sign that you are still thinking. Certainty, on the other hand, is usually a sign of rigidity: you have stopped reading and started reciting.

If you have ever wondered whether you are too tough or too soft with your child, with your team, with the people who depend on you — that question already says something good about you. It does not mean you are doing it perfectly. It means you have not stopped thinking.

But be careful: not all doubt is mentalization. Anxious rumination — "Am I a good parent? Am I a good parent? Am I a good parent?" — repeated in a paralyzing loop, is not reading the other; it is being trapped in yourself. When doubt prevents you from acting, you are not synchronizing with anyone. And in those cases, asking for help is not weakness. It is mentalization in action: recognizing that you do not have to know everything.

This release from omnipotence leads us directly to what Donald Winnicott coined to change parenting forever: the good enough parent. Good enough does not mean mediocre. It means that the parent does not need to get it right every time — that perfection is not only impossible but unnecessary. What the child needs is not a parent who never makes a mistake, but a parent who tries to synchronize with them, and who, when they fail, can repair. Even when you misjudge the intensity, the effort transmits a message that the other person values more than you think: someone is actually trying to see me.

Failures are inevitable. We all traumatize our children at some point. The difference is not in avoiding damage — that is impossible — but in having a foundation from which to repair. That is not a flaw in the argument. It is the reality of every human relationship.

21 Points. And Maryland Lost.

There is a detail that the viral narrative conveniently omits: Maryland lost the game 74-66.

Okananwa played extraordinarily after the moment with Frese. 21 points. But the team did not win. That does not invalidate what happened between coach and player. What it does is remind us of something life confirms again and again: you can build the best relational foundation, synchronize with precision, hold a now moment without breaking — and still, the result may not be what you hoped for.

Parenting works the same way. You can provide security, sustain the tension, be tough when the moment calls for it and soft when it calls for that — and still lose. Good enough does not guarantee outcomes. It guarantees something different: that you built a foundation from which to respond. That you did not stop thinking. That when the crisis arrived, you had a bond that held together what in any other context would have been destruction.

There is also something else in that statistic worth noting: 21 individual points did not win a team game. Because in the end, it is not enough to perform alone. You have to know how to play with others. That is a lesson that transcends basketball: parenting does not only seek children who perform under pressure — it seeks children who can cooperate, yield, trust a teammate. Who do not hog the ball. But that is another essay.

What does concern us today is understanding that the question "Is it okay to be tough?" is a still-photograph question. It looks for a rule. But parenting, leadership, and relationships are a film. They change scene. Change tone. Change intensity. What works in one sequence can be disastrous in the next.

What remains after Rousseau, Stern, Fonagy, Frese, and Winnicott is a single idea: do not lose the capacity to reflect. Do not pick a side. Do not hide behind a style. Do not confuse certainty with wisdom.

Because the difference between the parent who builds and the parent who destroys is not the intensity of what they say. It is whether, in the moment of saying it, they were still thinking about their child.

And if you are wondering whether that tough moment you had was a now moment that reorganized — or simply a discharge your child learned to tolerate — I do not have the answer. No one does from the outside. But the question itself, if you hold it without resolving it too quickly, is already clinical work.

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References

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. Other Press.

Frese, B. (2026, March). Post-game interview, NCAA Women's Tournament [Television broadcast]. ESPN.

Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. Training & Development Journal, 23(5), 26–34.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1997). Discourse on the sciences and the arts (V. Gourevitch, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1750).

Rousseau, J.-J. (1979). Emile, or On education (A. Bloom, Trans.). Basic Books. (Original work published 1762).

Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. W. W. Norton & Company.

Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Routledge.

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.