By: Joy Stephenson-Laws, Holistic Coach, J.D., Founder

A 17-year-old boy beat his grandmother to death inside a church. When police arrived, he admitted it immediately. No lying. No excuses.

This wasn't calculated murder. This was the complete collapse of the space between feeling angry and taking action.

The Missing Pause

Most of us have a "pause button" between feeling and acting. The healthy sequence:

Something bothers you → Anger → Pause → Think → Decide → Act

But for some people:

Something bothers you → Anger → Act

That missing pause is everything. It's the difference between walking away and punching a wall. Between taking a breath and screaming. Between life and death.

When this boy killed his grandmother, there was no pause. The immediate confession suggests he wasn't a calculating criminal—something broke inside him, and the normal stops failed.

How the Pause Gets Broken

It starts in childhood. Children learn emotional control from adults. When a toddler has a tantrum and a parent stays calm, names the feeling, and helps them settle, that child's brain builds regulation pathways. But when parents yell, hit, or dismiss feelings, those pathways never form properly.

Trauma rewires the brain. When kids experience abuse, violence, or chronic stress, it changes their brain structure. The danger-detection system becomes hypersensitive. The part that creates the pause develops poorly. By adulthood, their brains treat everyday frustrations as emergencies requiring immediate response.

The stress bucket overflows. Imagine a bucket holding all your stress. Every frustration adds water. Healthy coping—talking, exercise, sleep—empties it. But without those outlets, the bucket fills. Eventually one more drop makes it overflow. That's when people "snap" over something small. It's not about that one thing—it's about the bucket being completely full.

For that boy, whatever happened with his grandmother made his bucket overflow. That it was his grandmother—someone who should represent safety—suggests years of accumulated anger in a kid with no tools to handle it.

Why He Confessed Immediately

The boy didn't try to lie or run. He just told police what he did. This reveals something important.

Cold, calculating criminals plan and cover their tracks. This was different. When people commit violence in complete rage, they often describe feeling like they weren't there—watching themselves from outside their body. When they "come back," they're reporting what happened rather than defending it.

Sometimes confession brings relief. The person wanted someone to finally stop them, to control the chaos they couldn't manage themselves.

The most dangerous moment and the biggest cry for help can be the same moment.

Building the Pause

The hopeful truth: the pause can be learned, even by people who never had it. But it requires work and help.

Notice body warning signs. Most people who explode say "it just happened." But their body gave signals they missed:

Racing heart
Tight muscles
Heat in chest or face
Tunnel vision
Racing thoughts

Learning to notice these creates your first chance to intervene before rage takes over.

Use your body to calm down. When you're enraged, your thinking brain goes offline. That's why "thinking differently" won't work—you literally can't think clearly. But you can use your body:

Slow, deep breaths
Cold water on your face
Intense exercise (run, pushups)
Tense all muscles for 10 seconds, then release

These directly affect your nervous system, bringing your thinking brain back online.

Address trauma. If you grew up with trauma, your body stays in permanent alert mode—like a smoke detector that goes off when you make toast. Therapies like EMDR, somatic therapy, and trauma-focused counseling help your nervous system process old wounds and finally relax.

Get help early. By seventeen, we've missed countless chances. Help needed to happen:

During childhood anger outbursts at school
When teachers noticed problems at home
When family saw concerning behavior

If you're struggling with anger, or know someone who is, talk to a school counselor, teacher, coach, or caring adult. Keep trying until someone helps.

Create external pauses. Sometimes the pause needs external support:

Physically leave when anger rises
Remove weapons from homes with violence
Identify someone to call when losing control
Establish a 30-minute separation rule when things heat up

The Choice We Face

That grandmother is dead. A 17-year-old faces decades in prison. A family is shattered. A church community is traumatized.

Right now, somewhere, another child isn't learning emotional regulation. Another teenager's stress bucket overflows with nowhere to empty it. Another person heads toward the moment when the pause disappears.

We know how to prevent this. People can learn anger control. Trauma can heal. Brains can rewire. The question is whether we'll intervene before violence happens or keep waiting until it's too late.

The pause between feeling and acting is thin but powerful. For that boy, help came too late. But for every struggling young person, every worried parent, every observant teacher—it's not too late.

The pause can be learned. The bucket can be emptied. The nervous system can learn safety. Patterns can be broken.

It takes work, support, and someone who refuses to look away.

But it can be done.

Source Used for This Article

From Chains to Wings: A Poetry Revolution for Healing.

This article draws from the author's memoir, which documents a mother and son's parallel healing journeys from inherited anxiety patterns and childhood trauma. The book weaves together research on how trauma changes brain structure and nervous system function, the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and evidence-based approaches to emotional regulation and nervous system healing. The book also demonstrates through lived experience that the pause between feeling and action can be rebuilt, even after severe trauma, using somatic and body-based interventions combined with trauma-informed care.

Note: While specific case details about the church incident come from news reports, the psychological and neurological principles explained in this article are drawn from the research and lived experience documented in "From Chains to Wings."

Joy Stephenson-Laws, J.D., is a healthcare attorney with over 40 years of experience championing fairness in the healthcare system. She is the founder of Proactive Health Labs (pH Labs), a national non-profit that now embraces a holistic approach to well-being—body, mind, heart, and spirit. As a certified holistic wellness coach, she helps individuals and families create practical, lasting health strategies. Her own experiences as a mother inspired her to write resources that spark important conversations about safety and wellness.

She is the author of Minerals – The Forgotten Nutrient: Your Secret Weapon for Getting and Staying Healthy.Her children’s book, Secrets That Sparkle (and Secrets That Sting), empowers kids to recognize safe vs. unsafe secrets in a gentle, age-appropriate way.

Her latest book, From Chains to Wings, offers compassionate tools for resilience, healing, and emotional freedom.

When Anger Happens Too Fast: Why Some People Lose Control