The Man Who Couldn't Stop Checking His Phone

I met him in a service manager's office. Let's call him David. He was there for a performance review, and it wasn't going well.

Every few minutes, his hand drifted to his pocket. A quick glance at his phone. A flash of relief, then tension again. The manager's frustration was palpable. "It's disrespectful," she said. "I'm trying to have a serious conversation about your work."

David apologised. Put the phone away. Two minutes later, his hand was back in his pocket.

After the meeting, I caught him in the corridor. "Coffee?" I asked.

Over a terrible cup of instant, he told me about his daughter. Sixteen. In recovery from an eating disorder. She'd attempted suicide twice in the past year. She was at school now, and he was checking compulsively, obsessively, that she was okay. That she'd eaten lunch. That she wasn't in the toilets, in trouble, disappearing into crisis.

"I know it looks bad," he said. "I know people think I'm just scrolling Twitter or checking football scores."

The behaviour was exactly the same. The meaning was completely different.

What we see versus what we know

In addiction and recovery work, we say this all the time: any behaviour makes sense with enough information. But how often do we actually live it?

We see the business partner who misses appointments. The service lead who seems defensive in meetings. The colleague who won't engage with the new audit tool. The client who keeps relapsing on the same pattern. The service user who's aggressive at intake.

We see the behaviour. We rarely see the information underneath it.

And in that gap between what we observe and what we understand, judgement rushes in like water through a crack.

I've watched it derail services. I've watched it poison partnerships. I've watched it keep people trapped in cycles we claim we're trying to break.

The gambler who wasn't gambling

A support worker once told me about a man she was working with. He'd been in recovery from gambling for eight months. Solid progress. Then he started missing groups. Stopped responding to texts. When she finally got hold of him, he admitted he'd been back on the online slots.

She could have judged. Part of her wanted to. Instead, she asked: "What changed?"

Turns out, his mother had been diagnosed with dementia. He was her only carer. The meetings clashed with her evening care routine. He couldn't admit he needed to step back from recovery support to look after her, because stepping back felt like failing. So he went to old, familiar websites instead. Somewhere he could disappear for an hour and not have to explain anything to anyone.

The behaviour - his relapse -looked like backsliding. The information underneath it was grief, isolation, and an impossible caring load with nowhere to put it.

Once they had that information, they could build something different. Flexible support. Carer's groups. A pathway that didn't demand he choose between his recovery and his mother.

The behaviour hadn't changed yet. But the relationship had. And that's where change begins.

What this means for how we build systems

If any behaviour makes sense with enough information, then our job isn't to judge the behaviour. It's to become skilled at gathering information and creating the conditions where people feel safe enough to share it.

That means designing services that don't punish complexity. Commissioning frameworks that fund the time it takes to truly understand someone. Training that teaches curiosity before intervention. Peer roles that create space for the whole story, not just the presenting problem.

It means stopping the rush to label people as non-compliant, resistant, chaotic, unmotivated.

And it means checking our own pockets. What behaviours are we bringing to this work that make perfect sense to us, but look baffling or frustrating to others?

The practice

I'm not suggesting we become infinitely patient or abandon all boundaries. I'm suggesting we get curious before we get certain.

When someone's behaviour doesn't make sense to you, that's not evidence they're broken. It's evidence you don't have enough information yet.

So ask. Listen. Wait. Make space for the story underneath the story.

Because once you really see it, judgement becomes far less probable.

And something much more useful takes its place: understanding. Which leads to connection - the ground on which real change is built.