Am I overreacting?

Perhaps someone makes a passing comment and you think about it for the rest of the day. A change in another person's tone might leave you feeling anxious, rejected or suddenly on edge. During a disagreement, you may become angry, go quiet or struggle to find any words at all.

At other times, you might agree to something you do not want, explain yourself repeatedly or apologise when you have done nothing wrong. Afterwards, you may wonder why the situation affected you so strongly.

It can be difficult when your reaction seems out of proportion to what has just happened. You may tell yourself that you are too sensitive or that you should be able to deal with things differently. But reactions that feel confusing in the present often have understandable roots.

Our reactions often begin as protection

Our brains and nervous systems are constantly taking in information about what feels safe and what might be threatening. Much of this happens automatically, before we have had time to think through a situation.

These responses are shaped by experience. If you have often been criticised, ignored, overwhelmed or expected to put other people's needs first, you may have learned to notice the earliest signs that something is wrong. You might watch other people's faces closely, try to keep everyone happy or withdraw before you can be rejected.

Perhaps becoming quiet once helped you avoid conflict. Maybe being helpful or agreeable helped you stay connected to someone important. Anger may have given you a sense of strength when you felt frightened or powerless. Detaching from your feelings may have helped when there was too much to take in.

These were not foolish or defective responses. They may have been the best ways available to you at the time. Many of our reactions are actually survival responses: adaptations that once helped us manage experiences that felt overwhelming.

The problem is not that your mind and body learned to protect you. It is that an old form of protection may still appear in situations where it is no longer needed, or where it now makes life and relationships more difficult.

Why a reaction can feel so powerful

Your thinking mind may know that a friend is simply tired, that a partner's silence does not necessarily mean rejection or that making a mistake will not lead to disaster. Yet another part of you may already be preparing for criticism, abandonment or conflict.

This is why it is not always possible to think your way out of a reaction. You may notice your heart racing, your body becoming tense or your mind going blank before you understand what has been triggered. The present moment may have touched an older feeling, even if you cannot immediately identify where that feeling comes from.

Everyone reacts differently. One person may become angry, another may become very accommodating and another may shut down completely. None of these responses tells us who you are as a person. They tell us something about what your system has learned to do when it senses difficulty.

Approaching your reactions with curiosity does not mean excusing behaviour that hurts you or someone else. It means recognising that shame and self-criticism rarely help us understand what happened. A gentler question might be: What did this moment seem to mean to me?

How counselling may help

Counselling can provide time to slow these moments down. Together, you and your counsellor can begin to notice what happened before the reaction, what you felt in your body and what you feared might happen next.

You do not need to arrive with a clear explanation. Sometimes understanding develops gradually, as connections emerge between present experiences and earlier relationships. You may begin to recognise the difference between what is happening now and what your nervous system has learned to expect.

Some patterns may also appear in the counselling relationship. You might worry about disappointing your counsellor, find it hard to disagree or feel tempted to withdraw after sharing something vulnerable. These moments can be explored gently and can offer another way of understanding your reactions and relationship patterns.

Over time, being met with steadiness rather than criticism can offer a different experience. Counselling provides an open-minded, curious and non-judgmental space in which your responses can begin to make more sense as part of your story. The aim is not to stop having emotions or to respond perfectly, but to develop more space around a reaction, more understanding of what it may be protecting and more choice about what you do next.

Get in touch

Location:

Epsom, Banstead, Online UK wide

Contact:

Liessa Callaghan

07533 698084
perspectivescounsellingservice@gmail.com