If you have to ask yourself "Am I overreacting?" or "Am I too sensitive", you probably aren't!

[roxyreigns]

as dead simple as that. in a lot of cases, you might be tempted to wonder "oh, but does that apply to me? maybe everyone else is okay and not overreacting but maybe i'm the one who's overreacting". it applies to you. you aren't overreacting or too sensitive. the "probably" doesn't mean "but maybe you *are* overreacting", it means "it's incredibly likely you aren't." and the only reason i add that is because, well, there is such a thing as overreacting, but if you ask yourself if you are, and especially if you're told you are by someone who seems to be barely reacting, really, you aren't. people who overreact don't really ask themselves if they're overreacting.

and as for "am i being too sensitive" - there is, straight up, no such thing as being over sensitive. it doesn't exist, it's not a real trait actual people have, it's totally made up. oh sure, there's people who are really emotional, there's people who aremoody, and there's even such a thing as "emotional contagion" in particular cases of advanced anxiety or depression among others. but "too sensitive"? it doesn't exist. it's a dumb excuse by people who are either not thoughtful enough to consider, for a moment, that they don't fully understand someone else's situation right now, a malicious (and well documented and studied) way that abusive partners and family members keep their victims in line by causing them to doubt themselves, or a roughly 15-23 year old guy who grew up on the internet and loves south park.

speaking of which, while looking for an image for this mytake i was putting in things like "over sensitive" into google images and all that, and what i would get is, exclusively, crap reddit memes with the impact font or faux-pinterest quotes about "pfft... everyone's too sensitive and just gets offended by my epic sense of humour, am i right???", so, let me just say on that note, if you relate to those memes, no, people aren't over sensitive. you just suck. sorry. but it also kind of helps to the point - if you're being told by someone you're over sensitive, nobody is ever telling you that in a neutral, or helpful way. there's always some kind of condescending or critical tone under it, regardless of the situation. it's not advice.

it's true that, in some situations, your can react to something and your reaction is probably not in proportion to what happened, at that exact moment. but your day is a lot longer than just one moment, and everyone knows that shit can build over time, for hours, for days, for weeks, and you can't ignore that and question yourself just because other people didn't see a clear, gradual build up, and only saw it suddenly pouring out. from the outside, that kind of situation is going to look like overreacting, you'll be told "you're overreacting", on the inside, though, you saw the build up. you saw how this was all getting ready to boil over. and you know that anyone else, especially the people telling you you were overreacting, under the same gradual pressure or whatever you were put under, would react the same way.

and you can be wrong in the sense of seeing something as being worse than it is - that's true. but then, your reaction is actually in proportion to the thing you're perceiving either way. i mean, what else can you do? react to something you didn't and couldn't perceive? or react to your actual experience of the world? and your sense of something being bad doesn't come from nowhere, even if it's out of proportion - it could come from depression, anxiety, total lack of self esteem, it could come from a phobia, or just a really complex build up of past experiences that there's no easy label for. it's not like you suddenly and irrationally got some weird idea, even if you don't quite understand yourself where your reaction is coming from.

and that's the key part - if you're being told you're overreacting, or too sensitive, it's just ignoring your side of the story. it's just straight up dismissive, and frankly, pretty stupid.

god knows that on the outside, someone who doesn't understand anything about depression would see a depressed person and, if they're inclined towards the critical route, probably start saying bullshit like "well, you see, there's a person who's just a lazy piece of shit who can't stand up for themselves, or get their life in order. they should just work harder."

they don't see the measurable physical symptoms of depression - which, not coincedentally, are the same as those of anxiety, because they're so closely related. your muscles are tense, very tense, and when this goes on for a long time, they get tired, because they're working harder with no point. your digestion isn't going optimally, and so you're getting less nutrition from everything you eat. your breathing rate is different, and so you don't retain as much oxygen in your body, and the constriction of your blood vessels (not to mention the tension headaches) certainly don't help that matter at all. especially the constriction of the blood vessels to the brain, which is really visible in neuroimaging studies. you have a body that's working six times as hard on only a third of its normal resources, for months, combined with all the emotional shit going with it.

but of course, someone who isn't on the inside, and who doesn't see the actual physical aches and fatigues and doens't understand it intimately, or is willing to try some basic, active empathy, or just, read accounts of people who have it and imagine what it's actually like, doesn't get it. they don't see the inside. they just see a small fraction of an outside, for maybe a few minutes at most, here about some secondhand accounts, and come to a hasty, really stupid conclusion.

it's pretty much the same whenever you're told you're too sensitive or overreacting. it's entirely possible you have depression or anxiety too, and just haven't been aware of it - but then, your reactions would be entirely normal for, and maybe actually less extreme than any other ordinary person with anxiety or depression. and anxiety and depression are much more common than you might think - and i'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that i think at least half of the people who have it today don't even realize that it's even possible they could have it, and just would file it as something that happens to other people. or, they'd think they're just being oversensitive. especially with anxiety disorders.

and this also goes, by the way, for all the questions on this site of the form of "am i allowed to feel x? tell me how i'm allowed to feel."

simply put - assume you're right about your reactions. why should you assume otherwise? it can be hard, especially if you're a person sensitive to criticism - and if you are, then maybe "you're too sensitive" is something you've been hearing all your life, especially from family members. but that's a whole other mytake alone.

[snjokorn]

I agree with you on this. Have you read about gaslighting? It's where the person makes it's partner or friend etc.. doubt them selves to extreme.

My ex did this to me, I'm still recovering from it and it's been over a year!