How do I know if I'm overreacting?

If yo are upset, take a step back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself if someone else was In the situation, how would you advise them to react. Taking yourself out of the equation, can sometimes give you a new perspective, and help you see a situation clearly.

For me, I never know until after the fact. Sometimes, even a day or a few days after the situation happens. I go back and reflect on the situation calmly, and then the revelation comes to me, or it doesn't. Usually if I did overreact, it'll hit me like a ton of bricks in the form of guilt. If it's something that can be fixed, I'll apologise. If it's something that can't be fixed, I'll own it. However, if I don't feel guilty, and don't look back and feel like there's something I could've done differently, I own it and feel confident that I reacted in the best way possible, regardless of what other people might say.

To begin to feel much too angry and too shut down and too sad and as if one is imploding even if because you feel misunderstood... may be a sign of "overreaction." Effective communication often comes from a place of maintained openness and calmness and general positivity. By all means, we will and we may feel perplexed, a bit annoyed, a little bit on the side of furrowed eyebrows... but the whole idea, I think, that we should keep in mind... is that ultimately it's all about getting ideas across and even if you feel you cannot you must know that the gates to someone else's mind is entirely of their own access. Just as your mind is. Overreacting often doesn't feel good. And when do any of us truly not want to feel good? Our goal should be, perhaps, to make our point as best we can, listen as best we can, perhaps this one most importantly, and come to some kind of middle ground if either party feels they still disagree. Because in the end it's OK to and you should come away feeling OK.

There is no such a thing as overreaction. Every reaction what we have has its perfectly clear reason based on past experience and traumatic events.

I try to take a big step back from the situation and reflect on it to determine if the issue is under my control or not. If it is, I can take steps to fix or lesson the pain from the issue. If the issue is not in my control, I am overreacting and must let the pain and discomfort from the issue go. For my personal way of dealing with this: I like writing about the not-controllable issue and then meditation. These two methods get the negative thoughts out of my head onto paper/screen, and then archive it away. If the uncontrollable issue is still bothering me, it's time to find a listener :)

I always find it helpful to try and look at the situation and my behaviour or reaction to it, from an "observer" point of view. And then just ask: If someone else behaved or reacted like this, would I find it reasonable and justifiable?

That's really hard to tell sometimes, and I know it can feel like you're overreacting a lot or like you "should" be overreacting more than you are.. the only advice I can give you is to keep checking-in with yourself.. before you react (if you can!) take a second and count to 5, or 10 if you can), and then evaluate "is this an appropriate reaction?" ... if you answer "yes, this was a large problem" then you may well be justified in having a large reaction.. Just keep checking-in with yourself and being mindful of how you're reacting.. after you have a reaction do some self-reflection about the situation and ask yourself the same questions! Best of luck!!

It's important to know the difference between reacting and overreacting because not all intense responses are overreactions. It's perfectly fine to feel your emotions and express yourself accordingly. Just like in physics, every action can have an equal and opposite reaction. If something is truly upsetting, you can be upset. If something makes you justifiably angry, you can be angry. The problem arises when you start to react in a bigger way than justified. For example, if you forgot to pick up the milk, it's not a reason to scream at someone else. You forgot it, not them, but more importantly: it's just milk. Overreactions never make the situation better.Say somebody else forgot the milk and now the meal you've been preparing is somehow ruined. Yelling at them isn't going to get you the milk, and now you've created a new problem between you and the other person. Stress causes us to overreact, but overreacting doesn't release any of it. All it does is create more stressors in our environment.

This can be difficult as we all have different tolerance about how far can we follow how we feel. The important thing to do is to identify how we feel, are we reacting on sheer logical thinking or are we angry, upset, pissed, hurt, or even depressed? If we are reacting based on our feelings then we might very likely be overreacting. The right thing to do is to take some time off and analyse how we feel so we can be acting with a clearer mind :)

Here at 7 cups we don't class as anyone as overreacting. No matter even its a just a little niggle or something you want to get off your chest, we are here to listen to guide you through it