The art of overreacting, told by a master of it.

So, I’m not going into in-depth description on this random topic I thought would be nice to talk about, nor will I pseudo-psychoanalyze it. Instead I’ll try my best to give the best takes on it and probably most common places overreacting rears it’s indecisive head and ways you could avoid or better yet — use your overreacting to your advantage.

So without further hesitation, lets get right into it.

Okay so firstly — What is overreacting?

We’ll start with the google-bot definition which states; overreacting is to respond more emotionally or forcibly than is justified.

Okay. Cool. We now know what it means according to the google-bot that knows all. But does that google-bot actually understand what it means? Well, yes and no.

Yes in the sense that overreacting is the over the top and unnecessary response to an external stimulus you might feel, or put simpler you sped at a hundred and twenty miles per hour after seeing a road sign that read “eighty miles up ahead”.

Weird analogy but I’m sticking with it.

Its a no in the sense that this kind of overreacting feels like its now reserved for Karen’s Super-Saiyan transformation after being told her son has a goofy haircut at a Wendy’s or something. In other words, its way too over the top. The kind of overreacting I want to focus on is kind reserved and the kind we could all get our heads around.

The kind where we think that a lot of people are staring at us and we’d decide om leaving the place at the cost of other things being left behind- like dinner we had just paid for, or avoiding someone just because you’d rather bump into a lamp post more than you would risk talking to them and possibly embarrassing yourself.

We all know the feeling but honestly do we know what causes such a weird reaction to normal things?

This will nicely segue to the next part of this pointless rant…

What causes overreacting?

Short answer: Stress.

This isn’t very helpful of an answer…Uh…

Okay so look, I’m not a psychologist in any way, shape or form. So I wouldn’t know the very intricate triggers for it or why it’s prevalent at all. All I know is that its caused by anything that discomforts you. Easy enough right? If its that easy then you would remove that irritant and the world would feel a little better. Right? Well not necessarily.

What if you’re discomforted by things out of your reach or immediate control such as love-interests, foods, anime characters at comic-con, public areas, crowds, certain employees or contemporaries that have never done anything warranting your discomfort ? You’d overreact to the situation and probably feel absolutely dreadful after the fact you did.

These things are virtually uncontrollable and make you feel small and helpless honestly once you are confronted by them. This would only make you feel worse and make you overreact from the mere fact you overreacted to begin with.

You’d be screwed completely. Unless you had a way to work with your overreacting or find ways around it.

Hence the need for this following segue-

How do I stop the “what-if machine” in my head?

Ahh yes, the dreaded thing called the brain. Scary thing.

Honestly speaking I don’t know how to shut up the nagging in your head or if its even possible to so. There’ll always be a thought buzzing about in your head and a feeling of suffocation that entices some sort of panic.

I’ll make an example with myself. I used to have a crush on a girl that lasted for years while we were both in school that caused waves of irrational thinking. A few of these irrational actions include me avoiding this person by going into classrooms where there were ongoing classes to hide from her, trying to impress her by buying her and her friends and talking in a much deeper voice than natural. All because of overreacting in situations whereby she was inserted in.

See, a situation was greatly altered just because of a stimulus. It just so happened that stimulus was pretty damn cute.

I overreacted in the sense that I overdid my reactions in ways I wouldn’t normally do.

Seeing as I couldn’t magically make her like me or make her poof out of existence — I constructed a set of rules to remember when confronted by overreacting. Now these won’t necessarily work and they are mixture of avoiding the overthinking. They’re also ways to make the overthinking work for you if its already crept in.

1. Remember that whatever happens in your head might never actually happen: Okay so overthinking makes Murphy’s Law look like nothing, this is true to me anyway. Just either keep those alternate endings to the side or adversely use them as tools to engineer ways you could confront the situation more confidently.
2. Don’t let it hinder your progress: I’m a veteran at leaving situations merely because overthinking has judged that the outcome would never be in my favor. Don’t be like me. More often than not, nothing bad would come from talking to someone or trying a new hobby or even finishing the dinner for one you bought, so in this case just shut your overthinking down no matter what.
3. Remind yourself its normal: Thoughts run rampant sometimes, it happens, its human. Just remind yourself you’re human and joke about it in your head to keep yourself grounded.
4. Distract yourself a little: Okay so you find yourself overthinking. The best thing to do from here is to find a small task that won’t bring too much attention to yourself. I’d suggest avoiding things like looking at your phone or twiddling you thumbs and such. This will only take your attention away from the situation at hand completely which will then only fuel your overthinking which will most likely take center stage.
5. Just accept overthinking might have got the better of you: This’ll happen. Just don’t take it to heart. Think of it as character development and that you’ll have to work on it a little more the next time.

Keep your head up dude you got this.

There isn’t much else I could add really. I just thought it’d be nice to vent out all my overreaction tendencies here. I hope you enjoyed reading this half as much as I enjoyed typing this out.