When I saw this meme the other day it immediately went into my saved folder. I wasn’t ready to expose myself yet, lol, but I thought someday, I may…
And I was saved by the bell!! You see, I’m part of a visibility challenge where we were asked to select pictures before knowing what our social media post prompts would be and this was one of them 😉
I got to thinking about what causes me to over-react. What seems to cause most people to “over-react”? Let me know if you agree with what I believe the main causes are.
1. Lack of feeling respected, heard, validated, cared for, etc
2. Lack of holding their own boundaries
3. Being triggered by a past event
Now, considering what I do, and the most recent course I attended about somatic psychology the idea of being triggered causing an over-reaction is worth exploring more deeply.
First, let’s first talk about trauma. I’ve had clients who have shared things like "I don’t have any trauma.” Or “I wasn’t abused and I have a decent life." And let me explain, an event that causes trauma, may not feel like an event that should warrant trauma, like war, death or an accident. But here is the recipe for trauma: too much, too fast, not even support or resources to handle it.
Everyone has experienced this at some point in their life.
And trauma is a trauma when the event is not categorized as a memory. The hippocampus misses the opportunity to time stamp it a store it away in our memory bank, so when anything even remotely similar to those feelings come up it is as if the “trauma” event is still occurring or is happening again.
And in this post, I’m not saying over-reacting is okay or should be given a pass, but here is my tip:
If you are an over-reactor too, maybe we explore if there is a theme to what causes us to over-react.
1. Can you strengthen your boundaries so when you find yourself in the same position again?
2. Can you find more resources to prepare you for when if/it comes up next time?
3. Is this an opportunity to communicate your needs, release some expectations, talk it out with the people you tend to over-react with and see what the game plan could be to start reducing the episodes or the intensity?
💖 Hope this is helpful. If you would like to share thoughts, PM and we can set up a time to chat or you are curious to explore working with me in my Emotional Freedom Program apply here: https://bit.ly/35PwOBT