Why do I react so strongly to small things?

I was feeling irritable, almost defensive in a moment that was supposed to feel easy. It was like a part of me is not used to having it feel this easy. Ironically, easy felt like the most difficult part.

I have this side of me, almost the most powerful one, yet the most vulnerable. I call it spirituality. It protected me from everything that hurt me. The loneliness turned into solitude, the noise turned into divine guidance.

It was one afternoon when I just woke up from a nap (guilty :p), I took my phone in my hands and read the text. This was not the first time I was receiving such a message. The feelings stormed towards the calm. My voice conquered the quietness in my head, the safety. I was under attack. Not by the message but by my own very emotions. It was disproportionate. It was big. I call them my big emotions those that never correspond to the situation. Or did they?

I felt my brain being on fire. It probably misfired this time. I could almost see myself from the outside. I knew what I could have done. I could have stopped. I felt like having the power of a magician who vanishes behind the curtain; wooooshhh. But this time it failed. It fails me every time.

I am probably believing in an alternate reality of being strong. Despite feeling so disconnected in that moment, I could feel a tiny drop of tear slowly, like a feather, falling down. And then came lots of it, at the speed of a speedboat. My mind irritated, “try to think of the best case scenario” but can we, in that moment? When I relived a moment of feeling abandoned or a possible potential thought of being abandoned it left me frozen but at the same time breathless.

It felt like I could not breathe. Despite being intimately familiar with this abrupt dread, it still felt entirely foreign. Almost like I was experiencing it for the first time. I cry and howl and as I get louder the louder the voice in my head got, “oh, maybe they are going to leave you”. Completely, uncontrollably hijacked by the exact feelings. Terrified. Helpless. Feeling left completely alone. Entirely powerless, looking up at a world that feels too big and dangerous.

Surrounded by familiar faces I still felt disconnected, quite irritated; one more word and I would have stormed my way out. But how could I, in the middle of this hijack? Where I started believing that I had to take myself to the emergency room. Ironic, the disproportion of the feeling to the situation, yet the corresponding thought attached to it. It was a competition between them; my overthinking and my breath. My chest held caged by a hand that wouldn't allow it to loosen up. My stomach dropping towards the floor. A clamp in my heart. My mind convinced that I was unlovable and that eventually everyone was going to leave.

In that moment I decided a rush of ideas in my mind. I am going to wear an armour of not caring. What was my fault? What did I do? What's wrong with me and why me always? Why do I react so strongly to small things?

I knew what this meant. To my surprise my legs directly hit the ground, almost as if it was ingrained in them like that, like a soldier. I walk straight to the washbasin and look at myself in the mirror. I don't talk myself out of it. Instead I stayed. I stayed with that thought and that emotion, from the exact point it originated from, from how it circulated and pulsated around my cheeks. I slowly, gently let my shoulders come into existence simultaneously with my cheeks. I allowed myself to start breathing. I became aware of my hands. Just their existence was enough.

Slowly but very powerfully I could feel being blanketed with warmth. The feeling stayed but it was embodied, and the thoughts were contained a little more this time. Not to avoid or change it, but to build capacity. For myself. For the part of me who keeps wearing her armour everywhere. She deserved it. Not to change the feeling, but to stay with it.

So probably I still don't know why I felt that way in a moment I was supposed to feel easy. But I do know that embodying it is not a solution but rather a virtue.

Overthinking this time was more than self-sabotaging. It was hijacking my nervous system, my body and my mind.

If this felt familiar, the size of the feeling, the mirror moment, the armour you keep putting back on; we're here.

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