How To Deal With Reactivity As An Over-Thinker
How it feels to overthink about being reactive
When it comes to overthinking and reactivity, the over-thinking usually comes after the reactivity. When I am reactive, the way I see it is responding to a situation in an emotionally charged way, making assumptions without asking any questions, assuming the worst, or not liking how something played out.
This usually happens for me if I’m tired, in a burnout, or caught off guard by something. Whatever it may be, in the moment I’m responding in a way that’s primarily led by emotion and is usually absent of logic. I also find that I typically leave a reactive moment feeling bad, like it could’ve been avoided, or tired from the reaction.
After I respond in a way I don’t like I usually go into a thought spiral feeling guilty for what I said, realizing I let my emotions get the best of me, wishing I would’ve asked a question instead of jumping into only assuming, and usually realizing the situation does have a solution for me.
What overthinking about being reactive is doing to my life
As I continued to react emotionally from time to time, what I discovered was that nobody can listen to what you’re truly saying if you’re screaming, crying, or being reactive. When a struggle is clouded by high emotions, it’s hard to relay the real message when it’s leader is the emotion. It isn’t always easy to get out of that feeling once you’re in it either.
When I was in a place of being reactive, all I wanted was for it to end, to understand why what I wanted didn’t work out, and for my frustrations to be validated. I realized too, when I’m reactive I lose all of my clarity. I can’t think straight, I can’t talk right, I can’t respond right, or make good decisions for myself when I let my emotions completely drive my responses.
I would find myself getting so wound up in my emotional urgency to just get out of the situation, that my thoughts were in over drive coming up with ways to get all that energy out of my body. What I was doing, and what I was wanting were not lining up. I was being reactive, but what I wanted was just to respond calmly and be able to justify the situation I was in, which made me start thinking about how to choose a calm response over chaotic reactivity.
What I thought about to make changes in my reactivity
When I started thinking about how overthinking coupled with high emotions created my reactivity, it made me think about the ways I responded that I did like. To me, when I enjoyed how I responded to something I was responding instead of reacting. Responding is understanding, using your emotions to tell you what you’re feeling so you can talk about it, taking a break if you need it, and using reasoning to understand what the situation at hand really is.
Reactivity is an emotional reaction to an assumption. It is jumping to conclusions and defending a narrative you haven’t explored. Reactivity is neglecting to discover the facts of the conversation or situation and solely using heightened emotion as your main form of communication. I have been reactive and when I am, I’m in defense of an assumption. I don’t ask questions, I don’t reason, I don’t take a pause, I simply react in emotion.
The problem with that is emotion is information, not a form of communication. Emotions can tell us a lot about the way we are approaching the conversation, but using emotion to communicate when you are feeling defensive will not create clarity.
What made me want to change my view on being reactive
As I reflected deeper and discovered this duality in responding vs reacting, I knew over-thinking had a play in it and I knew I could use what I’d learned to change that part of me. When I’m thinking clearly, I can hear my thoughts I can gauge if they make sense or not. When I’m emotional and over-thinking I can not, which tells me I should not be talking or figuring out a solution if I can’t hear myself think.
Discovering this in itself made me understand that just because a conversation needs to be had, doesn’t mean I have to do it when I feel emotional I can take a break. Just because I feel very emotional does not mean I have to act on it because in a hard situation, my emotion is something I can control even if I don’t like what’s happening around me. And if I can’t hear myself and know I’m in clarity, I don’t have to respond. I have options when I am reactive, and like I mentioned earlier it is difficult to get out of feeling reactive once you are in it so I physically remove myself from the situation to calm myself out of it.
How I carried out what I learned about being reactive prevention
So from understanding in calmness there’s clarity, I started thinking more about ways to prevent that reactivity from happening significantly less. I created prevention strategies for moments I usually noticed myself being more on the reactive side.
For me, I noticed I was more reactive when I was tired, at night, or if something didn’t happen the way I wanted or planned out. So because I knew this, I decreased my stimuli of conversations at night and when I’m tired. When things didn’t work out the way I planned or wanted to I realized this was more of a control tactic of the world around me.
Things don’t always happen the way you want, but I would find myself taking it out on people around me or getting really frustrated with myself as I saw my perfectionism creep in. Because I knew this, I tried to expand my thoughts on things not working out. I tried to see the good in it, and believe that there was something else that was better or that it was a lesson of some sort. A perspective shift on what makes you really frustrated makes a difference.
What I chose to do with what I learned about being reactive
Choosing a better response doesn’t mean those feelings of frustration and irritation don’t come up or just go away. You just find a way to feel through them without causing destruction of the life around you or by disrespecting yourself or stressing yourself out.
The feelings that come up may not change, but how you know you’re doing something different is by how you learn to respond to things by using the emotions to help you instead of lead you. In the unknown and in high emotions you can’t see the full picture of what’s really going on, and maybe what you wanted isn’t what you need, and I choose to believe there is a better path for me if something doesn’t work out.
If you really think about it it’s a huge blessing that we don’t have to figure everything out. Imagine if we had to figure out every intricate details for everything there would never be time to enjoy anything. Letting things play out how they are supposed to and relinquishing the control that reactivity has, lowers not only your stress, but lets you enjoy the things you don’t expect. Conversations and situations come up all the time that you don’t expect, utilize your emotions to tell you what you think about it instead of letting your emotions consume you.
