You’re Not Overreacting—You’re Remembering

When Reactions Feel Too Big

You tell yourself to calm down. To stop being dramatic. To not ruin the moment. To not overthink it again. You’ve learned to swallow the unease, to brush off the comments, to laugh when your chest tightens.

But deep inside, something doesn’t sit right. You’re not overreacting to the moment in front of you — you’re reacting to something much older.

Someone raises their voice, and your stomach turns to stone. A friend cancels plans, and you’re back in that childhood feeling of being forgotten. A tone, a silence, a glance — and suddenly you’re spiraling.

And the voice in your head says: “Why are you like this?”

But the real question is: “When did I first feel like this?”

Because you’re not overreacting. You’re remembering.

What We Call Overreacting Is Often Remembrance

We live in a culture obsessed with composure.

Keep it together. Be rational. Don’t let your feelings lead. We’re taught to measure emotional intelligence by how calm we can appear, not how honest we can be.

So when our emotions rise loudly, we apologize for them. When we get flooded, we assume we’re weak. When we need a moment, we hide it. Especially if no one ever modeled emotional safety for us.

But an emotional response is not automatically an overreaction. Sometimes it’s the most intelligent thing your nervous system can do. It’s remembering something you forgot mattered.

You flinch at touch because your body remembers when it wasn’t safe.

You panic at silence because your child self remembers being ghosted by love.

You fall apart at small abandonments because they echo large ones that no one ever helped you name.

What looks like reactivity on the surface is often a map — pointing you back to what’s still unhealed.

The Body as an Archive: How Trauma Speaks

Your body remembers everything your mind forgets.

Not in words. In reactions. In reflexes. In sensations. In the way your shoulders curve inward when criticized. In the way your breath shortens when someone looks disappointed.

When people speak of trauma, they often imagine big, obvious events. But trauma can be subtle. It’s not always about what happened — it’s about what you had to carry alone.

And when no one helped you process it, your body became the vault.

Now, you store your story in:

• The way you clench your jaw in meetings

• The way you check your tone in texts 3 times

• The way you apologize for being in pain

• The way you ask for space and then immediately feel guilty for needing it

Your body is doing its best to keep you safe — based on outdated scripts. Scripts written in childhood, adolescence, heartbreak, family patterns. And until those scripts are rewritten, you’ll keep responding to today like it’s yesterday.

Trauma vs Intuition: Learning the Difference

Here’s where it gets tricky: trauma and intuition speak from the same place — the body.

So how do you know if that feeling in your chest is a warning or a wound?

Let’s start here:

• Trauma speaks in urgency. Intuition speaks in clarity.

• Trauma says “get out or you’ll die.” Intuition says “this doesn’t feel aligned.”

• Trauma floods. Intuition nudges.

• Trauma is loud and panicked. Intuition is calm, even when it tells you to run.

One client told me she felt like she had a gift for sensing people’s true intentions — but always found herself isolated. When we explored more, it became clear that what she was sensing wasn’t other people’s malice — it was her own hypervigilance.

She grew up with an unpredictable parent. She had learned to scan every room for threat. She wasn’t intuitive — she was prepared.

And her body didn’t know the difference yet.

Emotional Echoes and Ancestral Memory

Some of what you’re carrying may not even be yours.

Emotions can echo through bloodlines. Unresolved trauma — the grief that was never named, the child that was never mourned, the silencing that became generational — all of it gets passed down.

You may find yourself reacting to abandonment in ways that feel disproportionate… until you learn that your grandmother was left by her father, and your mother was raised by a woman who never trusted love.

The body doesn’t know time.

If it wasn’t resolved, it gets recycled.

And sometimes, your “overreaction” is your lineage speaking.

The ache isn’t just yours. But the healing can start with you.

The Nervous System Doesn’t Lie

Your mind can rationalize almost anything. It will tell you it wasn’t that bad. That you’re just tired. That other people have it worse.

But your nervous system keeps score.

It’s the part of you that contracts when someone walks in the room with a certain energy.

The part of you that freezes when your partner’s tone changes.

The part of you that tenses when your boss calls unexpectedly.

You may think you’re fine. You may look fine. You may have mastered how to perform “fine.”

But your body knows better.

Healing begins when you stop arguing with it — and start listening instead.

When Triggers Tell the Truth

A trigger is not a flaw. It’s a flare.

It’s your body saying: “Something old is happening again.”

You don’t need to eliminate your triggers. You need to learn how to respond to them.

Instead of:

• “I’m too much,” try: “This part of me is in pain.”

• “I don’t know why this is affecting me so deeply,” try: “This moment is touching something deeper than I can yet see.”

• “I should be over this by now,” try: “I’m still learning how to be with what happened.”

When you honor the trigger as a teacher, it becomes less sharp. When you meet it with curiosity instead of shame, the lesson reveals itself.

How to Respond to What You’re Remembering

You don’t need to solve it all today. But you can start by building relationship with the parts of you that are still stuck in old moments.

Here’s what I invite:

1. Name the younger self who is speaking

When you get overwhelmed, ask: What age is this part of me? Maybe it’s the 7-year-old who was never heard. Or the 15-year-old who had to shrink her dreams. Speak to her gently.

2. Let your body complete what it couldn’t before

Trauma is often stored as incomplete action — the scream that was never released, the tears never cried, the punch never thrown. Move. Shake. Breathe. Let the energy go somewhere new.

3. Stop trying to rationalize your pain

You don’t need to earn the right to hurt. Just because it wasn’t “bad enough” doesn’t mean it didn’t leave a mark. Let it matter.

Somatic Safety and Emotional Permission

True healing isn’t about thinking differently — it’s about feeling safely.

This is where somatic work comes in.

When you learn to slow down, to track sensation, to breathe with your fear instead of against it — something begins to shift. You stop being hijacked by memory, and you start holding space for it.

You create new outcomes in real time:

• You speak, even when your throat closes.

• You stay, even when your body wants to flee.

• You soften, even when your muscles say protect.

Not because it’s easy. But because it’s time.

Witnessing the Younger Self

Imagine the moment when it all began.

Maybe you were scolded for crying. Or ignored when you needed comfort. Maybe you were told you were too loud, too sensitive, too needy. Maybe you learned to smile through pain, to laugh off betrayal, to parent your own parents.

Now imagine sitting beside that version of you — not to fix her, but to witness her.

To say:

• “I’m so sorry no one saw you.”

• “Of course you feel this way. It makes sense.”

• “You’re not too much. You never were.”

That witnessing begins the rewire.

That moment is where healing starts.

Letting the Memory Move

You don’t need to rewrite the past. But you can release its grip.

That means:

• Crying when the tears come.

• Screaming into pillows if your rage has never had a voice.

• Creating rituals for the moments no one validated.

• Working with practitioners who know how to hold your story in sacred, non-pathologizing ways.

Your emotions are not problems.
They are messengers.
They are movements.
They are energy that wants to return home.

Let them.

Final Reflections: You Were Never Too Much

You were never too sensitive.
You were never broken.
You were never overreacting.

You were reacting to what your system encoded as danger — not because you’re weak, but because you’re wired to survive.

And now, you’re choosing to do more than survive.

You’re choosing to feel.
To stay.
To witness.
To remember — not just the pain, but the power you once left behind in that moment.

This is what healing is.
Not perfection.
Not immunity.
Not becoming someone new.

But remembering who you were before the forgetting — and letting her take up space again.

Fully.
Softly.
Loudly.
Without apology.

If this resonates with you, book a session.