When It Hurts More Than It “Should”
When the Reaction Doesn’t Match the Moment
If you’ve ever had a huge reaction to something small—
a missed text, a spilled drink, a harmless joke—
and then spent hours shaming yourself for “overreacting,”
I want you to know this:
The feeling is not proportional to the moment.
It’s proportional to the wound.
Your Nervous System Isn’t Overreacting—It’s Remembering
Your nervous system doesn’t measure moments—it measures threat.
When you’ve been hurt before, your body remembers.
What seems small now might echo something that was once big, scary, or humiliating.
These reactions aren’t flaws.
They’re survival responses.
Your reaction makes sense when you understand what it’s connected to.
What That Looked Like For Me
Last weekend, the toilet in my bathroom started running. A simple fix—a part just needed to be replaced.
My husband was heading out for work, and I thought,
“Perfect! I’ll have eight full hours to take care of this.
He’ll come home and see it’s already done.
He’ll be relieved. I’ll be proud. I’ll prove I can be counted on.”
I was pre-proud of myself. I wanted the gold star.
But I didn’t start right away—I didn’t feel ready.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I have to feel ready in order to do almost anything.
Still, I figured I had time.
And then… eight hours slipped through my fingers.
When my husband got home and asked how I was doing,
I completely fell apart.
I burst into tears, sobbing that I hadn’t fixed the toilet.
I felt sick. Ashamed. Furious with myself.
And it had nothing to do with him—
he was kind, supportive, reassuring.
It didn’t matter.
Because it wasn’t about the toilet.
It was about me.
I Wasn’t Crying Over a Toilet
What surfaced wasn’t frustration. It was every old wound at once:
I’m unreliable. How can anyone trust me if I never follow through?
I’m a failure. I had one thing to do—and I couldn’t do it.
I’ll never be good enough. I don’t deserve love.
This is who I am. And I hate it.
He calmed me down, and we ended up fixing it together.
But the shame spiral didn’t stop.
I felt ridiculous.
It’s just a toilet, I kept thinking.
But it wasn’t.
It was every moment I was expected to perform and couldn’t.
Every time I was judged for “overreacting” as a kid.
Every time my brain froze and I couldn’t explain why.
So yes—the problem was small.
The fix was easy.
But the wound it touched was enormous and soul-deep.
It looked like I cried over a toilet.
But really?
I cried over every time I wasn’t enough.
You’re Not Too Much. You’re Carrying Too Much.
If you’ve ever cried over something small—
if you’ve ever felt like you were “too much” for the moment—
I hope you know:
You’re not broken.
You’re just carrying wounds the world can’t see.
And you don’t have to carry them alone.
-A
If this resonated, you might also like:
Why Me?: on survivor’s guilt and invisible wounds
The Crushing Kind of Loneliness: for when you crave connection but fear it too
Living Disorganized: All the Texts I Never Sent: how fear silences even the most basic attempts to connect
