Why You Emotionally Overreact & How to Stop It

Are you always being told you are too sensitive?

Do you often get emotionally triggered?

Being emotionally sensitive in a relationship can be exhausting especially when it seems that nothing ever gets resolved. You feel you are the only one who cares and worse the only one who is always feeling hurt.

If you are super sensitive in a relationship, always crying or emotionally explosive, I’m afraid to say that the core of the issue starts with you!

Yes, I know – this is a tough one to swallow, especially if you are super sensitive.

Sensitive people – at the beginning of their journey – will have a tendency to feel (and be) victimized by their emotional sensitivity and as a result, will be inclined to point the finger and blame others for how they are feeling.

I have found that most sensitive people are also empaths, see if you can relate.

Empaths are extremely sensitive to emotions and energy, and yes that includes other people’s emotions and energy too. The journey of an empath is about learning how to be their sensitive selves without taking on other people’s emotional baggage.

I am an empath myself and have experienced this very journey (it’s ongoing) so trust me on this one if anyone can relate it’s me! I used to cry for everything and often still do when grieving the depths of an experience. I used to take everything personally, always felt drained around a lot of people and was highly triggered.

I was always overwhelmed and had no clue how to “manage” my emotions. In fact, my emotions controlled me.

Before you proceed with the steps though, you must first acknowledge where you are and how you are in all your relationships, taking 100% accountability and from now on 100% responsibility for your part of the relationship.

How to Stop Being So Sensitive in a Relationship:

1. Do Your Inner Work!

If you have been following me for a while you must be thinking, again Melany? Really? I’ve heard this before.

And yes, again! I will keep saying this as this is what I see as a block to most people’s negative patterns, fears, denial and self-delusion that they are actually doing inner work.

If you want a healthy relationship, know that if you are being emotionally triggered, you have emotional wounds and inner work to do. You can only be triggered emotionally if you are carrying old emotional wounds.

Trust me, this one comes from personal experience.

Emotional wounds create a hole in your energy field, literally like an open wound does on your skin. You leak energy from these emotional wounds and this energetic hole is where people emotionally hook onto you.

People, including toxic people, manipulators etc can only emotionally trigger you or manipulate you if you have unhealed emotional wounds.

The wound is your weak point and depending on the nature of the emotional wound, whether it’s to do with your self-worth, self-esteem etc you will not only attract the same situations triggering those emotions again and again in your relationships but you will also be easily used, tested and controlled through these emotional wounds.

Processing emotion is not merely “thinking”, reflecting, contemplating, meditating or chanting mantras for 45mins. I am stating this as I, myself started my inner journey thinking the above was doing inner work and processing emotions. Little did I know I wasn’t doing any inner work at all! Click here to read my previous blog on how you avoid your emotional wounds.

It took me years to figure out this whole inner work thing so I really hope I get this across to you clearly to save you years of wondering why you are still stuck being so sensitive and seeing this sensitivity as a curse. Even if it means being repetitive with my messages.

Processing emotions require feeling your experiences no matter how painful. It requires you to feel the pain you may have caused others, the pain others have caused you and yes it includes past painful emotions you have suppressed since childhood. You probably don’t realize how much you have suppressed!

It is very likely (I can almost guarantee) that you have some deep emotional wounds or traumas you have not yet acknowledged. The core of your wounds is in childhood, where all your beliefs and self-image is formed.

A common mistake people make is, because they don’t “feel” anything in the now about those past emotional wounds, they think they have processed it and are over it.

WRONG!

Looking back now as an adult you can logically “see” that you survived. What you need to understand is that the emotions you need to process are in the past, not in the now. You need to connect with the inner child that is storing those emotions.

So get out your inner shovel because you will have to dig them up!

Basically, this means that your emotional sensitivity in your current relationships has nothing to do with the person or situation, you are actually reacting to a past hurtful memory the person is triggering unconsciously.

So the first thing for you to consider is what emotion is constantly being triggered?

Second, what are you constantly attracting?

Look at the pattern.

Because I know sitting with these painful emotions is the hardest way to process them, and you will probably not be able to do on your own, the quickest, most practical and easiest thing I can suggest here to get you started is to journal!

You can start by journaling about the emotions you feel now in one of your relationships.

This is just the first layer…

After this go back in time to a memory where you felt these same emotions. Journal about how that situation or person made you feel. The key here is to feel and describe the emotions rather than facts. Just stating facts such as “he did this to me” or “she did that” only keeps you stuck in blame and you will not truly be processing the emotional wound but rather re-enforcing your victim stance and negative beliefs.

Journal until you feel you have expressed the emotions fully and completely.

You should feel a sense of relief once you’re done. You may even cry while journaling and if emotions are coming up this is great! Allow yourself to feel them without any judgment. Do the journaling about one specific incident in one go. Meaning don’t start now and finish it tomorrow, by doing this you are not fully engaging and going to the depths of the emotional wound. If it takes an hour then that’s what it takes.

I must warn you, this is not always easy! You suppress emotional wounds for a reason – because it’s uncomfortable. So you may need to use a little bit of will to get you through this emotional release journaling process!

So make a commitment, lock yourself in your bedroom until you’re done if you must and get to it!

The only way out is through so the sooner you embrace facing these wounds, the quicker you can free yourself from this emotional rollercoaster.

The only other thing I can say is to have courage my lovely one.

Be brave.

And be willing to feel whatever comes up no matter how much fear you have or the feeling of hating the fact you even have to feel the pain someone else has caused you and how unjust that is.

Whatever it is you are avoiding feeling, feel it and set yourself free.

2. Establish Emotional Boundaries

Being a highly sensitive person means you feel things 10X deeper than non-sensitive people.

Because of your natural ability to feel other people’s energies and emotions, you may be taking on their emotional baggage on an unconscious level and mistaking it as your own – making you feel totally overwhelmed emotionally.

Non-sensitive people tend to deny their emotions, they don’t want to own it or even acknowledge it. Basically, they are scared of “feeling”. What happens in this dynamic is because you are so receptive and open to emotions; they will project their unwanted emotions on to you. You unconsciously agree to take it on because you can feel they can’t handle the depths of their emotions.

The problem with this is that it is not your emotions, so you will never be able to “process” it for the other person. This can even become a form of addiction, where the other person will continually project and dump their emotional baggage onto you and you are left with all their emotions to “process” all the time and not know where it all came from.

They feel lighter and you are always left feeling “heavy” emotionally.

The truth is that you are not helping them by doing this and…

You are not responsible for other people’s emotions!

Whether it’s with family or in romantic relationships, they will never learn the lesson the situation is presenting to them if they do not process their own emotions. They will continue to project their emotions and not understand why they are “stuck” in these negative relationship dynamics.

Click here to read more about how to start setting boundaries.

Know that once you have truly healed your emotional wounds you won’t actually have to protect yourself in this way. The emotional wound is what creates holes in your aura (energy body) and attracts energy vampires, narcissists and energetically demanding people to you in the first place. The protection bubble technique is just a tool to support you on your journey in the meantime.

Be very conscious when engaging in an emotional conversation with someone, being sensitive you will naturally feel when their emotion or energy is imposing on your personal boundaries – especially now that I’ve mentioned this to you.

The minute you feel it, with your intention, hold your ground, make a decision in that moment not to take on their emotions and gently start pushing their emotions and energy back to them.

If this has become a habit, you may need to do this several times for their unconscious mind to “get it” – that you’re not taking on their emotions anymore.

Take a personal stance for yourself with your boundaries and reaffirm your personal space. This is simply an intention and a loving decision you make from your heart. 

This is really about practice. Once you have done this exercise enough, you will soon become an expert at knowing when someone is trying to dump his or her emotional baggage onto you. 

And when you stop taking on other people’s emotions, energy and projections, naturally, you will definitely feel less emotionally overwhelmed.

3. Embrace Your Emotional Sensitivity

There is a tendency as a highly sensitive person to see this beautiful gift as a burden and reject this part of ourselves.

My entire life I was told I was too sensitive, or to “toughen up” and “just get over it”, so I totally get it, in fact, I bought into this perception and felt that this was one of my “weaknesses” (click here to read one of my first blogs on this).

Being super sensitive only becomes a burden when you are not standing in your power.
 

Empaths or HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) who carry a lot of emotional wounds first need to heal these emotional wounds before their gift of sensitivity can truly flourish (step 1).

As mentioned in point 2, the emotional wounds create holes in your aura. These energetic holes are how other people’s energies and emotions seep into your energy field.

So the more you can process those past emotional wounds the clearer you will feel within yourself. You also would have sealed your auric field from outside influence and from this new centered space you can use your gift of sensitivity in receiving clear guidance on every situation.

Because processing your old emotional wounds close the holes in your aura, you will stop being triggered and you will no longer be open to other people’s negative energies being projected or buy into their emotional manipulation. Once this happens you will clearly start to see when others are reacting to their own emotional wounds being triggered as well as not take these reactions personally. You will start to understand people’s needs from an emotional perspective.

You will also be able to process your own emotions and experiences rather than trying to process everyone else’s emotions – which is technically impossible.

If you are in a supportive relationship you can work through everything I am sharing here, and heal together, all while developing emotional intelligence and creating more meaningful relationships. 

Your emotional sensitivity gives you an advantage of having the ability to process your emotions and negative experiences more quickly and naturally over those who are not sensitive.

Your gift of sensitivity will also make it much easier for you to hear your intuitive voice as well as connect to your Spirit Guides when you have cleared out the emotional baggage and are truly standing in your power.

You are not weak because you are sensitive.

You are sensitive; this is your superpower.

Once you have healed some of those deep emotional wounds and established your energetic boundaries, you will naturally begin to feel more centered, happier, more confident within yourself and have the ability to respond to situations rather than react without getting overly sensitive and truly enjoy this gift of being sensitive to connect with others and experience life to the fullest being a super sensitive being.

Your sensitive Soul is meant to feel and experience life through being sensitive, otherwise, you will never be able to embody the wisdom of each experience.

Emotions and feelings are the languages of the soul so welcome them because resisting it only makes it worse and keeps you stuck in negative patterns, drains your energy and continues to disempower you.

The goal in terms of spiritual growth and evolution is to become more sensitive and not to desensitize from emotions, emotional pain or experiences.

So believe in yourself and embrace your sensitivity…

Being sensitive is your gift!

If you need support on your healing journey and want more personalized guidance check out my Intuitive Coaching & Emotional Healing Sessions and let’s get you started on getting your life back.

All techniques and information I share are considered coaching, self-help or complementary therapies. I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or medical doctor, I have a degree in Health Sciences in Complementary Therapies. Everything I write and talk about comes mainly from my own experience in healing myself and the tools, techniques, and resources I learned throughout my own inner journey.

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