3 min read

·

Jul 5, 2025

It’s funny how adding the word “over” as a prefix completely changes the way people perceive something so deeply human. Thinking and reacting? That’s normal. But overthinking, overreacting — suddenly, you’re seen as dramatic. Too much. Not right.

But in reality, sometimes we don’t feel happy when others around us do, sometimes we get sadder than what people call “usual”, sometimes we get excited about the tiniest, most random things, and most people don’t understand that.

So this gap, this missing link of understanding, makes us feel like we’re wrong for feeling differently, but the truth is, everyone experiences emotions in different ways, with different intensities, and that’s totally okay.

Sometimes I ask myself:

Why am I still feeling so bad about something that happened years ago?

Why am I empathising so deeply with something that isn’t even my problem?

Why does my heart feel heavy for no clear reason?

Why can’t I hold back my tears when I should be fine by now?

Why does moving on seem impossible when everyone else looks okay?

Wait! Am I overreacting?

Why do I constantly have so much in my head?

Why can’t my mind just stop for a second?

Why is it so hard to accept certain things?

Why do I understand everything?

Why does it always have to be me?

Why now? Why?

Am I overthinking?

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I can feel your quiet nod of agreement.

One of those questions must’ve lingered in your head, too, right? And what did you do about it?

Oh, me? I don’t know. I just kept drowning in all those questions. I kept placing myself in the same emotional whirlwind again and again. I didn’t know how to escape the mental tsunami. I got swept away every time, and somehow, I barely survived each day with all of this in my head.

I didn’t know what was harder to manage: the world around me or the one inside me.

Everything began to feel suffocating. The ache, the chest tightness, the invisible weight, it hurt, but strangely, that pain reminded me I was still alive. Still breathing. Still surviving. Despite everything I’d been through.

All that overthinking. All that overreacting. It wasn’t really over anything. It was the real, raw, honest way I experienced the world. Every emotion I felt was real, at least to me.

I never really tried to understand why those questions kept coming. I was too busy searching for the answers. I never questioned why I reacted the way I did. I was too busy wondering whether it was “normal” or “too much.”

But when the pain reached its threshold, something shifted. It forced me to pause. To ask myself: What’s really going on with me?

I didn’t have the answers. But the more I tried to find them, the more I kept hearing the same truth: It wasn’t really overthinking. It was me trying to prepare. Trying to protect myself. I imagined every possible outcome so I wouldn’t be caught off guard again.

Because the last time? I wasn’t ready. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t know how to survive it. So I made my mind messy. Because messy, I believed, was safer than being unprepared.

And that overreaction everyone talks about? It wasn’t exaggerated. It was just me being human. I expressed everything I felt. Maybe I just wanted someone to finally notice. Perhaps I believed that showing my emotions genuinely would help. But it didn’t always work the way I’d hoped.

Still, if you feel that same heaviness in your heart while reading this, trust me: You never overreacted. You were simply expressing yourself — raw and real.

And those countless thoughts in your head? They’re not signs of weakness. They’re trying to tell you something. You were never wrong for having them. You were never a bad person for feeling too much.

And feeling less? That’s okay too.

Whatever you feel or don’t feel — it’s valid.

All I ask is this: Try to understand what your mind, heart, and soul are trying to tell you. Don’t shut them out. Learn to listen.

Because you, who can build entire universes in your mind, who can feel everything so vividly it aches. You can absolutely find a way to feel better.

Why?