“You’re overreacting” was the chorus of my childhood.
Whenever I complained about something or boasted about a personal achievement, I was always told:
“Oh, come on, it’s not really like that.”
Neither the pain was too painful, nor the achievement too valuable.
I was always “exaggerating.”
And somehow, there was always more sympathy and compassion available for anyone else involved in my story than for me. Everyone else had valid reasons or mitigating circumstances for the behaviors that hurt me. I was the one “overreacting”.
I heard it so many thousands of times that I started to believe what was repeated to me.
I began to believe it so intensely that I started telling it to myself even when no one was there to remind me:
“I’m exaggerating! Surely it’s not really how I feel!”
It was no longer just the voices of the important people in my life. It had become my own voice.
The fact that my feelings were never validated in childhood made me doubt them myself.
I began to question everything: my emotions, my pain, my turmoil, the magnitude of my successes, even some of the most defining events of my life.
“I can’t be that special.”
Looking back now, I realize I was quite special, I’d say. Life knocked me down many times, in many ways. I had to start over, shattered, so many times. Each time I brushed off the dust, gathered my pieces, and rebuilt myself. Each time I became stronger and achieved even more impressive results.
Perhaps I would not have managed without that inner voice:
“I’m not that special.”
“Plenty of people went through this and didn’t die!”
“It’s not that bad.”
“You’re overreacting.”
If I had had the strength, just once, in those critical moments, to look reality in the eye and truly see where I was, if I had realized, even briefly, that I was not exaggerating, I would have collapsed. I would have dug myself a hole and never climbed out. Or I would have been hospitalized and lived only on medication.
That “you’re overreacting” saved my life. In childhood, in a crowded house with nine kids, during the bullying years at boarding school, when the man I loved died, when I was abused verbally, physically, and emotionally, when I ended up on the street after a failed marriage, when I gave up the television career I loved, when I found myself in a foreign country with no resources, when I faced illness and forgot who I was, when I realized I had been born into the role of a mother for everyone, even for myself.
And there were many more moments when I was forced to believe I was exaggerating in order to survive.
But now, when I want to speak or write about sensitive personal subjects, this “you’re overreacting” gets in my way instead of helping me. And again, I blame myself: yet another defense mechanism I developed just to survive.
I often catch myself not allowing myself to feel deeply. Maybe I don’t believe I deserve it.
I compare myself to others who have “worse problems” and I tell myself, as I did for decades:
“Alina, you’re overreacting again!”
Then I question myself: “What exactly am I overreacting?”
The facts bear witness, so I’m not exaggerating the facts.
The pain I feel is real, so it’s not made up either.
It is intense. It is excessively intense.
Maybe it comes with such intensity so that I finally give it attention, allow it to exist, see it, and, at last, stop turning the volume down.
I sit “overreacting” at the table with me and I promise her that this time I can face reality without dying.
I’ve worked a lot on myself in recent years, I have more resources than ever, I have people who support me, and I can face even the avalanche of intense, “exaggerated” emotions. I can carry them.
As proof, I’ve already begun exposing them. Today, here.