Am I overreacting? A framework for trusting your read on a situation.

“Am I overreacting?” Almost every thoughtful woman I’ve worked with asks it — about a comment, a pattern, a feeling she can’t shake. And here’s the first thing worth noticing: people who actually overreact rarely ask. They’re certain. The ones who ask are usually the ones whose reactions were, at some point, treated as the problem.

If you grew up being told you were too sensitive, too dramatic, making something out of nothing — or if you’ve spent years with someone who reliably reframed your reasonable reactions as overreactions — then “am I overreacting?” isn’t really a question about this situation. It’s a reflex. You learned to check your read against the possibility that it’s faulty, because you were taught your read was faulty.

So before you can answer it, you have to separate the reflex from the actual question. Here’s a framework that helps.

First, name the reaction precisely. Not “I’m upset,” but “I feel dismissed,” or “I feel like I don’t matter to him when his friends are around.” Vague feelings are easy to dismiss as overreaction. Precise ones are data.

Second, ask: would I think this was reasonable if a friend told it to me? Strip your name off the situation and put hers on it. If you’d tell her “no, that’s a real thing, I’d be bothered too” — you have your answer, and the only reason you doubt it for yourself is that you’re the one who’d have to act on it.

Third, separate the size of the reaction from the validity of it. Sometimes the reaction is big — bigger than this one moment warrants. That doesn’t make it wrong. A large reaction to a small event usually means the small event landed on an old, well-worn bruise. The bruise is real. The pattern it belongs to is real. You’re not overreacting to the moment; you’re reacting accurately to the pattern the moment is part of.

Fourth, notice who benefits from you deciding you overreacted. If concluding “I’m overreacting” reliably ends the conversation, lets the other person off the hook, and leaves you apologizing for being upset — be suspicious. That’s not always insight. Sometimes it’s just the most familiar way to make the discomfort stop.

The goal isn’t to never question yourself. Self-questioning is part of how smart, decent people stay decent. The goal is to stop using “am I overreacting?” as an automatic off-switch for your own perception. Your read is usually better than you let it be. The work is learning to trust it without needing a committee to ratify it first.