Why Does Everything Seem to Upset You So Much?
“Why does everything seem to upset me so much?”, “Why do I worry about everything and get so easily hurt? If these are the kinds of things you find yourself saying, some people will probably say that you’re too thin-skinned and that you just exaggerate everything that happens to you. However, in reality, behind your constant discomfort and sensitivity, there’s a psychological reality that you’re neglecting.
Maybe you’re suffering from stress, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. Indeed, stress increases your susceptibility to negative feelings and anxiety can turn any molehill into a mountain. However, there are deeper and more interesting factors at play here.
You may be one of those people who tend to lose their cool and emotional balance when little things go wrong. Therefore, when you’re faced with more serious situations, you feel completely overcome and are unable to cope. These psychological realities are often seen in therapy.
Let’s take a look at why it happens and what can be done about it.
Why everything seems to upset you so much
You’re not made of stone. Your heart isn’t made of steel. You’re made of flesh, blood, and emotions. For this reason, it’s normal that, from time to time, you feel hurt and certain things really affect you. However, a problem arises when every aspect of your day-to-day troubles you and sparks your fears, anguish, and worries.
In order to understand why everything seems to upset you, imagine a glass of water, full to the brim. The liquid represents your overflowing emotions about to spill over at any moment. Any slight movement, even a sigh, makes you realize you’re at your limit, about to explode and pour out everything inside you.
However, why are your emotions at this level? We take a closer look.
Overthinking fuels pathological worry
You ruminate and turn things over a thousand times in your mind, filling your days and nights with worry. Your brain gets no rest. You spend weeks thinking things through without making any decisions. You imagine the worst and suffer for it. In fact, you obsess so much over the ‘What ifs?’ and the ‘I shoulds’ that you turn your mind into an unforgiving judge who always punishes you for not doing what you think you should’ve done.
Such dynamics and mental flow feed your discomfort and make everything upset you more than necessary. As a matter of fact, Emory University (USA) conducted research that suggested that excessive thinking is the language of anxiety. This can be the origin, not only of psychological discomfort but also of health problems.
What can you do?
You can’t switch off your excessive thinking just by telling yourself that you’re going to think less. That’s because, in reality, your mind is like a factory that never stops producing ideas, images, and reasoning. What you need to do is to make your thoughts useful. If something worries you, resolve it. If you can’t solve it, accept it and turn your attention to other interests
The open emotional wound
The reason why things upset you so much may lie in your past, in unresolved trauma. Indeed, some wounds remain open. This means that everything tends to hurt you excessively because you have an emotional injury that you haven’t dealt with. That’s why you sometimes react disproportionately to things that aren’t really important. Furthermore, you have a low emotional pain threshold, hence your condition.
What can you do?
You must deal with the traumas and imprints of yesterday’s pain with psychological therapy. You need to understand that traumas are often not the result of just one specific event. In fact, because you didn’t manage them at the time, other injuries have now been added over time.
When facing these realities, you must work on your intrusive thoughts and manage your emotions that are associated with traumatic memories. Only then will you regain a sense of security.
Dissatisfaction equals overload
You’re teetering on the brink, overloaded, and exhausted. What’s worse is that you feel unhappy. In fact, as we pointed out earlier, when you wonder why it is that things seem to upset you so much, it’s easy to put it all down to stress and anxiety. However, you must beware, because stress and anxiety are always symptoms of something underlying. They’re not standalone entities.
Maybe you feel dissatisfied with your life. Perhaps you don’t feel motivated in your job, or you lack dignity and self-esteem. Or, it could be that you’re in an unhappy emotional relationship. As a matter of fact, there are multiple factors that can leave you feeling dissatisfied and, when you don’t deal with them, everything starts to upset you.
What can you do?
If everything annoys, irritates, hurts, or disturbs you, you must react. Discover the root of your emotional state and treat the triggers. If you don’t act and don’t make a courageous decision, your dissatisfaction will lead to depression and then you’ll suffer even more. Don’t normalize your condition. Transform it into renewed hope by making small or even drastic changes.
To conclude, although it’s true that everyone tends to take things in different ways, there are times when everything weighs you down and hurts excessively. Put a stop to those feelings now and take care of yourself in the way you deserve. With affection, responsibility, and compassion.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Kaya, Y., & Dumitras, T. (2018). How to Stop Off-the-Shelf Deep Neural Networks from Overthinking. ArXiv.Org, cs.LG. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1810.07052v1 papers3://publication/uuid/46F2E7E2-DA20-44BB-B17F-DA1B09AB0088
- Kaiser, B. N., Haroz, E. E., Kohrt, B. A., Bolton, P. A., Bass, J. K., & Hinton, D. E. (2015). “Thinking too much”: A systematic review of a common idiom of distress. Social science & medicine (1982), 147, 170–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.10.044
- Vangkilde, Kasper & Sausdal, David. (2016). Overponderabilia: Overcoming Overthinking When Studying “Ourselves”. Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 17.
