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That's an interesting conundrum that I've grappled with myself. Telling myself counter-productive things like "outrage is a perfectly normal reaction to an outr

That's an interesting conundrum that I've grappled with myself. Telling myself counter-productive things like "outrage is a perfectly normal reaction to an outrageous situation". How should you tell someone that they're overreacting?

YuriNiyazov 14y ago
This particular subthread caused me to google "no such thing as overreaction". This is what I found: http://www.pediatricneurology.com/practica.htm http://www.pediatricneurology.com/practica.htm and the most fascinating paragraph from them there was: 'There Is No Such Thing as Over-Reacting A psychologist I recently met taught me the following: People do not over-react. They react, by definition, appropriately to the meaning a situation has for them. People have "over-meanings," not "over-reactions." When our child blows up over what seems like a trivial issue to us, it may help us to understand that to our child’s mind, this issue must have a tremendous amount of meaning. We could benefit from saying, "Wow, if that’s how it feels to him, we better calmly discuss this," rather than "Wow, he’s overreacting." For example, imagine an ADD child’s tearful screaming over the process of getting dressed. He’s not over-reacting. He is living a tough morning. Maybe that would change our reaction to his behavior. Children’s "over-reactions" are a window into their minds.'