Many of us grow up hearing comments like:

• "You're overreacting."
• "Why can't you control yourself?"
• "You're too sensitive."

When our emotional responses are consistently picked up on by others and criticised, we can believe that there’s something inherently wrong with us. This might include hiding or downplaying our emotions or feeling as if we have to stay silent, because the way we experience situations is too much or too extreme for other people. 

When I was growing up, once I got to about age seven, I hid every emotional response I felt. Instead, I developed an eating disorder and later on alcohol abuse issues to cope with the emotional rollercoaster I was on. This meant that my feelings were pretty much hidden from everyone around me, except on occasion when I would have an uncontrollable meltdown. And right up until a few years ago, when I learned about neurodivergent issues around emotional regulation, I thought that there was something severely wrong with me. 

Learning that there was a reason I experienced the world in such an emotionally intense way was the starting point for me to accept my emotional responses as normal. Extreme, yes. But normal for me. 

Accepting them as normal removed the shame and judgement around why I responded in the way I did. It also helped me understand that the issues I had faced around food and alcohol in the past were simply coping mechanisms that made sense when I had little other support or knowledge to go on. 

It also means that now when I overreact to a situation – which is far rarer, but which can still happen – I skip the self-blame and recrimination part, and move on from it far quicker. If I have a meltdown in a supermarket, or a crying fit because my day’s been completely mucked up because of someone else’s actions – such as recently when the plumber let me down for the second time in a row – I just accept that it was the only way I could have responded at that moment in time. And I get over it far quicker.

Acceptance of how my mind works doesn’t mean that I don’t accept that my actions can have consequences on other people. If I’ve upset or distressed someone else, I take responsibility for my actions, apologise and explain what was happening for me at that point in time. I have neurodivergent people in my family and I know how difficult and upsetting it can be to be on the other side of an extreme response, which is often more extreme than my own meltdowns. Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you’re blind to the consequences of your responses. But it does mean that you can move forwards without feeling shame. 

It also means that you can adopt a far more realistic and logical perspective regarding your emotional experiences. When you accept your emotional response as a normal neurodivergent response, you can stop getting so overwhelmed that you can’t think of how to address the situation. From a calmer perspective, there are measures you can take to manage your emotions more effectively, and on those occasions when it’s impossible to do so, acceptance is the key to stopping your emotional responses from being linked to a sense of poor self-worth and low self-esteem, which just makes everything harder.