Overreactions can be a sign of manipulation

conversation about how beholden the offender ought to be to apologize when they think there has been an overreaction. I know overreaction is totally in the eye of the beholder, but even my boyfriend admitted his reaction was a bit much. What do you think?

When you take each situation individually, there’s always a way to spin it into one person’s overreaction, or, from the other side, one person’s dismissiveness of the other’s feelings. Especially when both of you think you’re right, it can be hard to tell who actually is — and in that little gap of doubt is where so many abusers or potential abusers plant seeds of self-doubt. Maybe I am being too sensitive, you start to think, or maybe I was being thoughtless, and bit by bit you release your grasp of your version of what’s true in favor of the other person’s.

When you take situations as a group, though, you get a clearer picture of overreactions and how to respond to them.

An example: Let’s say an avid-reader friend has one overreaction to one generic comment on one book in one situation. In that case, the apt response forms itself. “[pause, raise eyebrows] “You OK?” Because that’s what you tend to wonder when an otherwise reasonable person has utterly taken leave of his or her sense of proportion.

If instead an avidreader friend overreacts on a fairly regular but also unpredictable basis, rooted in an expectation of mindreading believed to be legitimate and justified — to the point where you find yourself trying to choose your words in advance so as to avoid triggering such overreactions, and/or the ensuing accusations of non-apology apologies, and/or follow-up conversations about ways you can be wrong in an argument even when you’re right — then it’s time to form a different, equally apt response:

Know manipulation when you see it, and get out as soon as you can.