The Moment Was Over. My Brain Wasn’t

There have been a few things that have really stayed with me. My spat with a friend. The whole mess at the airport. The anger, the frustration, the embarrassment afterward. And honestly, the way my brain can keep replaying things long after they’ve happened.

The airport experience was a big one.

I had already been traveling for around 15 hours when I got on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles. I was exhausted, overstimulated, and just wanted to get home. I fell asleep for about two and a half hours, woke up, and realized we still hadn’t left the runway.

I was frustrated and angry. I voiced that anger, things escalated, and I was eventually escorted off the plane.

I spent the entire next day waiting to get on another flight. I waited all day for a flight that was leaving around the same time as the one I had been on the night before, thinking I was finally going to get home.

Then, after every other passenger had already been let on the plane, I was pulled aside and told I couldn’t board because the pilot refused to let me on. I was considered a red flag and was being considered violent because of what had happened the night before.

That was a lot.

I was angry, embarrassed, frustrated, and overwhelmed. I also felt completely misunderstood. I had already been dealing with the exhaustion of traveling, and now I felt like one really bad moment had become the definition of who I was.

And that’s where my RSD came in hard.

When I feel rejected or misunderstood, I don’t always experience it as just that one thing. It can feel much bigger and much more personal. My brain starts filling in the blanks, and suddenly I’m thinking about what everyone must think of me, whether I’ve screwed everything up, and whether people now see me differently.

Add exhaustion and overstimulation to that, and things can get intense pretty quickly.

I’ve had meltdowns. I’ve gotten angry. I’ve reacted in ways I wish I hadn’t. I know that understanding why I reacted a certain way doesn’t automatically make the reaction okay, and that’s something I have to be honest about.

But I also know that beating myself up afterward doesn’t actually help.

The same thing has been happening with my friend.

We had a spat, and I was angry and hurt. I felt misunderstood, and I found myself replaying the conversation in my head. What was said, what I said, what I should have said differently, and what I wish had happened instead.

I’ve noticed that I do this a lot. I go back over conversations and situations trying to find the exact point where things went wrong. I can spend way too much time trying to make sense of something that has already happened.

And sometimes there isn’t anything left to figure out.

It happened. I was hurt. I got angry. I didn’t handle every part of it perfectly. The other person had their own feelings and perspective. That’s the reality of it.

I think that’s been one of the harder things for me to accept.

I can have strong emotions without needing to solve every emotion immediately. I can be angry without staying angry. I can feel rejected without letting that feeling decide what something means about me.

And I can have a meltdown without deciding that the meltdown is who I am.

I’m learning to separate the feeling from the story I build around the feeling.

Being angry doesn’t have to become everyone is against me.

Feeling rejected doesn’t have to become nobody wants me around.

Handling something badly doesn’t have to become I’m a terrible person.

Those are very different things, and I’m getting better at recognizing the difference.

I’m also getting better at recognizing when I’m already running on empty. When I’m exhausted, overstimulated, frustrated, or emotionally worn down, I have a lot less room to deal with one more thing.

That doesn’t excuse how I react. It just helps me understand what is happening before I get to the point where I can’t regulate anymore.

I don’t have everything figured out. But I’m starting to notice what comes before those moments, and that feels important.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life reliving every argument, every rejection, every embarrassing moment, or every time I didn’t handle something the way I wanted to.

Some things need to be talked about. Some things need an apology. Some things need a boundary.

And some things just need to be left where they happened.

I’m working on knowing the difference.

What is something you’ve been replaying that you’re ready to stop carrying?

“You cannot change what has happened, only how you respond to it.”— Viktor Frankl