I was more overstimulated than upset

Dear Delyara, I keep forgetting that not every bad mood is emotional in the dramatic sense. Today I thought I was becoming irritable or low, and then later I realized I was simply overstimulated. Too much light, too much sound, too many people entering and leaving my attention, too many tiny social adjustments, too much internal translation. Once the environment softened, I softened. That felt useful to notice. I think my nervous system is more sensitive than I keep pretending, maybe because pretending otherwise helps me move through the world more efficiently. But some evenings the pretending stops working. Today was one of those.