The emotional weight of small moments
14 April – written by Katrin Kemmerzehl – Blog
Relationships can bring so much into our lives: closeness, friendship, love, comfort and a sense of belonging. But they can also bring uncertainty.
Sometimes it is something small. Someone takes longer than usual to reply. Their message feels a bit different. They seem quieter when you see them. Maybe you send a message and then find yourself checking your phone more than you want to admit.
And then the questions start.
Have I done something?
Did I say something weird?
Are they annoyed with me?
Have I somehow messed things up?
You might know, logically, that there could be a hundred ordinary reasons for someone not replying. They could be busy, tired, distracted or simply not looking at their phone. But knowing that does not always stop the feeling.
You might replay the conversation later, trying to work out what changed. You might read their message again and again, looking for something in the wording or tone. Sometimes you can even find yourself pulling back from someone because you are worried they are pulling away from you.
For some people, these moments can feel much bigger than they might seem from the outside. A small change in communication can bring a surprisingly strong wave of worry, hurt or shame.
This is often where the idea of rejection sensitivity can be helpful. It is not necessarily about being rejected. Sometimes it is the uncertainty around possible rejection, or the feeling that someone you care about might be disappointed, annoyed or losing interest, that feels hardest to sit with.
Research describes rejection sensitivity as a tendency to anxiously expect, readily perceive and strongly react to possible rejection, particularly in situations where it may not be clear what someone else means (Downey & Feldman, 1996).
For some people, especially those with autism, ADHD, AuDHD moments of feeling disconnected from others can carry a strong emotional weight and may linger long after the moment has passed (Shaw et al., 2014).
Uncertainty in relationships can be difficult to settle. You might keep going back over an interaction, trying to untangle what happened, whether something has changed, or what the other person might be thinking.
There is something about being in relationship with other people that can make us especially aware of how we are seen. Sartre wrote about this experience, and the way another person’s gaze can suddenly make us more conscious of ourselves and how we appear to them (Sartre, 1943/2003).
From the outside, the situation might look quite ordinary. Inside, though, it can feel much bigger. A small change in someone’s tone or behaviour can leave you wondering what it means, and sometimes it is that uncertainty that is hardest to sit with.
When Social Uncertainty Starts to Feel Personal
This can be especially familiar for many neurodivergent people, particularly if you have spent years trying to make sense of social situations that did not always feel easy or predictable.
Relationships involve a lot of things we do not always say out loud. You might find yourself paying close attention to someone’s tone, timing, facial expression or the way they respond, trying to work out what they mean when they have not quite said it directly.
Over time, this can leave you becoming very aware of yourself too.
Did I talk too much? Did I misunderstand them? Did that come across badly? Was I being awkward? Have I got this completely wrong?
If you have often felt misunderstood, criticised or left out, or have spent years masking or camouflaging parts of yourself, it can make these moments harder to brush off. You may have learned to pay close attention to other people’s reactions, while also questioning your own.
Research has found that experiences of social camouflaging and the pressure to adapt how you present yourself can be linked with poorer mental health and wellbeing in autistic adults (Hull et al., 2020).
So when something feels different in a relationship, it may not feel like a small thing at all. You might notice it quickly, think about it for hours afterwards, or find it difficult to simply let it go.
The Past in the Present
Often, these experiences are not only about what is happening in the moment. They can connect with older feelings of not quite knowing where you stand with other people.
A delayed reply may not feel like just a delayed reply. A change in tone may leave you wondering what has happened. A little distance can become filled with questions and meaning.
Sometimes, something small in the present touches something much older: earlier experiences of feeling outside the group, misunderstood, criticised, left out, or unsure of how to connect with other people.
From a psychodynamic perspective, what we feel in a relationship is not always only about what is happening right now. Earlier relational experiences can stay with us in ways we may not always notice. A small change in someone’s tone, a delayed reply or a feeling of distance can sometimes stir up something that feels strangely familiar, even when we can’t immediately say why (Erikson, 1950; McWilliams, 2011).
Sometimes something happening now can touch an older feeling from earlier in our lives, even if we cannot quite put our finger on why it affects us so strongly.
Making Sense of What Happens Between Us
People often describe replaying conversations afterwards, noticing changes in someone’s behaviour, or becoming unsure about where they stand. Sometimes it is not one big thing. It might be a friend taking longer to make plans, not being invited to something, someone cancelling at the last minute, or noticing that a partner seems a little distracted.
In close relationships especially, uncertainty can be difficult to sit with.
Sometimes this can create a cycle between people. One person may look for reassurance, while the other is not quite sure what to say. Someone may need a little space, while the other experiences that space as distance. Before either person really knows what is happening, they can both end up feeling misunderstood.
In friendships, you might find yourself wondering whether you are still as close as you were, or whether you have somehow been left out. You may want to ask, but worry that asking will make things awkward.
In dating or intimate relationships, uncertainty might show up when plans change, affection feels different, or you are unsure whether the other person still feels the same way.
And it does not only happen in close relationships. At work, you might leave a meeting thinking about a piece of feedback, wonder why someone sounded particularly brief, or spend far longer than you intended trying to work out how you came across.
These are ordinary human experiences. But when you are already sensitive to the possibility of rejection or disconnection, they can carry more emotional weight than someone else might expect.
Psychodynamic and relational approaches often look at what happens between people, rather than seeing everything as something that exists within one person. We all bring our histories, sensitivities, hopes and ways of protecting ourselves into relationships, and these can shape how we respond to one another (Benjamin, 2004).
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy offers another helpful perspective. It can help us notice difficult thoughts and feelings without immediately getting caught up in them. When uncertainty shows up, there may be a little more space to pause, notice what our mind is telling us, and choose how we want to respond rather than automatically reacting.
Irvin Yalom also wrote about the importance of the space between people and how much of our emotional life is shaped through connection. We want to feel understood, accepted and valued, while also trying to work out where we stand with one another (Yalom, 2002).
A more compassionate understanding
It can be easy to turn these experiences against ourselves:
Why am I so affected by this? Why can’t I just let it go? Why does this feel so personal?
But perhaps there is another question worth asking:
What have relationships felt like for me over time?
Sometimes our sensitivities make more sense when we look at what we have experienced. Maybe you have often felt misunderstood or left out. Maybe you have spent years trying to work out how to fit in, or have been in relationships where you were never quite sure where you stood.
Seen in that light, being sensitive to changes in connection is not necessarily a flaw that needs fixing. It can be part of what you have learned through being in relationship with other people, and it may also reflect how much being understood, accepted and connected matters to you.
This can offer a more compassionate way of understanding rejection sensitivity (Neff, 2011). Rather than asking why you are so affected, you might begin to get curious about what these moments mean to you, and what they might be telling you about the relationships and connections that matter most.
How Counselling can help
Counselling can offer a space to explore what happens when uncertainty in relationships feels particularly difficult. Because therapy is itself a relationship, some of the same feelings may sometimes show up here too: wondering whether you have been understood, feeling unsure how you are being perceived, or noticing moments when you feel more connected or more distant.
This can become something you explore together rather than something you have to work out on your own. Over time, you may begin to notice what happens when uncertainty shows up, what you tend to do next, and what might help you stay connected to yourself and to the other person.
It can also be helpful to discover that relationships do not have to be perfectly smooth to be meaningful. People misunderstand each other. They need space. They sometimes get things wrong. What matters can be what happens afterwards: being able to talk, repair, ask questions, and find your way back to each other.
Counselling is not about learning to stop caring what other people think. It can be about having a little more space around those feelings, so that uncertainty does not always have to decide what you do next.
If something here feels familiar, you are very welcome to get in touch and see whether counselling might feel helpful for you.
References
- Benjamin, J. (2004). Beyond doer and done to: An intersubjective view of thirdness. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 73(1), 5–46.
- Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., & Mandy, W. (2020). The female autism phenotype and camouflaging: A narrative review. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 7(4), 306–317.
- McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic diagnosis: Understanding personality structure in the clinical process (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Neff, K. (2011). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. William Morrow.
- Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and nothingness (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1943)
- Shaw, P., Stringaris, A., Nigg, J., & Leibenluft, E. (2014). Emotion dysregulation in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171(3), 276–293.
- Yalom, I. D. (2002). The gift of therapy: An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients. HarperCollins.
Katrin Kemmerzehl
I’m a qualified counsellor based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Please get in touch if you’d like to arrange a consultation.