Discernment notices when an emotional reaction is providing information about you rather than the situation.

Reactions point in two directions and it is easy to confuse them. Sometimes a surge of feeling is accurate reporting about what is in front of you. Other times it is reporting about your history, an old injury being pressed, a fear that belongs to a different year. The intensity is the same in both cases, which is why intensity is a poor guide to whether the feeling is about now.

When a reaction feels larger than the event, ask when you have felt this before. If a clear earlier scene arrives, some of the charge belongs there. That does not make the present concern invalid, but it lets you respond to the size of the actual situation rather than the size of the feeling.