When How You Feel Is Treated as Overreaction: Emotional Reactions and Mental Health Accessibility
- David Langdon
- 15 hours ago
- 2 min read
This scenario comes from the BlindSpot Accessibility Playbook. It is one of many situations where the cultural response to an employee's experience creates a barrier that compounds the original difficulty.
Something happens at work that upsets the employee. It might be a critical comment in a meeting, a decision that affects them, a change to their role, or an interaction that did not go the way they hoped. They show some distress. Perhaps their voice changes. Perhaps they go quiet. Perhaps they express that they are finding something difficult.
The response from a colleague or manager is reassurance that it is not a big deal. That they are overthinking it. That everyone else is fine. Emotional reactions and mental health accessibility are directly affected by responses like these. For someone whose emotional regulation is already effortful due to a mental health condition, being told their response is disproportionate does not reduce the distress. It adds shame to it.
They learn not to show how they are feeling at work. That learning has its own cost.
Emotional Reactions and Mental Health Accessibility: Why Dismissal Compounds the Difficulty
Mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and PTSD can affect emotional regulation. This means the intensity of an emotional response to a situation may not match the response an observer would expect. The emotion is real and proportionate from the inside, even when it appears disproportionate from the outside.
When that emotion is met with dismissal or reframing, the person receives a clear message: this is not a safe place to be honest about how you feel. Over time, the energy required to mask emotional responses at work is an additional tax on already limited resources.
Employees who feel safe expressing difficulty ask for help earlier. They recover faster. They stay longer.
What a Validating Response Looks Like
Validation does not mean agreeing with the person's interpretation of events. It means acknowledging that their experience is real, that their response makes sense from where they are standing, and that it is safe to express it.
“It sounds like that was really difficult. I can see why it landed that way for you.”
That response does not require agreement, does not assign blame, and does not minimise. It makes room for the person's experience without enlarging the problem.
Emotional reactions and mental health accessibility are shaped by how organisations respond to difficulty. The response is a choice. It can be made better.
Want to Go Deeper?
Scenarios like this are common, but they are often overlooked because they feel ordinary. Learning to spot them, and knowing how to respond well, is a core part of building more inclusive workplace experiences.
You can download a free copy of our Accessibility Playbook, which explores everyday scenarios like this and offers practical, human centred ways to reduce friction.
These are also the kinds of situations covered in our Accessibility Awareness Course, where we help organisations build awareness, confidence, and better habits around accessibility across physical, digital, and cultural environments.
If you are interested in learning more, you can access both the playbook and the course here:
Accessibility Playbook:
Accessibility Awareness Course:
💡 Small change. Big impact.
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