How to Stop Over-Explaining Yourself Over Text

You're staring at your phone. Someone responded to your message, and something about it doesn't feel right. Maybe they questioned your reasoning, or maybe they just sent a single word that somehow made you feel like you did something wrong. Your thumb hovers over the keyboard, and before you know it, you've written three paragraphs explaining yourself. You do this so often that it's become automatic. You justify your opinions before anyone asks you to. You add caveats to your statements. You anticipate every possible objection and address it preemptively. And lately, you've started to notice that this happens more with certain people, or in certain contexts, or after certain kinds of messages. Here's what you need to hear first: you're not weak, you're not broken, and you're not doing this because you're bad at communication. You're doing this because at some point, the people who were supposed to validate your experience didn't. And your nervous system learned that the only way to be