If you notice yourself over-reacting to something, it may be that your current reaction has a logic in a past situation that you were not able to resolve at the time. Consider this example: a 33-year-old professional woman who is normally emotionally composed finds herself feeling full of rage while ordering a coffee, when the barista serves the man behind her in the cue first. She later realises that the situation reminded her of growing up with her brother, who she felt was consistently favoured by her parents, something that she never expressed at the time.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a relatively new form of therapy that is useful for settling troubling emotions that have their origins in unresolved past experiences, like the one in this example.