“Crying Over Spilled Milk”: What Emotional Sensitivity Is Really About

I recently read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson, and one phrase has stayed with me ever since. The book references emotionally sensitive or “hypersensitive” individuals as people who might “cry over spilled milk.”

I paused when I read that.

Not because the phrase was unfamiliar — it’s one most of us have heard — but because of how often I see it misunderstood, weaponized, or used to dismiss people who are already struggling to make sense of their emotional worlds. As a therapist and as a human, it made me think deeply about how we speak about emotional sensitivity, especially in the context of emotional dysregulation and diagnoses like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

But what if “crying over spilled milk” isn’t really about the milk at all?

The Milk Is Rarely the Point

When someone reacts strongly to something that seems small — a mistake, a tone of voice, a cancelled plan — it’s tempting to focus on the surface event. Why is this such a big deal?

But in my experience, both personally and professionally, the milk is almost never just milk.

For someone who struggles with emotional dysregulation, a seemingly minor incident can activate much deeper emotional layers:

• Shame: “I messed up again. I can’t do anything right.”

• Fear of rejection: “They’re going to be mad at me.”

• Helplessness: “I can’t handle anything.”

• Abandonment: “This proves I’m too much.”

The emotional response isn’t disproportionate — it’s contextual. The context just happens to be internal, historical, and invisible to others.

Strong emotional reactions often come from a nervous system that has learned, over time, that small moments can quickly turn into big ones. That mistakes lead to shame. That emotions aren’t met with comfort. That safety is conditional.

So, when the milk spills, the body doesn’t respond to the mess on the floor — it responds to everything that mess represents, and beneath the surface is a nervous system responding exactly as it was trained to.

Emotional Dysregulation Isn’t a Choice

Emotional dysregulation is often framed as a lack of control, or worse, a lack of effort. I want to be clear: for most people who struggle with it, emotions don’t feel manageable in the moment. For people who experience it, emotions don’t arrive quietly — they arrive loud, fast, and full-bodied. Joy can feel euphoric. Sadness can feel devastating. Fear can feel consuming.

This isn’t because someone is dramatic or attention-seeking. It’s because their nervous system learned early on that emotions weren’t consistently met with care, validation, or guidance. When caregivers were emotionally immature — dismissive, overwhelmed, unpredictable, or unavailable — children didn’t learn how to regulate with support. They learned how to survive distressing emotions alone.

Over time, that survival turns into hypervigilance.

Reading This Through the Lens of BPD

As I read Gibson’s words, I couldn’t help but think about how easily phrases like “crying over spilled milk” get mapped onto people diagnosed with BPD. BPD remains one of the most stigmatized diagnoses in mental health, often reduced to stereotypes about being “too sensitive” or “overreactive.”

But what research — and learning from the lived experience of others— tells us is that many individuals with BPD have heightened emotional sensitivity and slower emotional recovery. Their feelings aren’t wrong; they’re loud. And they’re loud for a reason.

Many people with BPD histories describe chronic emotional invalidation: being told they were too much, too dramatic, too sensitive, or simply ignored when they needed comfort most. When emotions aren’t allowed, they don’t disappear — they intensify.

So yes, sometimes there are tears over spilled milk. But often, those tears are carrying years of invalidated emotion.

Why Being Told “You’re Overreacting” Hurts So Much

One thing I see consistently is how deeply painful emotional dismissal can be. Being told you’re overreacting doesn’t calm you down — it teaches you that your internal experience can’t be trusted.

And the paradox is this: the more invalidated someone feels, the harder their nervous system works to be heard.

Validation doesn’t mean saying the milk mattered more than it did. It means acknowledging that the emotion makes sense. That something deeper was touched, or a ‘sore spot’ was hit. That the reaction didn’t come out of nowhere.

Sometimes, regulation begins not with fixing the feeling, but with staying present long enough for it to pass.

Reframing Sensitivity

Reading this book reminded me how much our language matters. When we frame emotional sensitivity as a flaw, we miss the opportunity to see it as an adaptation. Sensitivity often develops in environments where emotional attunement was inconsistent — where you had to notice subtle shifts in mood, tone, or safety just to make it through the day.

That kind of sensitivity doesn’t disappear in adulthood. But it can be understood, softened, and supported. When we frame emotional sensitivity as “crying over spilled milk,” we miss an opportunity to ask better questions:

• What does this moment remind them of?

• What emotions weren’t allowed when they were younger?

• What support was missing then — and is still missing now?

Healing doesn’t mean never crying over spilled milk again. It means learning that when emotions spill, you don’t have to clean them up alone.

And sometimes, those tears aren’t about the milk at all — they’re about all the times no one noticed it had spilled before.