Cut your problem down to size

“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
This is a famous phrase that no one should ever use. If you’ve been on the receiving end of it you’ll know what I mean. Maybe you were very upset about something and you were trying to explain what the problem was; perhaps you were crying or carrying on attempting to convey the seriousness of the issue and then — splash! (picture a bucket of cold water being dropped on your head here) — the dreaded phrase was uttered. Someone thinks you’re making a big deal over nothing.

Whose Mountain?
Imagine for a second that you’re the one delivering the mountain-out-of-a-molehill expression. What are you hoping to accomplish? Although you may assume otherwise you can be sure that discounting the other person’s dilemma or angst will only ratchet things up even more.
When words and tears fail there’s always the slamming of a door the shattering of a glass — big sounds that communicate the brokenness of a heart. Failing to acknowledge pain when it is put forth almost inevitably leads to louder more dramatic shows of anguish. This is why we should not refer to mountains and molehills when someone in the family issues a complaint or shares a frustration.
Keeping It a Molehill
On the other hand when you’re the one issuing a complaint or sharing a frustration try to refrain from making mountains out of molehills. In other words while no one should ever accuse another person of engaging in this act everyone needs to refrain from doing so himself!
Indeed anyone who is crying and carrying on slamming doors and breaking glasses is either making a mountain out of a molehill (i.e. expressing outrageous histrionic upset over one of the innumerable normal upsetting events of life) or is expressing emotion that should have been processed released and transformed long before the conversation about the issue took place.
Let’s start with the latter option — the drama-filled communication. There are events in life that can cause excruciating emotional pain. Unexpected death or severe loss would be in this category. The discovery of betrayal is probably there too. There are some things in life that may very well provoke an extremely intense show of emotion. But not many.
Which takes us to the former option — the dramatic response to a frustrating disappointing even maddening “normal” event. The faults and flaws of family members and friends may be the cause of many such events. Someone forgot to do something important. Someone wasn’t perfectly honest. Someone made a very poor decision. Someone’s carelessness resulted in a large financial loss.
These and many other events happen all the time because imperfect human beings mess up quite often. Moreover there are also events that happen because this is how the world works: construction slowed traffic to a halt; you find after driving an hour to get there that the store is closed due to renovations; the oven breaks down just as your guests arrive for the week and so on.
Although these are all very frustrating events making a loud fuss about them won’t improve the situation. In fact the loud fuss is much more likely to worsen it.
Contrary to popular opinion shouting and speed-talking do not help release the stress. Instead these behaviors release a flood of stress chemistry into the bloodstream.
It’s bad enough that the car got dented due to the carelessness of an adolescent driver in the family; the real suffering is caused by one’s own expressed hysteria as toxic chemistry floods every cell in the body. “Blowing up” on a regular basis is associated with all sorts of serious health consequences — not for the perpetrators of the aggravations but for the one who blows up in response to them! It would be far better to take steps to calm down from bad news — sit down breathe slowly rub a bit of lavender oil on some pulse points.
Don’t even speak to the person who is at fault or try to deal with a situation until you’ve settled your nerves thought things through and developed a plan of action. For your own sake and for the sake of your most important relationships think small.
If Hashem loved Har Sinai so much for its small size think of how much He will love us for reducing our own mountains to molehills.