I found this great quote in a post on Patty Digh’s blog:
In times of panic, or fear, we create whole worlds of sense in our minds.
Her point was that these worlds only actually make sense in your mind. Not to other people, and often not to yourself when you look back on it (from a place of less fear).
This is so common in conflict situations, and is one of the reasons they get so hard to resolve–people are trying to talk about a single situation, but in fact are talking about two different "worlds of sense."