I read recently that a woman had been caught out by the change in Marks & Spencer’s returns policy. Instead of it being open-ended, purchases now have to be returned within 35 days. The woman said she was devastated when the goods she wished to return were refused because she had overshot the stipulated 35 days.

When people claim to be devastated by life’s events, I have a tendency to dismiss this as an unnecessary exaggeration. I fully accept that some things are truly devastating in the sense that they lay something to waste. Famines, severe droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, genocide, wars and financial depressions can all have devastating consequences for thousands, perhaps millions, of people. But lots of the things people claim to be devastating, such as losing a football match, being insulted or criticised, having your house burgled, being made redundant – or even a bereavement – do not have to be devastating unless, that is, we let them.

I realise that I run the risk of sounding insufferably stiff-upper-lip, but I think it is easy to talk yourself into feeling devastated when a less troublesome emotion would be appropriate. You could argue that there is no harm in a bit of exaggeration, but feelings are easily contaminated by thoughts and words. If I keep telling myself, and other people, that I’m devastated by something that has happened to me, then the chances are that I will fall for my own propaganda and feel far worse than I otherwise would. Most of the time, feeling sad or upset will do; on a Richter scale of emotions, nowhere near feeling devastated.

Does this matter? Well yes, I think it does. Some feelings, such as being devastated, are so negative that they cripple us – we become incapable of taking sensible actions to improve the situation. Why do you suppose so many people delay going to their GP with symptoms that could turn out to be cancer? In any case, harbouring strong negative feelings doesn’t feel at all nice. I’d rather swap them for something easier to handle, something more benign.

But all this assumes that you accept that people can exercise some choice over how they feel.