Here recently it seems like everything just gets under my skin so quickly and easily. It’s not that I get mad and take it out on others, it’s just the fact that I’m constantly annoyed and stressed. Something as simple as the dogs tracking some mud through the house will just ruin my mood. I know some people who would just laugh it off and clean it up. Meanwhile I’ll get pissed that I didn’t wipe their feet and be mad the entire time I’m cleaning it up. This has nothing to do with the dogs, it just an example. Any number of seemingly insignificant things can trigger me like that. Like forgetting something at the store and having to go back. I would love to be able to go, “well that sucks” and just get over it.
Happened to me too. Best thing is going to therapy.
This might be caused by bigger problems with your family or work. Or it might just be accumulated stress unrelated to anything in particular.
Therapy helps either way
I’ve been in therapy for years and it is very much accumulated stress. At this point I don’t know what other stress I can cut out, so I figured of maybe I could lessen the impact across the board it might help. Like if I could compress my stress so it takes up less resources.
I’ve also been through therapy for years, although not currently. IDK whether it’s true or not but for me personally I feel as though therapy can deteriorate from a short, sharp, beneficial “intervention” (which is very helpful) into a malaise of relating ones problems to a friendly ear (which is unproductive) … but I digress.
This sounds to me like one of those problems which is a symptom potentially caused by a myriad of different issues, and as such has no specific “cure”. As you’ve said it’s “accumulated stress”, which is another way of saying the same thing. I feel like I run into this type of problem a lot: the solution is really easy, I just need to do better at life!
My one suggestion would be to look at therapies for anxiety, since anger and anxiety are commonly symptoms of the same problem. There’s two common therapies for this.
Firstly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - figuring out why your thoughts follow the patterns they do and as a result, learning how to change those patterns. This is hard work. It’s a bit like going to a gym. You need to set aside time for several sessions a week of examining the parts of yourself you’ve been trying not to think about your entire life. The gold standard for DIY CBT is “When Panic Attacks” by David Burns, alternatively “feeling great” by the same author. He has a podcast also. I know the dirty dog feet was just an off hand example, but to continue that example you might discover that you have a deeply held belief that people who have dirty houses end up sad lonely and unloved, a potential solution might be to tell someone who you feel is happy and well loved how difficult it is to keep a clean house - inevitably they will agree with you and tell you how hard they find keeping up with their chores.
Secondly Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) - accepting that stressors will always be present, understand that they’re harmless, fleeting thoughts, and committing to a course of action that is more meaningful than simply “avoiding stress”. Author Steven Hayes is the gold standard here but personally I find his stuff too heavy. I quite like “DARE” by Barry McDonagh, basically ACT but more easily digested. This one is more readily applied “in the moment”. It takes practice but there’s no sitting and pondering one’s soul so-to-speak. This is very difficult to explain in a sentence but you might acknowledge, in the moment, that dirty dog feet are infuriating, you feel that feeling, allow it to come. What you’ll find (with anxiety at least) is that if you don’t resist it but regard it with a welcoming curiosity, it will dissipate fairly quickly and leave you with a kind of energised readiness. “Well that was a thing!”. If feeling frustrated is a natural response, and you fight with yourself not to feel that, it creates an incredible tension - you push the feelings away and they just push back harder. You kind of learn to let the frustration come feel the feelings in a healthy way.
ACT sounds very interesting. There are stressors I’ll never get rid of. But that sounds like it could help having them control my life. Thanks!
I would like to add EMDR to the list of therapies. Ive been through CBT and ACT and learned some coping skills there. EMDR is considered a bit ‘advanced’ in that a person needs CBT-like skills and self-awareness for it to really work.
I’ll admit it seems like woo-woo to my overly logical brain. But I cannot deny the real permanent breakthroughs in learning to more efficiently recognize and process distressing emotions.
I trained myself over years after realizing stress was killing me, I was unpredictable to be around, and struggled to eat with any regularity which led to really bad eating habits.
What ended up working is when something would happen that upset me I would close my eyes, take a deep breath, go to a room by myself and just sit down with my eyes closed and do box breathing until my nerves settled. Then when I opened my eyes I would say to myself, ok let’s go get this mud cleaned up.
Admittedly it doesn’t work in a car, crowded location, or even work necessarily. Over years my impulse control and roll with the punches attitude really developed. Maybe too much, when my ex wife said she wanted a divorce it was kind of just an “ok, do you want me to move out or did you plan to? I’ll see what paperwork we need to fill out “.
I enjoy life so much more though. My dog peed in the laundry room shortly after coming inside and I remember a time when I would have been incredulous about it. My response was to chuckle and say “oh buddy you know not to pee inside”, grap a swiffer and throw the pad in the load of wash I was starting.
Maybe I just got older, life experience and all that. I do think the separation from what happened and box breathing exercise really helped me in being able to put things into context and just let life be life though.
My solution, which I honestly believe leads to a much more happy life consist of two things:
Have a conscious relationship to what you can do something about. “Dog peed in laundry” is a great example. It’s already happened, there’s nothing I can do to change that, so I’ll just fix the problem. No point in getting irritated. The point is: Don’t get mad about stuff you can’t change/influence.
Always give everyone the benefit of doubt. If someone says something hurtful, like "your mother is a fat asshole™ ", I’ll try to think “maybe they have legitimate concerns about my mothers health, and legitimate concerns about how she’s treating others that I should bring up with her”, rather than immediately thinking they’re just trying to hurt me. That me be disproven in later conversation, but I believe it helps me treat others in a better way, and helps me be a more balanced person.
12 Practical Steps for Learning to Go With the Flow
- Realize that you can’t control everything
- Become aware.
- Breathe.
- Get perspective.
- Practice.
- Baby steps.
- Laugh.
- Keep a journal.
- Meditate.
- Realize that you can’t control others.
- Accept change and imperfection.
- Enjoy life as a flow of change, chaos and beauty.
Even if the TP unrolls on the side of the wall?
Whoa now, let’s keep this civilized.
For me, it was pure philosophy. When I came to terms with how totally insignificant I and my world is in the grand scheme of the universe, something as simple as the dog tracking mud across the floor became less then inconsequential.
As an aside:
Meanwhile I’ll get pissed that I didn’t wipe their feet and be mad the entire time I’m cleaning it up.
This reads like someone who takes everything upon themselves and doesn’t cut themselves enough slack. I don’t know you and this is the tiniest snippet of your life experiences, so take my statement with a massive heaping of salt, but give yourself a break. You aren’t super human, you aren’t responsible for everyone and everything, and you will make mistakes. Holding yourself to an impossible standard is a common source of anger and unhappiness.
Subjectively speaking, every person I’ve met who I would describe as “angry” when discussing their personality (I’m a believer that some things are worth being mad about and choosing to be appropriately angry does not make you an angry person) is deeply unhappy with themselves. This is usually because, thanks to a combination of external influences like narcissistic friends/family, they never measure up to their distorted beliefs of how they “should” be. “Should” is a bad word. Thinking in terms of “should” is self-abusive and rarely helpful. “Will” and “next time” are fine. They’re about learning. “Should” is nothing more than a way to internalize the things you’ve done wrong without focusing on how you’ll learn from them.
Anyway, I could be way off, cause man I don’t know you. But, some food for thought, anyway.
I would say you are pretty spot on. I was raised by a narcissistic father, who always told me I wasn’t living up to my potential. It’s taken years of therapy to get over that feeling and it still creeps up from time to time.
I like the thought on should. I never thought about it that way before. Which is funny because that is what I always tell me kids. If they do something wrong I don’t sit there and harp on them about what they did wrong like my parents did to me. I talk to them about how we can handle that situation better in the future. Guess I need to listen to myself more often.
Just wanted to add the easy to remember shorthand (came from a therapist on youtube): “Don’t should all over yourself.”
Things gonna do their own thing. You can only handle the direct consequences, and work towards influencing the outcomes.
Drink more water! Whenever I find myself grumpy, the culprit is usually dehydration… It makes everything harder IMO. Ymmv etc etc anecdata
When I start feeling frustrated or anxious, I go through a checklist.
Am I too hot or too cold? Am I properly hydrated? Have I walked around recently?
If it’s none of those, I stop what I’m doing and drop into Zen meditation for a few breaths
in my experience, the sooner you accept that life is terrible and full of pain and misery, the sooner you cease to be surprised by it being terrible and full of pain and misery.
tl;dr “this might as well happen, I guess”
You know, it’s sad but I think lowering my expectations out of life really does help get through a bit. You end up a bit cynical by default, but when good things do happen they stand out more. Sure my life kinda sucks but taking it out on others does nobody any favors. Patience and kindness might come back around - but again, don’t expect it.
While reading Epectitus definitely helped (externals - out of your control; reactions - your choice, things don’t bother you, you bother yourself), and telling myself that I gain nothing out of anger (mostly lose from it), I ran out of fucks to give. Someone’s blocking the way? Just wait until I can pass them. My delivery is running late? Whatever, it’ll get there. I left the window open during heavy rain and everything is wet? Close the window and mop it.
In a world where nothing really matters, giving your undying attention to stupid things like these is just absurd. Who’s watching your reactions so that you have to put on a show?
But as someone said, it takes practice. Being mindful, present, realizing that you’re getting angry, and then consciously thinking “ah whatever” and accepting it. Difficult at first, but as with any skill, the more you do it, the easier it gets.
For me: get enough sleep and/or do exercise. Getting 9 hours is my ideal but I settle for 7 more often than I should. As for exercise: running, hitting the heavy bag, jump rope, rowing, weight lifting, swimming, walking, VR boxing (got too sweaty for it to be a long term thing), rock climbing; all these things have been good over the years or whatever you want. Cortisol builds up in your system and exercise breaks it down. You can’t be stressed if you’re exhausted. I think of the two as shielding and loading. Sleep increases my shielding from stressors and exercise decreases my baseline stress load. The two together are the actual answer, in my opinion.
Being mad sucks. If something bad happens it sucks. If I’m mad about the bad thing that happened then I already got two things that suck. I like to minimize the suck.
Are you getting enough sleep and nutritious food? It’s critical to have the basics covered.
We have zero control over the first thought that comes to mind, so don’t sweat it if it’s an angry one. A few deep breaths really helps, even if the head (which wants to get angry and rage) says it won’t do anything.
So many good suggestions here. And while therapy is definitely a good option, I’d start simpler before spending money on that.
I’d ask one simple question: what are your sleep habits? Sometimes it’s as simple as working to get better sleep. Not more sleep. Better sleep.
If you wake up tired, feeling physically exhausted, then a few things could be at play: you may simply need to stop eating four hours before going to bed, and only drink water, but stop that like two hours before going to bed — and try to use the toilet before going to bed no matter what.
You could be losing sleep due to using a device when you lie down. Either due to time, stimulation, light patterns, etc.
And another, bigger issue, is sleep apnea. A few of the biggest symptoms of sleep apnea are: waking up feeling physically tired (like your arms feel like salamis hanging off, or you feel in a brain fog); falling asleep in the middle of the day for what seems like no reason; finding that to get through the day, you have to have a lot of caffeine to function; nodding off easily while driving; and the most obvious of them — waking up in the middle of the night as if you had to take in a huge gasp of air.
Sleep habit issues and sleep apnea are both major causes of impatience in a person. Source: myself. When I get better sleep (especially after I got on a CPAP), I generally became a more patient person and in many ways a happier person.
There will always be other stressors than the above that can factor in, but for my money, I’d begin there. The other suggestion of drinking more water is another easy first step to see if that helps. Exercise is also an easy step to take because it has the immediate physical and chemical effect in the brain of helping to ease one’s mind.
Everyone is different, but the above has helped me.
I wish you luck in your journey.
Or: kids. I can’t remember the last time I had a good full night’s sleep.
True.
I’ll second the sleep apnea thing. Before I was diagnosed, I was getting terrible sleep and was constantly exhausted and irritable. I’d nod off at my desk mid afternoon occasionally. Getting that under control completely changed my life for the better.
I went on anxiety meds. Changed my life
Yes. In my case, my mood disorder was causing irritability. Many disorders can cause it (e.g., MDD, BPD, IED).
OP, I’d suggest an appointment with a specialist if everything else has been ruled out; everything else includes bad sleep habits, bad eating habits, physical illnesses, etc.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff”.
It’s about adjusting your perspective. Some things can be looked at as new challenges and opportunities for creativity. Some things can feel very important and weigh on you but given a day or two can be irrelevant. Other things like death, finances, or relationships are difficult to get past, but you will eventually. Taking a breath to step outside the situation or looking at it from someone else’s perspective can really help.
I absolutely have these little moments every day. I get mad, say some ‘what the fucks’ out loud, call myself an asshole, etc, then move on seconds later. Giving your emotions a reasonable amount of time to smack you up is a good thing. Allowing them to take over isn’t helping anyone.
Edit: Come to think of it, I was just around my mother for the holidays. She is agent of chaos. She has a short temper, she yells, she’s erratic, she very much exerts her irrational stress upon others. Without getting into my entire childhood, I’ll share that it took me many years to figure out why I was so short tempered and angry at everything. The quote I started this post with was what sparked the change for me.
practice.
you have to intentionally practice.
metta is one exercise.
prozac
though i’ll be honest, the several months of dialing-in the initial dosage were an absolute hell, but once it starts working… like hot damn, a whole new person. i can’t function without it, but everyone reacts differently to SSRIs… so YMMV and it’s definitely something to consult a physician about if you’re serious.