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.
How new is ACT therapy? Is it more prevalent nowadays in comparison with CBT? CBT seemed to be a hugely popular “trend” and it always seemed to not make much sense to me.
CBT was definitely a trend because it’s easy to administer and it absolutely works for certain things. It worked wonders for me with panic attacks, and it’s child DBT is the only known effective treatment for BPD last I heard, but it solves specific problems namely irrational and harmful thought patterns
If your therapist isn’t doing as well as you feel they could be,don’t feel bad about finding a new one, hell, you can just schedule an appointment with another one without quitting your current one, just to try it out
You kinda just have to stop giving a shit, which I guess is technically Mindfulness.
But I think I achieved it after a bad shroom trip when I had an epiphany that nothing in life matters, but it really doesn’t have to matter.
Yep, because when it’s all said and done who cares? You got mud on the floor? So? Your dog doesn’t know any better and you’re human so you forgot. If that happens to me I just think “my happiness and my dogs and family’s happiness is more important than some mud”. I focus on this example because it’s the example OP gave.
In life only one thing matters and that’s happiness and actively hamstringing yourself is shitty
That one was a k-hole for me, but same thing basically. I was like “whoa nothing matters and I’m my own person” and I cut out everyone toxic in my life and stopped betting upset at small things, like someone hitting my car so hard the wheel fell off when it was parked outside. I was like “yep, that’ll happen” and shrugged.
The only things that make me very upset now are people rude to service people and cunts who litter out of their cars (or overall). That’s the only time I yell anymore.
I had something similar to this after a good trip, but the dark version where nothing matters until it hits you, then spent next few years where my déjà vu and empathy kept breaking through ceilings in its way going up
Some good advice I heard once is that you can’t change what happens to you but you can change how you react to it. Bad things will happen but how you react to those things makes such an impact. Reacting positively to negative things happening affects not only your mood, but also how you deal with those things. It takes time to shift to this style of thinking but it will definitely improve your way of life.
This mindset is helpful especially when compounded with general therapy techniques that you can use in your day to day, diet, exercise and sleep. Sounds cliche but it all compounds in ways that we don’t really notice consciously (at least for me)
Definitely agree. I was raised with this mindset, but it never stuck until I went to therapy and got other things sorted. It’s hard to react calmly and logically when the rest of your brain is fucked.
Reacting versus responding.
As I’ve progressed from my early to mid 20s this is something I’ve really tried to focus on.
I was extremely reactive and volatile emotionally, and a single thing could fuck up my entire day. Between my brain doing its last bit of developing, and getting a hold of my generalized anxiety disorder and depressive disorder through therapy, I’ve gone from, “this fucking sucks” before having break downs in the worst case to, “I can feel bad once it’s fixed, but it’s gotta be fixed first”.
This is definitely a healthier mindset, but I catch myself trying to fix things that just can’t be fixed. Sometimes you just gotta let go, so that’s been my focus recently. It’s hard, but I think recognizing it has been a great first step.
Honestly this often makes me more frustrated at myself for acting a certain way. I know what I’m feeling is irrational and I know it doesn’t help the situation and I shouldn’t be feeling or reacting this way. And then it drives up he frustration because of how ridiculous it is.
You do not need to be that hard to yourself when your feeling “wrong”. Yes it is probably better for yourself if you don’t overreact. However you cannot really cotntrol your feelings. So it is still better to accept your anger. First, as you said, it drives up the frustration, because now you are also worried about your feelings. And second your original emotion wants to be “noticed”. I read and experienced a few times myself, the “wrong” emotion disappears often quickly when you accept it. It is an essential concept of mindfulness, to accept your emotions.
Edit: As far as i understand it and experienced it, saying to yourself “no i shouldn’t be angry about this” won’t change your thinking
Yeah sometimes you just gotta laugh about things and move on. Losing your temper usually doesn’t help.
Also you can often change what happens to you. If someone is treating you badly don’t let them keep doing that, correct or avoid them. If your bed is full of cracker crumbs, change your sheets.
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.
Free bitter fruit rollup
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.
100%, removing myself from a situation when I start to get frustrated is key. It also helped me to realize that I was being a jerk to people. The attitude adjustments are a work in progress though, for sure.
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.”
Yes. I first distanced myself from that mean, critiquing internal voice. That took about a year. Then I learned practiced self kindness, that took many years. The final stage was befriending that mean voice of mine, she meant well even though she was doing harm. That felt really good, like it wrapped things up for me in a really satisfying way.
Learning, time, and turning towards those difficult thoughts and feelings with kindness and curiosity. Allowing it to evolve over time.
Things gonna do their own thing. You can only handle the direct consequences, and work towards influencing the outcomes.
Proper sleep and exercise, yoga in particular, is what helps me. When I’m dead tired and my back hurts I’ll get mad at everything too.
I’m on antidepressants and I smoke a shit ton of weed
I’ve always had a personality that everyone thinks I smoke weed but I don’t.
I had that personality before weed and ssris, I still do though
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.
Age. After 40 years I realised it’s not worth getting wound up about things. Every year I drop more and more ‘baggage’. Life is a lot easier when you let things go.
Similarly, experience. I’ve survived suicide attempts, close calls, addictions, fights, sickness and death. My meds being lost by the pharmacy is pretty minor compared to the epic time travel battle I had against God last year during a meth psychosis that resulted in my arrest and court. Experience adds perspective.
Meditation and noticing emotions don’t have to be acted upon. It’s on top feel something. It’s pointless trying to stop that feeling. What you can do is not act on that feeling. Raging at the idiot who pulled in front of you solves nothing.
Hanlon’s Razor: “don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance”. The majority of times people ‘wrong’ you is due to ignorance. Not malice. One of the reasons why I find the obsession with labelling people “narcissist” a bit silly. They aren’t, they’re just wrapped up in their own bubble of problems. We all are.
Stoicism has many great lessons and quotes that are worth reflecting on over your lifetime. Let them percolate your soul and after many years you just become more stoic.
As someone of a similar age, I can definitely say this is not true for everybody.
Raging at the idiot who pulled in front of you solves nothing.
It’s not like we don’t know that. Otherwise OP wouldn’t have the self awareness to ask the question. It’s just an emotional reaction to people, situations, and actions that defy logic. I get angry at drivers when they do things that are not only blatantly selfish and inconsiderate, but dangerous and usually illegal (in SoCal that’s every few minutes). I don’t know about OP, but I’m not doing any “raging.” No one looking over at me would know I’m angry af, but I’m sitting there wondering how the US is filled with so many sociopathic freaks and why we’re all ok with the way we treat each other. And picturing what would happen had I done the same thing in traffic. A cop would materialize out of nowhere, or the other person would jump out of their car with a bat. But the people who cut me off? They never see any consequences, and if any one of them learns their lesson, there’s ten more willfully ignorant, dangerously stupid people to put everyone else at risk. I’m not attributing anything to malice. Cluelessness is so much worse, and people should be held accountable for not learning from their mistakes. Besides, being considerate, responsible, generally respectful, and empathetic does not require any extra education or intelligence (though it would certainly help). Somehow, the universe is totally fine with all of this, and so is everyone else. I was in a bad accident years ago because someone pulled right out in front of me, so I’ve lived through the consequences of some selfish prick valuing their two seconds of time over other people’s actual lives. If a teenager acted the way we act collectively, as a population, their parents would be told they have behavioral problems. You can not react all you want, but that doesn’t help anything going on under the surface. Mindfulness and stoicism is just living with the anger and stress instead of solving it. That’s why cognitive behavioral therapy is the only thing that will actually help it.
You can not react all you want, but that doesn’t help anything going on under the surface
Reacting also means any thoughts you may have. You reacted by thinking all of this:
It’s not like we don’t know that. Otherwise OP wouldn’t have the self awareness to […] behavioral problems.
That’s reacting. VERY reacting. Did it solve anything by reacting like that? Telling me all that? Does it fix your problem - the idiots on the road? No. What would fix the idiots on the road? Speaking to your political reps, volunteering or funding road safety charities.
Mindfulness and stoicism is just living with the anger and stress instead of solving it.
No it isn’t. I strongly urge you to study it more. Mindfulness is the first and very important step to realising emotions don’t rule you. You rule your emotions but most people manage their emotions badly. They fight or ignore them. That’s a bad idea because they don’t like being ignored, they come back x10. I’ve done DBT which is like CBT for emotional regulation and mindfulness is a key component. Mindfulness teaches you to detach from your emotional impulses and react more rationally. It’s a lot like CBT but it uses mindfullness to help you learn that fundamentally important fact: You are not your emotions.
You don’t ignore your anger, sadness, pain, etc with mindfulness, you embrace it.
Take meditation - pure mindfulness - you sit in silence with your eyes closed. Your arse hurts (pain), your back (pain), am I breathing right (anxiety)? I should focus on that (intention), fuck I’m bored (iritation), I’m tired (tired), maybe I should eat (bored/hunger), etc. The simplest, most basic activity you can do is immensely difficult for people to manage more than 5mins of. Why? Because you’re governed by your emotions, those drives and annoyances flooding you every few seconds. You realise your mind is noisy as hell but meditating/sitting silently teaches you that you aren’t those emotions.
From there it becomes easier to ‘pause’* your feelings and make a more rational and useful response. A response that gives catharsis.
*pause is the wrong word. You kindof ‘pause’ your inner state, step back, assess and act. It sounds overly complicated but like any skill it becomes second nature and instantaneous with practice. Meditation is a form of practice and living your daily life as mindfully as you can is practice.
Stoicism
Is basically CBT/DBT and mindfulness spat out in quote format. Having read the above maybe you’ll see that in these Marcus Aurelius quotes:
- “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
- “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” - thoughts, feelings, actions and speech are all different things. You can’t control your feelings but you can control your thoughts!
- “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
- “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” - to reference your comment: Instead of bitching about idiotic drivers: Be a better driver and do what you can to improve others driving.
- “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” - embrace your feelings, manage your thoughts.
Recommended Reading:
- Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
- Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life - Thích Nhất Hạnh
- The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation - Thích Nhất Hạnh
- Dhammapada
I’m glad those quotes helped you, but to me they just look like vague platitudes. And I say this as someone who does not have trouble controlling their emotions.
I would add to Hanlon’s Razor that not everything needs an intent behind it. Sometimes things just happen, good or bad, and you should take them as they come without worrying too much about whether someone has wronged you. A lot of people get wrapped up in conspiracy theory thinking because they have to have an explanation for everything, even if they have to invent shadowy organizations.
This sounds like you are stressed. In the particular example you give (I am a generally even tempered person, and having trouble with irritability today) I find exercise helps. Exhausting my body calms my mind.
If it’s a situation where the irritability is telling you something, like you are stressed because you are doing too much and the rest of your family doing too little, you may need to communicate that to them, to be able to fix it.
I have this marvelous quote saved in my phone:
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius
The secret isn’t not getting mad. The secret is going with the flow despite being mad. If you’re constantly triggered by small things (like your dog getting some mud inside) then there’s proooooobably something a bit deeper that needs to be addressed. But either way, do the things, mad or not. Emotions happen, they’re never “wrong” but you can also determine what to do with them, or what to do despite them.
I’ve found having a good psychotherapist to talk about all the things that are actually bothering me (that makes others uncomfortable) is the key. Usually it’s work or family related stress. All the little stuff isn’t really a bother, it’s just the ongoing last straw when there’s a pile of much more significant stuff underneath it being ignored.
edit: to clarify
psychotherapist = no drugs (in my experience) psychiatrist = may prescribe drugs
Both are valuable when appropriate. Sometimes you just need to talk things out with a neutral confidential 3rd party who recognizes the issues. Sometimes brain chemistry is a bitch.
I’ve worked through that stuff a bunch with my therapist. I do unfortunately have a lot work and family related stress that I can’t avoid. Which is why I’m always trying to figure out how not to things bother me. I’ve been setting firmer boundaries at work, but can’t exactly do that with family, but if I could somehow not let things bother me I’d be better. For example, my 12 year old is autistic, and will do things like walk up to me and say, “no TV!”. To whichy response is always, “that is not how we ask for things”. Then he will ask, “dad, can I watch TV?”.This has been going on for years, so it immediately gets on my nerves because I know he knows how to ask properly. But I also know I shouldn’t really care that much.
For me there’s a number of other coping mechanisms, like the usual breath work to try to be more meditative and objective about something, but often I employ the “at least it’s not” approach to bridge the gaps and minimize it in comparison to something worse. It’s often possible to invent a silver lining.
Such as taking a moment to think “as least it’s not shit” when the dog tracks in mud, or “at least he isn’t physically pounding the TV when he wants to watch it.” Just anything that I would rather not be dealing with more than the current thing.
It’s an aggravating world and reality. Now more than ever. Figuring out how to not be aggravated by it constantly is a lifelong challenge. I’m still working on it.
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.
