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.
You should take a sabbatical or however else a time out.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!
Get checked for vitamin deficits?
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.
Are you annoyed and stressed because everything gets under your skin, or does everything get under your skin because you are constantly annoyed and stressed?
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I started drinking lots of alcohol. It didn’t really help in the long run.
It’s like liquid therapy.
Then you lose your family and job.
It’s great!
Drink more water! Whenever I find myself grumpy, the culprit is usually dehydration… It makes everything harder IMO. Ymmv etc etc anecdata
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.
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.
Shit happens. Often. Choose to not let it control you and your mood.
Being stressed and / or tired usually makes my reactions worse. Get rest, lessen stress, and use stress coping techniques.
You can control your reactions. You cannot control the shit that happens.
Serenity now…laugh at life and yourself. It is not really that bad. You knew that, right?
I went on anxiety meds. Changed my life
hmmm…
I think it helps if you play a lot of “immersive” games. and practice disengaging from there.
For example, if you now don’t get mad and throw controllers breaking screens, you’re now half-way to the real task at hand!
I don’t think I have the emotional range to “get angry” the way most people describe it (as some overcoming urge). It’s an alien concept to me. For me, anger is a quiet loosening of my moral obligation towards someone, a re-tallying of social contracts, something done consciously and with purpose.
If I should appear angry, but just “go with the flow” instead, it doesn’t mean I’m not angry – it means I no longer feel the need to be honest with you about my thoughts or feelings. I’ve found that by and large, people fail to notice the difference.
So if it is any consolation, at least some of us who appear easygoing are actually furious internally.
For me, I do get mad occasionally but I just see that me getting mad doesn’t get me anywhere. I just gotta fix the problem.
