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SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
Also visit the online treatment locator.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.

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No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.

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Last Updated: 08/30/2022

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What to do when everything is annoying. Psychological advice

Health

Author Alexandra Egorova

July 14, 2020

Do you notice that you overreact to little things? Do you chastise colleagues and lash out at loved ones? Increased irritability can signal unresolved problems or be a symptom of an illness. In any case, irritability must be dealt with.

The material was checked and commented by Olga Kitaina — psychologist, founder of the service for the selection of psychologists Alter

What is irritability

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This state is often described as a mood. Unlike outbursts of anger or aggression, which are usually caused by specific events, irritability monotonously accompanies a person for some time. In everyday life, this is called "everything infuriates." Even the most minor everyday difficulties or setbacks — coffee suddenly ran out, a shoelace broke, a friend was late for a meeting — cause a distinct negative reaction [1], which seems too emotional.

Everything turns out one to one (only in a bad sense), a person does not expect anything good, and the next mistake is perceived with tired irritation and even gloomy satisfaction, as it makes it possible to express everything in the face of the first person who comes across.

Everyone can experience irritability, but it is not always a cause for alarm. We can talk about increased irritability, including in children and adolescents [2], if it interferes with normal life: it makes work difficult, overshadows communication with loved ones, and deprives them of the usual joys.

Causes of irritability

They can be divided into two large groups [3]: psychological and physiological. Unfortunately, this division does not give an answer in which cases you need to go to the doctor, and in which a person can handle it himself. The first group includes both temporary stress and serious psychological conditions that require attention from a specialist, such as bipolar disorder. The second also includes completely different conditions: lack of sleep and diabetes, unbalanced nutrition and toothache. Some conditions can be caused by infections (flu), others by hormonal disorders.

In women, additional causes of irritability can be premenstrual syndrome, menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome, and some others. In addition, irritability as a symptom of conditions common to both sexes [4] is more common in women.

In order to provide the doctor with the necessary information already at the first appointment or to cope on your own, it is worth observing your condition. Of course, as long as you don't feel any pain (like a toothache), you don't have a fever or other obvious signs that you need to go to the doctor immediately.

Things you can do at home

When you visit a general practitioner or specialist, the doctor will probably ask about your habits, daily routine, nutrition and physical activity, stress level. He will ask you to tell about the diseases of your relatives and the drugs you are taking, because irritability can also be a side effect of taking medications [5].

If you don't get enough sleep on a regular basis, you don't exercise enough, and you don't follow nutritional guidelines, you'll have to deal with this. Observations of oneself can be made the basis on which it is realistic to build physical and psychological comfort.

It is ideal to keep a diary of emotions and nutrition, note workouts and sleep time. Brief explanations will suffice, indicating probable causes (both physiological and emotional). In order to structure observations, you can indicate your state of one of the template marks. It can be, for example, a smiley or one of the pre-selected words. It is better to keep notes electronically, so you can quickly print your notes or email them to your doctor.

Psychological causes of irritability

chronic stress;
poorly developed coping skills;
insufficient self-care (not enough sleep, food, time for hobbies and loved ones).

Irritability can also be a symptom of depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other illnesses.

It is fundamentally important to understand whether you did not get enough sleep or do not tolerate being late at all? Headache unsettles you or are you sick of work? These states may overlap. And only observation and respect for yourself and others will help you figure it out.

How not to hurt the feelings of those who are dear to you

Honesty is the best policy both with yourself and with your loved ones. Tell what you are experiencing. Not necessarily in all the details - only what you are ready to share, and what seems appropriate to you. If you explain to relatives and friends that your irritability is not a manifestation of hostility towards them, but a consequence of circumstances or your internal processes, it will be easier for them to understand and support you. To learn how to pronounce problems and accurately determine your condition, it is useful to develop emotional intelligence.

Psychologist's comment

Olga Kitaina, psychologist, founder of the Alter psychologist selection service: “In a certain situation, irritability is useful - it signals that our boundaries have been violated, our values are under threat, something is not going according to plan. We tend to think of irritability as something bad, while anger can be experienced positively as a feeling of vitality and energy. Irritability becomes a problem when it leads to a reaction that is inappropriate for a stimulus, which in turn can lead to difficulties at work or in personal life.

Feeling annoyed is part of our lives and is absolutely normal, but we must remember that a certain reaction may be read by others as a violation of their rights and boundaries.

How to cope with irritability when it becomes a problem

During an attack

). This breathing helps to relax.
Distract - try to distract yourself with something that will take your thoughts away from the irritant.
Ventilate emotions - you can “reset” emotions in a useful way: move to a place where no one sees or hears you and yells into a pillow, tear paper that no one needs, inflate a balloon. All this makes it possible to channel the emotional charge that has arisen without harming anyone.
Transition to assertive behavior [6] - learning not only to act out an emotional reaction, but also to take steps that would help correct the situation that causes an acute reaction. We always have a choice of reaction, we need to learn to catch a pause between the stimulus and our response to it and make a choice that is more useful for us.

After an attack

Develop awareness and acceptance skills. Mindfulness techniques will help you develop your ability to linger between stimulus and response and choose more appropriate behavior. And developing acceptance skills will help you not perceive more stimuli as annoying. How to learn it? There is a lot of literature on the topic of mindfulness, there are applications that help in the development of this skill, you can find specialized trainings and classes. Psychotherapy, especially Acceptance and Responsibility Therapy (TPO), is helpful in developing acceptance techniques.
After you've shown irritability in a bad way, say offended someone, you might want to consider what you can do to minimize the damage, such as apologizing. And most importantly, decide what you will do next. Planning our future actions makes it more likely that we will do so next time.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is considered to be the basic approach to dealing with irritability and anger in psychotherapy. If you feel like you can't handle the condition on your own, then working with a specialist is a good idea. This will allow you to minimize the risk that a poorly managed emotional state will harm your career, relationships, and self-image.

The soul hurts: how and for whom the Russian psychotherapy market works .

Tags: psychology

What to do if everything infuriates and irritates?

From time to time everyone wants to say the phrase “How everything infuriates me!”. And this is not surprising, because life consists not only of positive events.

Everyone knows the feeling of anger - this is a normal human emotion, which has its advantages. A flash of negativity allows you to throw out negative energy, can give motivation and stimulate activity. But sometimes everything infuriates to such an extent that the emotional state gets out of control: problems begin in personal relationships, work and other areas of life. In this case, anger becomes destructive and requires correction.

Anger is a negatively colored emotional state of varying intensity: from moderate irritation to intense rage. Such a reaction is reflected not only in mood and behavior, but also in the physiological parameters of the body. When a person is too long or too much infuriated by everything around, then the following physical changes appear:

Increased activity of the limbic system, and then the adrenal glands and cerebral cortex, which leads to an intensive release of the corresponding hormones
Hyperemia (redness) of the skin due to increased blood circulation
Rapid heartbeat and breathing
Increased blood pressure
Muscle tension
Increased sweating
Scattered and narrowed attention

The patient may notice that his emotional background is not in order, because it interferes with a normal life. Usually a person says something like “I suck and therefore I can’t control myself”, but does not perceive this as a pathological condition with serious consequences.

If everything irritates you regularly, be prepared for the fact that this will negatively affect your health, because the listed symptoms keep the body in great tension. If they occur too often, then this can lead to a breakdown of the adaptive mechanisms of the psyche and the body as a whole.

Uncontrolled attempts to suppress anger are also dangerous. Suppressed external aggression develops into auto-aggression, that is, it is directed inside oneself. This can lead to pathological consequences in the form of the development of passive-aggressive behavior, neuroses, psychosomatic disorders and various addictions. There is an effect on different systems of the body, such as cardiovascular, immune, digestive and nervous. This leads to an increased risk of developing hypertension and stroke, exacerbation of stomach and intestinal ulcers, and reduces immunity.

If you feel that the environment annoys you too often, then try to determine the cause and deal with it. Otherwise, it can cause significant harm to the physical and mental state.

Why is everything annoying

Anger is a secondary emotion that arises in response to a perceived threat. Anger itself is not considered a separate disease, but it is a common symptom of various pathological conditions. Reasons why everything infuriates and irritates:

Personal characteristics. Temper is the backdrop for developing anger control problems.
Childhood and upbringing. Some set behaviors and triggers may be related to the past. The cause of persistently suppressed anger may be related to the period of childhood: for example, punishment for expressing feelings or observation and fear of adults in anger.
State of stress. Life's difficulties that lead to stress exhaust the nervous system and are a common reason why everything is annoying.
Mental illness. Anger and irritability can be symptoms of obsessive-compulsive or bipolar disorder, depression, attention deficit disorder in children, and other ailments.
Hormonal imbalance. Complaints of irritability and emotional lability are characteristic of hyperparathyroidism, hyperthyroidism, thyroiditis, and hypercortisolism. Also the question "Why does everything infuriate me and want to cry?" pregnant women and girls during PMS are often asked. This is due to a change in the hormonal background, in particular, the level of progesterone.
Use of drugs and large amounts of alcohol. Drugs change the physiological processes of the body and have a detrimental effect on the psyche. Even isolated cases of use may be enough. The state of drug intoxication and withdrawal symptoms always become the reason why anger is inside and everything is annoying.
Chronic pain and somatic diseases. They do not allow to relax, sleep and exhaust the nervous system.

Irritability can be triggered both by sudden and short-term incidents, and by long-term situations. A person cannot always catch the reason why everything infuriates. This means that the elimination of the problem is unlikely. It happens that the response splashes out immediately, but sometimes it is suppressed and accumulates. The latter option is dangerous both for the state of health and for the environment - internal aggression can result in unpredictable aggressive actions.

Any of the reasons why everyone around you is annoying can be eliminated with the right approach. The problem does not always lie on the surface. Complex psychotherapeutic work may be required along with laboratory and instrumental examination of the body. If you cannot understand why everything annoys and infuriates what the reason is, an experienced specialist will definitely be able to figure it out. You should not put off seeking help, because the sooner you start to deal with the problem, the less consequences there will be for both health and social life.

What to do if everything infuriates and annoys

It is believed that anger is almost never a primary emotion. In most cases, with the help of anger, the subconscious mind tries to protect itself from feelings such as guilt, fear, pain, humiliation or powerlessness. If you have a negative attitude from morning to evening and you don’t know what to do when everyone is enraged, the advice of a psychologist can help you:

Accept the fact that you have trouble controlling your anger. Aggression is an inefficient and incorrect way of social interaction that leads to negative consequences and destroys relationships.
Examine outbursts of negative emotions. Keeping an anger diary helps with this: write down the reasons for aggression there and evaluate the intensity. This will allow you to understand that the phrase “everything infuriates me how to deal with it” is not always true, because dissatisfaction has very specific reasons that cannot always be noticed without a close analysis of the situation.
Use sports to release negative energy. Regular exercise and walking helps to stabilize the emotional state.
If irritability has appeared recently and is associated with temporary difficulties, then rest will help you: change the situation, get enough sleep, do pleasant things. So that the nervous system can work with new forces, give it a break.
Talk to loved ones. Obstacles are difficult to overcome alone. If you don't know what to do when everything is annoying and you don't want anything, the advice and support of loved ones can help
Control the situation. Try to experience the next outburst of anger consciously. Mentally tell yourself: "This is not the biggest problem in the world, I can handle it." Do not respond with instant aggression, speak in an even voice, do not dwell on an unpleasant situation.
Don't be afraid of professional help. If you have been regularly catching yourself thinking “everything is pissing me off how to calm down” for a long time and you can’t cope with it, don’t wait for the worst consequences. Seek help from a psychiatrist-psychotherapist or psychologist.

Everyone wants to get universal advice like “if everything infuriates you, do this or that and everything will pass right away.” Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. The psychological and physiological features of the development of anger are complex, so it is not always possible to cope with the problem on your own. If general advice does not help, then you should seek the help of a specialist who will determine what to do with irritability and anger in your particular case.

Psychotherapy. If you want to know what to do when everything is infuriating and annoying, then psychotherapy is a recognized method for solving problems in the emotional sphere. Cognitive behavioral therapy identifies pathological thoughts and internal beliefs that influence emotions and actions. The goal is to change the mindset that leads to anger responses into healthier and more productive ones. Also, psychotherapeutic techniques work on the problems of childhood traumas, inferiority complexes, parental prescriptions and other causes of inadequate emotional response.

Transactional analysis, group and family psychotherapy are used. In response to the question of what to do if everything infuriates, the patient is given advice on normalizing the lifestyle, teaching relaxation techniques and ways to correctly transfer the energy of anger into a productive channel.

Medical treatment. If anger is a consequence of mental disorders, then appropriate treatment is prescribed - sleeping pills, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, tranquilizers and other means.

Examination and treatment of chronic diseases. The diseased state of the body affects the functioning of the nervous system and the emotional background. If the primary cause of irritation is a somatic disorder, then nothing will work without its elimination.

If you feel that you have lost control of anger and irritation, then you need to learn how to deal with them. First, try to relax and normalize your lifestyle. But if self-help did not help and everything is still annoying, only a specialist will tell you what to do.

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