Irritability is anger’s socially acceptable little sister, the one that got the tiny waist, the Barbie doll hair, and the scholarship to play two sports at a state university.
Like anger, irritability is about a boundary violation. Also like anger, irritability tends to build to a breaking point. And that’s when we tend to act in ways that are not loving or Christlike.
If you struggle with this, here are three things that might help you.
Number one is learning to actually feel your feeling.
The sinful or undesirable actions that we take in our lives are not because we’re feeling, but in fact, because we’re avoiding feeling.
If you scroll down on my IG page, you will find a video entitled, The Wrong Way To Feel Your Feelings. This video will help you actually do it the right way.
Once you build the skill of being able to feel irritability or anger, you will give yourself the space to think.
The second thing I offer you is a thought, my emotions cannot get too big for me to feel without reacting.
There is no point at which my emotion can force me to do something stupid. There’s no last straw. No, “I can’t take it anymore”.
Those are words that we say to give us permission to snap, and they’re not true. There is never a point at which you cannot feel your emotion instead of reacting to it.
Yes, it’s a skill you have to build, and yes, you have the ability to build it.
Finally, the reason the anger or irritability is mounting is because it is covering for another emotion, powerlessness.
Your brain believes there is nothing you can do about the situation, so it puts you into fight or flight.
The reality is that you always have power, you just need to reclaim it.
The key is to calming irritability is to process your emotion so you can redirect your thinking…
…back to a place of POWER and responsibility.
When there is “nothing you can do…” you will get more and more irritated because your body needs to protect you from the pain and death of hopelessness.
And you will take that irritation out on others.
Or yourself.
Check out my next post for more on this topic!!
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