4 Ways To Stop Your Grumpiness From Rearing Its Ugly Head – Yahoo Beauty, YourTango

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Delighted to have this piece picked up by Yahoo Beauty last week. Screen Shot 2015-07-05 at 1.57.27 PM
Your irritability is toxic to everyone around you.

Grumpiness gets the best of all of us from time to time. And the ones who feel the outfall are the people around us. Here are some ways your irritability likely rears its ugly head and affects your relationships:

  • At work, your co-worker sniffles and clears his throat constantly throughout the day, and after a few hours of that, you feel like you’re back in middle school, trying desperately to ignore your classmate’s tapping pencil during a math test. Your anger and annoyance steadily builds as you wonder—why he can’t just STOP making so much noise?!
  • At home, your spouse forgets to thank you for making dinner, and you find yourself seething, wondering if this is the beginning of him dismissing your efforts … the same way your dad dismissed your mom’s. You feel angry and want to shame him for not noticing all that you do.
  • Over the weekend, your teenager doesn’t clean up her room (despite promising that she would), leaving you feeling oddly betrayed and ignored, like you felt when your friends broke their promises to you as a teenager. You snap and yell at her, warning her that you won’t be ignored.

Like a sudden push of a button, our irritability springs up seemingly out of nowhere and wreaks havoc in our relationships. 

Why do we get annoyed at the drop of a hat sometimes or overreact in ways that don’t really make sense? Maybe you’re hungry, tired, or need to exercise, or maybe something pushed your buttons earlier and you’re still irritated now. It’s hard to change our reactions when we’re not always sure what is going on…read full post

Looking for more help in understanding relationship anxiety? Learn more about my book Hack Your Anxiety and access free tools to help you manage the fear and anxiety going around the world today.

Alicia H. Clark, PsyD