The Real Reason You Are Irritable

Mental GPS with Dr. Jana EP 2

Ever find yourself snapping at a loved one or getting instantly frustrated by a social media post? In this episode, Dr. Jana reveals that your anger might not actually be about the other person. Learn how simple physical factors like exhaustion and low blood sugar trigger irritability, and discover how to pull your nervous system down before you react. 

Key Episode Takeaways

• Discover how physiological triggers like physical exhaustion and low blood sugar directly cause sudden everyday irritability. 
• Learn to set clear personal boundaries and walk away from toxic interactions instead of demanding that other people change. 
• Understand the crucial difference between emotional adolescent reactions and productive adult communication styles. 
• Shift your focus from winning arguments to resolving problems by checking in with your own system first. 

Transcript

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Good day. Thank you for joining me. This is Dr. Jana, and I am so excited to be here with you today. I'm going to talk about what do you do when you're angry? This seems to be kind of a pervasive problem right now in our whole country. So one of the things that happens with anger is people want to point the finger and they want to go, if only you hadn't done this, I wouldn't be angry. The problem is, what if that person never changes? What if that person keeps doing that? What if this continues to happen? Are you going to be angry all the time? So one of the things that has to happen is all of us have to come back inside and go, okay, what can I do to cool my system down? Meaning reduce the anger, reduce the adrenaline and cortisol. What can I do to either change the situation, distract from the situation, or walk away from the situation? But the first part of that is we have to know why we are angry? What is it that is kind of pushing our buttons that is making us angry? There's a lot of things that make people angry that they're not even aware of. One of the first ones is when people are exhausted. Everything irritates when we're exhausted, right? What that person said on social media, what that person said to us at the grocery store. I mean, we walk into our house and somebody says to you know something to us in our house. When we are tired, we tend to react very strongly. And so keep that in mind. If if I'm really tired, I intentionally disengage because otherwise I say things that are, you know, they're flippant or they're, you know, snarky. And I don't ever want to hurt anybody's feelings. So I stay off social media when I'm tired. I I just disengage. If I know I'm coming home and I'm gonna be really tired because I didn't sleep the night before, I had a long day, I might even send my husband a text and say, Man, I had quite the day. I am so exhausted. Can we just eat dinner and watch a fun movie and I'm just done for the day? So that he kind of knows when I walk in the door, he's not going to want to talk about, I don't know, some very serious issue, and I just don't have the bandwidth for it. So communicating that we're tired, communicating that we don't feel well. Sometimes when we're getting sick and getting a sinus infection or you're getting a flu, and boy, there's a lot of it going around, right? Communicate that. You know, I just don't feel very good right now. Can we please table this and talk about this at a different time? You know, again, that's a time to disengage, and it's okay to disengage, but you need to have you need to have that conversation with people that you love about why you're disag disengaging. You're not just, you know, kind of walking away from them and leaving them there wondering what's going on with you. Did somebody walk over your boundaries? You know, did they, I don't know, hurt your feelings? Did they try and take over your life and try and fix things for you when you didn't want them to do that? Did they kind of invade your privacy with your sexual life, your spiritual life, your financial life, your home life, your work life, whatever? Did somebody cross over that boundary? If so, then set the boundary and say, yeah, I'm not really comfortable talking to you about this. This is something's very personable, personal to me. And I, yeah, I'm just not really going to talk to you about that. You can do that. It's okay to tell people, no, no, this is too far. Please back away from this because I'm not going to do this. And if they persist, then you leave or you walk away, you get in your car and you drive away, or you walk out the door, you know, you put some distance in there. Don't stay there and demand that they change what they're doing because they may not change it. So set that boundary. It's okay to have personal rights when it comes to your thoughts, your feelings, your, you know, your body, your emotions. It's okay. But don't keep engaging expecting them to change, because they may not change. Okay. But set the boundaries. Sometimes people are hungry. The common term now is hangry, I think, right? Where you haven't eaten, you haven't noticed that you haven't eaten, and you're like, oh my gosh, suddenly I am just I need to eat something. Okay. So that's something that also to be mindful. If you know you get that way, then make some kind of plan that you're eating on a regular basis. Now I know things happen, you know, meetings go over or you get home late or whatever. But, you know, maybe you carry snacks. If you know that's something that happens to you, maybe you carry some snacks or you put some protein shakes in your refrigerator or, you know, something like that so that you have kind of an immediate access to something to eat that isn't going to be bad for you. That is going to bring, usually it's a blood sugar thing, not every time, but you know, a lot of times people have a dip in blood sugar and then they get really irritable and really angry. So, you know, keeping that in mind, start to monitor when is it that you get angry? What is driving that? Sometimes it's because of the people you're hanging around. Maybe you have people that are pushing your buttons or they're being abusive to you or rude to you. Then you have to ask yourself, okay, do I need to change the people I'm around or do I need to set boundaries with those people? Depends on the person, right? If it's somebody that you see on occasion or whatever, then maybe they, you know, get offlisted, right? But, you know, think about when is it I get the most angry and what's going on with me. Not what's going on with that person necessarily, but what's going on with me and what do I need to do to change it? Empower yourself to change what you need to do. I've watched some incredibly good friendships absolutely destroyed on social media. And that's because they get in discuss about things and they disagree, and then they just get on that keyboard and start typing, and now they're at each other's throats. And I'm like, you know, people get the they have the right to feel the way they feel. They have the right to their own opinions. That's why we live in the United States. We have the freedom of speech. And so, you know, if you disagree with somebody, fine, walk away. It's okay. They get to have their ideas, you get to have your ideas, but don't get embroiled in the chaos that seems to be going on and has been pervasive for about the last 20 years. Get unembroiled from that because it doesn't help anybody and it just makes people hate more. And you don't need to be part of the hate. That hate really is very toxic. It's toxic for our body, it's toxic for our brain. Do things that build, do things that are part of the solution, do things that make you feel better, that empower you. And that should not be cutting other people down. That should be building yourself up or helping yourself to heal or helping yourself to have fun. And so really consider what you're doing with your anger. I think sometimes people are having problems in lives, they're having tumultuous relationships, and it comes out on social media. Instead, fix the relationship or walk away from it, but come back inside and take care of you. Make sure that you're staying in that adult mode of conversation. And what that means is it kind of a kid mode, adolescent mode of conversation is kind of very defiant. I don't have to do this, and I'm sick of doing this, and you're just stupid. Okay, that usually just promotes anger and it promotes arguments. Avoid that parental or control figure type of discussion when you're angry. Why didn't you do this? You know you needed to do this, that kind of lecturing type of communication. Adult mode is something along this line. Oh, yep, you know what? I did forget to do that. I'm so sorry. I'll take care of it. Or, oh, I didn't realize that that was something I needed to do. I don't think I have time to do that. Can you help me with that? Or maybe it just doesn't get done. I don't know. It stays neutral, it doesn't get involved in defending, it doesn't get involved in lecturing, it just is talking about the situation from a non-defensive position. It's about resolving the problem, not winning. Okay, and so often people go into arguments and they want to win. And I'm like, yeah, you might, you might win the skirmish, but you're gonna lose the war. So, you know, you really want to think about how am I approaching this person? Am I getting defensive? Am I getting judgmental? Am I talking down to them? Or am I just talking about the problem? And the more people can come along on the same side and talk about the problem with each other, the more they're gonna get problems resolved. So again, when you're angry, take that step back and ask yourself, why am I angry? Is it something I did? Maybe I need to apologize. Again, that's that adult mode of communication. Maybe it's a misunderstanding and we can get it cleared up, and then one of us can do whatever it is. Maybe it's I really need to eat and I am really cranky, okay? And so I'm gonna go eat and then we can talk about this later. Or maybe I'm not feeling good, or maybe I'm tired, maybe I didn't sleep well last night. And with that anger, timing is so important, right? If we're gonna bring up something to somebody we love, we need to really think about when we're bringing it up. Are we bringing it up when they're tired and when they're sick, or when they had a really bad day at work, or they're stressed for whatever reason, are we bringing it up in a time frame that works for both of you? But again, that's part of that resolving rather than about winning. So I hope this is helpful. Make sure that you're checking in with yourself first when you're angry. Don't check in with the other person, check in with yourself first. Why am I angry? What is going on with me? Because once you identify that, then you can begin to resolve it. Okay. So I hope this was helpful. Thank you so much for being here today. I love working with all of you. Have a great day. Remember, you have the right to be happy, you have the right to enjoy life. Take care. This is Dr. Jana.