When you feel annoyed, everything around you seems to make your day worse. Noises, smells, food, people – anything at all makes you keep feeling annoyed and irritable.
Why does this happen? What underlying reasons cause us to feel such anxiety – and can we do something about it?
How Do You Know You’re Feeling Annoyed?
We all process experiences differently, but most people have a similar feeling when they are annoyed. This can manifest itself as:
- Feeling short-tempered and irritable.
- Having no patience.
- Anxiety and nervousness.
- Being unable to be positive.
- Wanting to be alone.
However you experience it, being annoyed is not a pleasant feeling, so trying to find out how to get rid of this emotion and move forward is essential.
5 Reasons You Might Be Feeling Annoyed
You might be surprised at some of the reasons we get irritable – and they are usually unconnected to the unfortunate target of those negative feelings!
1. You are taking on too much.
Whether in your workplace, your personal life, or in a family dynamic, if you are shouldering too heavy a burden, you are always under pressure.
This can make us feel continuously anxious and on edge. This is because we know, in our hearts, that there is no sensible way to cope with the number of jobs, tasks, and projects we are burdening ourselves with.
Having no time to ourselves, constantly rushing from one place to the next and not having time to stop and take a breather put us in a permanent ‘fight or flight’ state, where anxiety bubbles over and is directed at whatever – or whoever – is unfortunate enough to be closest.
2. Your expectations are too high.
Everybody wants a perfect life – until we realize that such a thing doesn’t exist outside of a square on social media!
When you feel driven to achieve perfection in any aspect of your life, you are setting yourself up for frustration when nothing entirely lives up to the ideal you have in your head.
This can apply to anything from wanting a perfect family day out and letting it get to you that the kids are misbehaving, to wanting an excellent appraisal at work, and finding out you have some areas to work on.
If you set your standards impossibly high, you will be moving from one disappointment to the next and setting yourself the impossible task of achieving perfection.
When we start telling ourselves things aren’t good enough, this becomes a cycle of inner criticism. Your internal dialogue is vital to the way you experience the world and the way you communicate.
If nothing meets the gold standard, you begin to feel annoyed, disappointed, and frustrated. And everything that gets in your way feels like it is contributing.
3. You need to revisit your boundaries.
I’m very guilty of this – I have a particular number of hours per week assigned to a specific piece of work and begin with firm boundaries about when and how I am available to discuss it and consult over new projects.
This starts with responding to messages during those allocated times and not getting drawn back in whilst dealing with other commitments.
However, over time, those boundaries slide, and I find myself going back to answer questions more often – until the boundaries are gone, and I’m right back to bouncing between tasks!
Your boundaries apply to every aspect of your life from finding that elusive work/life balance to your relationships and family. When you don’t protect your limits, the structure and control you have over your day start to slip away, and you open yourself up to anxiety and panic as you try to regain control.
4. You need some help.
Arguably, three of the hardest words to say in the English language are, ‘I need help‘.
We often avoid ever having to ask for support, since it feels like a sign of weakness, or revealing that we weren’t competent or capable enough to manage something on our own.
This goes back to allowing yourself to get overloaded. If you don’t have the right skills, resources, or knowledge to do something, trying to persist will only exacerbate your frustration, which will spill out into other areas of your day.
Everybody wants to be confident and independent. But if you don’t ask for help when you need it, you are leading yourself down a pathway of resentment, anger, and annoyance.
5. You are depressed or anxious.
Depression itself can be caused by any of the above issues, or made more intense by any of them. If you are feeling anxious, burned out, and frustrated, it is possible that you are dealing with emotional overload and need support to find your balance again.
People trying to cope with depression may find themselves unable to find any positivity in anything as if they are stuck in an energy-sapping cycle of low self-esteem and seeing the worst in everything and everyone.
Solving the problem that makes you feel frustrated might help in the short term. However, depression is a serious condition that needs professional support to work through and recover your mental health.
How to Stop Feeling Annoyed
There are a few things you can do to turn the situation around and prevent yourself from feeling annoyed with every obstacle that crosses your path:
- Talk about it. Lighten your load, share your troubles, and ask for help.
- Identify the problems. If you’re burned out, tired or plain fed up with something, once you remedy that pressure, everything becomes a little easier.
- Rationalize your thoughts. You decide what ideas you put into your head. So if they are not serving a purpose, try to realign your thinking and expectations to rebalance that internal dialogue.
- Set priorities. Decide what is most important to you and what isn’t of that great a consequence. Focusing on the positive things that bring happiness to your days will help you achieve what you need to and stop stressing about what you don’t.
- Take a step back. Burn out is real, and it is dangerous. If you need to take a break, for a minute or a week, then do so. Nothing is more important than your health.
Be realistic – life is always going to have its ups and downs. But planning and preparing yourself to cope when things don’t go your way will help you keep going without crumbling under strain.
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Feeling Annoyed with Everything and Everyone? 5 Unexpected Causes
Adding two more causes:
Lack of exercise
Lack of Sex