38 PSYCHOLOGIES MAGAZINEJANUARY 2020self
T
he person opposite me on the train is
watching a fi lm on his laptop. It’s a familiar
scenario. His headphones don’t seem to
work, I can hear every gunshot, shout and
scream and I can’t concentrate on the
notes I am reading. I feel increasingly put out by this
leaking noise. The train stops for a bit; we’re waiting for a
signal. I spill co ee on the cream trousers I am wearing.
My body begins to tense and my mood darkens. This
is so annoying! Why can’t he be more considerate? But
I do nothing, keeping my negative thoughts to myself.Irritation navigation
While I’m quietly seething, a man on the opposite side of
the aisle gets up, stands over the fi lm watcher and tells
him in no uncertain terms that he’s disturbing the entire
carriage. Why didn’t I do that? Why did that man feel
entitled to express his anger, while I don’t? Why can’t I let it
wash over me? Why do I get stuck in a spiral of irritation?
Annoyance is a feeling I know well, and it is not just
directed towards strangers. I love my children with all my
heart but it really irritates me when they never bring cups
or plates down from their rooms, when they unplug my
phone from its charger in order to charge their own (almost
daily) and that they’re never ready to leave the house
until at least half an hour after I’ve asked them to be.
‘Irritation is a state of feeling annoyed or impatient,’
says psychologist David Cohen, author of What Bugs
You? (Psychology News Press, £12.99) – a study of
irritation and its causes. ‘It’s a diluted form of anger
that tends to be driven by lots of little things and rarely
coalesces around a single big thing, the way anger does.’
Irritation is more common than anger and yet lesstalked about. There is a lot of literature about anger
and hardly any about irritation. Most of us know
how to step back from anger but fi nd ourselves
succumbing quite easily to irritation.
‘There are two typical responses to irritation,’
says Michael Sinclair, a consultant psychologist
at City Psychology Group and author of The Little
ACT Workbook: An Introduction To Acceptance And
Commitment Therapy (Crimson, £7.99). ‘We tend to
either keep it to ourselves and allow it to a ect us or
we fl ip and act on it. Both responses are problematic.
‘If you keep it to yourself, you tend to start ruminating
and it begins to become about you rather than something
external. But if you react impulsively to the irritant, you
can exacerbate the situation and make it worse.’
So what’s going on here? Why do we get irritated and
what’s the point of it, if it just increases tension all round?Evolutionary help or hindrance?
‘All emotions have a function,’ says Sinclair. ‘Irritation
raises our awareness of a given situation, alerting us to
the fact that we might have to do something about it. It’s
an evolutionary function and designed to keep us safe
in a threatening world. The trouble is that our typical
responses tend to exacerbate the situation, our stress
hormones leap into action, we go into fi ght-or-fl ight
mode and the tension increases.’
I think back to the train incident. Yes, leaking
headphones are annoying but what did sitting
there feeling irritated achieve? And was my fellow
passenger’s angry outburst a better response?
‘We tend to get irritated when we feel less able to deal
with things than we’d like,’ says Sinclair. ‘This causesMajor irritant
Selfi sh children, noisy commuters... like many of us,
Lizzie Enfi eld often fi nds herself stewing, and yet says nothing.
Why? And how can we deal with irritation in a better way?38 PSYCHOLOGIES MAGAZINEAPRIL 2020psychology
>>>