Pathways and Triggers Brought to Life 63in an irritable, cranky mood, they experience every re-
quest or change or inconvenience as yet another demand
for an expenditure of energy. If you think about it, over
the course of a day or week, a person’s energy for dealing
with these requests and changes and inconveniences
starts to wane. Often the event that sends an irritable,
cranky person over the edge isn’t necessarily the biggest;
rather, it’s the one that happened after he’d expended his
last ounce of energy.
“Think of times you’ve been tired after a long day at
work,” the therapist continued. “Those are probably the
times when you’re least adaptable and least flexible and
when very minor things are likely to set you off. I think
Danny is in that state of mind fairly continuously.”
“There’s no way I’m going to tell him he’s allowed to
hit me just because he’s irritable,” said the mother.
“Oh, I’m not saying you should allow him to hit you,”
the therapist said. “The hitting has got to stop. But to get
the hitting and swearing and tantrums to stop, I think
we need to focus on things you can do before he ex-
plodes, rather than on what you can do after he’s ex-
ploded. And we need to focus on all the ingredients that
are fueling his inflexibility and explosiveness. From what
I’ve seen so far, helping him with his irritability will be
high on the list.”