Nicola Harrison tries to get to the bottom of irritation and wonders if there is a solution.
I am very intolerant and irritable. I could put it down to my upbringing, which was very noisy and stressful. Or to my home life, which is very noisy and stressful. Or to my temperament, which is very noisy and stressed. It is probably in-built, a miserable character flaw that is there in the egg, just waiting to be born so it can yell, " Call that pushing? For God's sake stop groaning and get on with it.."
Irritable behaviour is generally linked to another unpleasant trait - impatience. Because, as all impatient people know, there is nothing more irritating than having to wait for someone else to do something that YOU JUST KNOW you could have done in half the time. It all boils down to tolerance levels. There are some unfortunate people, like me, who dream, nay, fantasise about being placid. About discovering what the word 'relaxed' actually means.
But they'll never know, you see, because everything irritates them.
(CLANG! Will you STOP KICKING THE DOG'S BOWL!).
No. They can't help it - they long to be tolerant...
(CLANG! Aargh!.)
...but sadly, at some point in their lives, someone pushed and irritated them beyond endurance, and now they just snap at the slightest thing.
Mind you, there are some people who were just born to irritate. It's as easy as breathing to them. Because they are the tea stirrers, the cappuccino froth- suckers, the finger-tappers, the sniffers, the twitchers, and the gym-grunters. Nor should we forget the Walkman-wearers, the mobile phone-users and those who incessantly eat popcorn at the cinema.
The blissful state of irritation has two main triggers, best described by the words predictable and repetitive. Add the word familiarity to the others and there you have it - the recipe for irritation. Because we are creatures of habit, all those little quirks we never used to notice in our partners, or even found endearing, have become major sources of irritation. Familiarity breeds contempt.
Oh, to not react when I hear the clumping of my teenage sons' enormous POD shoes as they run up and downstairs. Aaargh! Oh, to smile sweetly when my dear husband is sent out to buy new batteries and comes home with 12 bread rolls because he thought I said BAPS. Oh, to not get touchy when I hear the sound of football on the telly, punctuated by the roaring trio of male voices that is my family.
Of course the simplest way to avoid all this stress-inducing stuff is to have children and a husband who LISTEN to you. A sort of Stepford Husband and Sons. If husbands changed light bulbs, children kept their rooms tidy, and garden frogs never got caught in the strimmer - oh what a calm and placid home this Harrison house would be.
Wouldn't it?
