Have you ever found yourself irritable, frustrated, or angry, but you aren’t sure why? You know something is bothering you, but you aren’t sure what?
I find that if eating or napping doesn’t fix it (hello, “hangry”!) – if it’s the kind of thing that sticks with me for a while – the best thing I can do is make a list.
It sounds like silly advice, I know. But it really helps.
The benefit of the list is that you don’t have to be able to explain anything. Sometimes, trying to talk it out or write it out in sentences and paragraphs can lead to more frustration: the “why” or even the “what” of the irritability is difficult to pinpoint and explain. Speaking and writing properly requires that we relate at least two things to one another. A subject + predicate. But what if I only have one, or half of one?
Enter the list.
A list does not require any formal writing. It doesn’t require you to explain anything. It doesn’t require you to group similar things together, or even have similar things in mind.
The list is a dumping ground for everything. Once it’s out in the open, you can sort through it. (But that’s another process. First, get it all out.)
Write down every single thing that is bothering you, making you frustrated, worrying you, angering you. It can include everything from “my colleagues don’t seem to appreciate my work” to “the kitchen drawer” to “bank account” to “no sleep.”
If you know why it bothers you, you can add that – but if it just bothers you, period, stick it down. It doesn’t matter how big or how small. Maybe your mortgage is too burdensome, maybe the pan you cook with every day just gets on your nerves.
The act of writing can help us start to process what’s going on inside. Getting out every last thing that annoys us can be surprisingly cathartic. You’ve named the unnamed.
Chances are, once everything is out, you’ll already have a sense of which things are the most pressing. If you feel better already, now is the time to walk away from the list and move on to something new, paying attention to how you feel for the rest of the day.
If you find yourself thinking about the list, come back to it. Circle the thing or things on it that are the most frustrating. It may surprise you to find that the kitchen pan you hate having to use every day is actually bothering you more than the weight of your mortgage! If it’s something like that, you know that splurging on a new pan is actually going to help your quality of life quite a bit.
(We eat a lot of rice in our home, and for several months I found myself really annoyed every time I had to make it, only to have it dawn on me that those hours of frustration were due to lack of a sieve. We were on a tight budget, and I didn’t want to spend the £5. After realising that £5 would buy me hours of peace when making rice, I went out and bought a sieve—and I’m grateful for it nearly every day!)
If what is bothering you is more difficult, now is not the time to say, “well, I can’t do anything about it. It’s not a sieve.” Chances are, you can at least begin to pray, discern, and think about small changes you can make: just knowing and naming the issue is a massive first step.
Over time, take each issue individually and sit with it. Talk to God about it. Talk with a friend about it. Talk to an outside observer about it. Ask yourself, is there something tiny I can do to make it better, to change it, to make it different? Is there something I can do to change my attitude towards it?
Frustration can be a positive catalyst for change. But start with figuring out what it is that’s bothering you. You might be surprised just how fix-able it is.
Have you ever tried to make a list of everything that is bothering you?
