The Reason For Lingering Irritability

Irritability can be a hard mood to break out of because it often creates a negative feedback loop that is self-reinforcing in ways that can deepen its hold on our state of mind.

It reinforces our negative mood such that we're much more likely to fixate on anything even mildly upsetting or annoying (we might even do so unconsciously as a way to validate our bad mood).

Focusing on all these annoyances then fuels our irritability further, which in turn, focuses us even more intently on validating our irritable mood by continuing to scan our environment for external frustrations.

Ask them to consider trying one of the following techniques that have been shown to lower irritability:

• Gratitude exercises:

Spend 10 minutes each morning journaling about three things for which they're grateful and why-what that thing means to them and why it makes them fe...