#Quick tempered how to#
#Quick tempered tv#

“He might think to himself, They need to learn to toughen up, like I had to, but the truth is that the toughening-up process was the thing that left the dad without the resources to understand what his own fear and pain feel like, and without strategies for caring for himself when he’s in distress.”

#Quick tempered how to#

“Once we step back and examine that, the truth was the dad just didn’t know how to tolerate seeing his child suffer, and handled it in a way that may have felt appropriate at the time,” Bognar says. If the child is in pain, scared or crying, the dad finds himself angry, and some dads might even yell at their kids or punish them for this. Other things also can contribute to men being short-tempered or irritable, says licensed marriage and family therapist Nick Bognar: “Most of them boil down to not having the emotional literacy to know what’s going on within themselves, and a lack of knowledge about how to care for themselves.”Ī classic example of a counterproductive anger response is a dad who can’t stand to see his child suffer, Bognar says. When the child doesn’t behave, the negative core belief kicks in, and he thinks, I’m not good enough, not loved enough, so I have to be angry and control the outside world.”Īnger in such a situation can be empowering, he continues: “If someone’s belief system centers around the world being fair, it energizes them to correct the wrong, or whatever it is they perceive as unjust or unfair.” “Does your child wailing mean you’re inadequate, or not okay? No, but it can feel that way. “It’s a core, or absolute, belief about oneself,” Sultanoff says. A man who thinks it’s unfair that his child is misbehaving will think, “If things aren’t fair, then I’m not good enough to be treated fairly.”

Someone who sees behavior as unfair and who also perceives that unfairness as a personal attack might get angry in a particular situation whereas someone who doesn’t share that tendency would not, he says.įor example, when a kid isn’t behaving in a way he or she “should,” someone with a short temper might, deep down, see it as a reflection on him, Sultanoff says. Sultanoff, Ph.D., a professor at Pepperdine University. Other mental health concerns, such as depression, anxiety, stress and trauma, can contribute as well, especially if people haven’t been able to express or process them.Īnger tends to directly relate, however, to specific thought patterns triggered when someone perceives a situation as unfair, unjust, or simply “wrong,” says clinical psychologist Steven M. It’s possible that short tempers run in families and can be part of our genes, Lira de la Rosa says. Why Short-Tempered Men Are The Way They Are Feeling angry is normal, but it’s the behavior accompanying the emotion that can be problematic: “There are both healthy and unhealthy ways of expressing anger,” he says. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing anger, Lira de la Rosa clarifies. “IED is more severe and consists of repeated patterns of aggressive behavior that are out of proportion to the situation at hand,” he continues. “Short temper” isn’t an official psychological diagnosis, but it is similar to “Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED),” Lira de la Rosa says. “The reaction is usually quick and can lead to people not recognizing their behavior and actions until after the anger subsides.”

“This can entail an increase in aggressive thoughts, emotions, and physiological responses that leads someone to behave in an aggressive or angry manner,” Lira de la Rosa says. Even if you stop yourself from say, kicking the toys left strewn around the living room out of your way, and even if your anger never leads to violence or shouting, chronic crankiness nevertheless affects your relationships, not to mention the mental health of everyone in your family.Ī short temper can be described as someone quickly reacting with anger to any situation, says New York psychologist Ernesto Lira de la Rosa, media advisor for the Hope for Depression Research Foundation. If you have a short temper, it can make your family tense and on edge, bracing for an outburst every time something goes wrong.

#Quick tempered tv#

Blustering, short-tempered dads are a tried-and-true TV sitcom trope, but the tendency to anger quickly and easily isn’t a harmless personality quirk in real life.