What on Earth is WRONG with me?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My fuse seems to have gotten very short recently. Little things that would have bothered me a little but rolled off my back, have started to piss me off to the point of insanity. A few cases in point, all of which have taken place in the last couple of months:

Me, to my secretary: Jane, I don’t have a copy of the arraignment calendar. Could you please get me a copy?

Jane: I put a copy in your box.

Me: There’s no calendar in my box.

Jane: I put it in there yesterday.

I look in my box again, which contains 3 sheets of paper and no 20-page long calendar.

Me: Jane, it’s not there. Please get me a copy.

Jane: I put it there yesterday.

Bill: Are you looking for a copy of the calendar? I had 2 copies, Jane must have put your in my box.

I literally had to sit in my office with the door shut for a few minutes to keep from going off on Jane.
Between my husband and me:

H: I’m making the grocery list. Do you need diet ginger ale?

Me: no, I have 2 12-packs.

H: Are you sure you don’t need more?

Me: Positive.

(5 minutes later)H: And you’re sure you don’t need diet ginger ale?

Me: FOR THE 3D TIME, NO!!

Another one with Hubby:

H: I want to go see my parents this weekend. You’ll be working anyway- so you mind if I go alone?

Me: No, I think that’s a great idea.

H: I haven’t seen them for a few months.

Me: I know.

H: You’re sure you don’t mind?

Me: No, I’ll be working all weekend, like you said. It’s a good time for you to go.

H: I haven’t seen them for awhile.

Me: I know.

H: You’ll be working anyway.

A few more minutes of this before I finally shriek, “I SAID IT WAS FINE! GO AHEAD AND GO!”

There have been a few other incidents - he was talking non-stop while I was trying to watch something (OK, Ted Kennedy’s funeral), and I finally yelled, “ARE YOU GOING TO BE YAPPING AT ME THROUGH THIS WHOLE THING?”.

I yelled at him this morning for asking me what I thought was a stupid question.

I don’t want to be the harpy that no one can get along with, and I don’t want to make my poor husband miserable.

FWIW, I’m 48 and on hormones, and I recently started taking blood pressure meds.

Any ideas as to why I’m such a bitch lately?

2

Sounds to me like you’re such a bitch because you’ve gotten tired of people treating you like you haven’t a brain in your head.

Seriously, though, I’m pretty sure you knew that going in, and I’d get a bit stabby myself if I had to repeat myself three times every time someone asked a question or I requested something be done.

3

I’ve been feeling that way myself recently.

In my case, though, it’s because my wacky brain chemistry has won the latest round of Crazy Vs. Meds. I don’t know if that would apply to you.

4

How long have you been on the hormones? Perhaps they need to be tweaked a bit.

Sounds like you’re a pretty busy lady. That can make ya snappy, too.

5

I am not a doctor, but my guess is it’s the hormones you’re on. That, and your husband sounds like he has a bit of an annoying habit of reconfirming your answers over and over again.

6

Don’t feel too bad. Everything you described would make me snarly too, and I’m not hormonal.

7

He’s reconfirming over and over because he doesn’t trust that you’re really ok with him going alone. Likely he sensed a tone in your voice or noticed some body language that told him you weren’t giving him your true feelings on the matter. Or maybe he’s walking on eggshells because you’ve had problems with him doing his own thing in the past?

8

It could be the hormones, but it could also be the blood pressure medication. You’re undergoing some serious changes because of that, and it can affect your mood.

I’ll also take a random shot here - are you in pain at all? I find that often people who are suddenly short tempered are in a little bit of pain - enough to make them edgy, but not enough to prompt them to take a pain killer.

9

I agree with HelloNinja. It could be he is just annoying. Or if she really has been in a more elevated state of pissiness for MONTHS, he may figure annoying her slightly by triple checking is better than the shitstorm that will ensue if he messes up otherwise.

katie1341, if you really feel like you have gone a marked change in mood recently, you should really discuss it with your doctor. It could just be the medications. Much less likely, it could be something like a tumor. It could be some other major life event that you haven’t told us about that.

10

The hormones, plus as El_Kabong said, those “little things” are the verbal equivalent of the water drop torture method.

You’ve got reasons to get irritated and the hormones are blowing the irritation up. Ideally, both things should get fixed, but fixing the hormones will probably be easier than fixing the rest of the world.
My mother reconfirms if we don’t give her the answer along with our undivided attention. But if she wants us to give her our undivided attention, she should refrain from asking whether those shoes match the hose while, say, SiL is changing the baby’s diaper…

11

I like these two responses. Taken together they match my experiences with the dynamics of anger and frustration.

12

Are the hormones new? Your mood sounds like I was when I was early pregnant. Hormones can do funny things to you, including affecting your ability to cope with stress. Ask your Dr. if it doesn’t improve.

Also the obvious - are you getting enough sleep, other changes in your life, stress, etc. are all factors.

If this is the way your husband has always been and it does not usually bother you, I would make a point of telling him you are sorry you have a short fuse right now and just to let him know you are aware that you are acting differently and for him to try not to take it personally. Just knowing someone is aware they are acting irrationally can make the situation better, and maybe he will learn not to ask you something 3 times :slight_smile:

13

I’ve been on the hormones for a couple of years, so it certianly could be time to tweak them. I have a weird mole I’ve been meaning to have my Dr. look at- sounds like I need to discuss my meds with him as well. The only thing I’m taking besides the hormones are the BP meds.

My husband knows that I’m OK with him visiting his folks or his son without me once in a while- for one thing, I think they probably appreciate having him to themselves from time to time, and for another, I enjoy having the house to myself on occasion.

I also haven’t been sleeping well lately, which could be a factor.

14

Hormones or no, menopause-related stuff could still be leaking through. Hair-trigger anger is one of the big indicators. I have to deal with it too; I do a lot of tongue-biting so that I don’t snap off my husband’s head when he muses and mumbles or repeats himself endlessly. And I hear you on the chattering through something you want to watch. I was trying to watch Henry V the other day, which my husband doesn’t care for. He was bored, so he looked at a catalog and kept thrusting the catalog in between me and the television screen to show me stuff. I finally glared at him and he left the house in a huff and stayed away for two hours.

15

Or maybe it’s nothing she’s done, and he’s just got an inflexible mental model of the universe and refuses to accept her at her word because it would conflict with his model. Some discussion between the OP and her spouse might be helpful to understand why he won’t take her at her word on the first pass.

FWIW, BTDT. On a visit to Chicago several years ago, my car got a flat tire one evening. Installed spare, and next morning I told her I’d drop her off at the mall (so she could do the shopping that she was wanting to do), and I’d go get the flat plugged (by a shop) and reinstall it on the car (myself). She asked me three or four times whether I was sure I wanted to do this, as she struggled to comprehend the idea that I might find a tire shop - and working on my own car on a nice sunny day - more interesting than a shopping mall. Like the OP, I finally blew up at my wife. At the time, I was a 35YO male, not on hormones. Post-explosion discussion revealed that it was indeed as I described: she likes shopping, doesn’t like auto work or mechanical things, and was having difficulty understanding that my interests were far different from hers, and it was not in fact a huge burden, but a *pleasure[/i ]for me to install a newly repaired tire on my car.

As for Jane, the nitwit secretary, she was so hell-bent on defending her past job performance (task: place calendar in boss’s inbox) that she missed the main point, which is that whatever happened yesterday, there is not now a calendar in the inbox, and another one needs to be handed off immediately. Staggering that she could respond to the direct request “PLEASE GET ME A COPY” with “I put a copy in your box yesterday.” Someone that obstinate and defensive would frustrate the hell out of me too.

16

If I can offer a possible translation:

The inner meaning of the ginger ale incident – Husband has noticed that you have been unhappy and (to use your own words) a bitch of late. He really loves you and has an inner urge to give you something that will make you feel better/happy. All that he could think of at that moment to give was ginger ale so he fixated on that a bit. He could not make himself vulnerable enough to tell you any of this because you don’t feel safe to him right now.

The inner meaning of the visit to the parents – Husband needed to be away from you for a while because he is feeling powerless to make you feel better/happy. He also feels guilty and like he is copping out because he loves you and feels like there is something that he should be doing to help you. He was looking for absolution on some level or failing that some means of feeling justified in going.

So what is your underneath deepest truth here? You already know what is really making you unhappy. What are you willing to do about it?

17

All I can think is, maybe you’d be happier if you recognized the problem you were trying to solve earlier in the conversations, instead of letting the other person derail it.

In the first one, maybe a “I understand, and maybe I lost it or something. Could I get another copy?”

In the second one, “I’m really sure. Is there something that makes you not believe me?” (of course, you have to ‘sell’ that question so it’s clear you’re not being snide)

In the third one, again, “Are you not believing my answer?” (if you can do it without having an edge in your voice).

I wish my wife were at least introspective like you. She’s pretty certain it really is everyone else’s fault (especially mine) she’s angry all the time.

18

Perimenopause? The BP drug you just added? Both of which can cause mood swings like that. Meds can have odd reactions with people, everybody is different.

19

IANAD.

Some blood pressure medications can affect your mood. It might be a direct effect- Inderal and some other beta blockers can cause depression as a side effect, for example (and depression can manifest itself as irritability). Or it could be indirect- the medicine or some of its side effects makes you not sleep as well or feel tired, and that can affect your mood.

If the high blood pressure is the first serious health problem you’ve had, that can affect your mood, too. You might feel like you’re getting old, or feel like you’re facing your own mortality. That’s not a particularly pleasant feeling.

Have you changed your diet or when you’re eating recently? I have depression, and find that a low-carb diet makes it a lot worse (the body makes serotonin from carbs, and SSRIs such as Prozac affect serotonin in the brain). I eat a lower-carb diet during Passover every year because of the Jewish dietary restrictions during Passover, and I find I’m as mean as a snake by the end of it (it lasts for 8 days). When I started trying to eat more whole grains last year, I changed too much too fast, and it gave me temporary intestinal discomfort, which did not help my mood. Just plain hunger can make people irritable, too. If you’re eating less than you used to, or eating on a different schedule, you might be irritable because you are hungry. Or if you’re getting acid reflux from certain foods or medications, that might be making it hard for you to sleep, or just making you irritable from the pain of heartburn.

If you’re not sleeping well, it could be that. My depression gets much worse if I don’t get enough sleep. When I was in college and staying up late doing homework (I was and am the Queen of Dorks and had very little social life) and not on medication for depression yet, there was a clear pattern. I would feel much more depressed, weepy, and irritable at the end of the school week than I would at the beginning. Of course, my brain chemistry is not normal, but maybe that happens to normal people too. Being tired doesn’t seem to improve their moods any.

20

Are you reading more into what people are saying than is actually there? You might feel that Jane is deliberately trying to frustrate you, when the real problem is actually that she’s not the brightest crayon in the box (or just not at her personal best today).

Or maybe she doesn’t have any more copies, isn’t sure what to do at this point, and is just babbling.

Your husband might just have an annoying habit of asking and re-asking the same questions. Or his short-term memory might not be that good and he forgets that he just asked you something. Or he may come from a family or culture where you’re supposed to refuse the first few times when someone offers to do something for you, so not asking repeatedly feels unnatural to him.

There might be problems here that have nothing to do with you, but you might be taking them too personally.