Why Do I Snap At People So Easily? | The Time Peace Sessions Part 5

Why Do I Snap at People So Easily? #5

Here's a transcription of this episode:

Ah, yes, we had to cover this topic in our Time Peace Sessions.

This is a subject I know quite well, so if you feel triggered by what I’m going to share with you, please know that nothing I say here comes from judgment. I’m the last one who’s going to throw stones.

I know this topic very well being both on the giving and receiving end.

But we don’t have to snap at people.

In fact, you’re going to find out exactly why we snap…and especially at those we love the most.

You know this applies to you if…

• you’re constantly apologizing to others for your bad behavior
• you feel embarrassed at your behavior at times
• You think about how you should have handled a situation with your employee or your loved one better
• In fact, you often think later on how disproportional your reaction was to the situation
• It seems to come out of no where
• When you see something not exactly the way you want it — the way your coffee is sitting in the morning, the way files are set out on your desk — you become furious and begin complaining in your head. Maybe you even sneak in a passive aggressive remark in later in the day.

For example, you may snap at an employee for not doing what you told them, “a million times.”

Or you may snap at your spouse because they interrupted you when you’re trying to work.

Or you may snap at your kids because they aren’t picking up their room like you told them to.

In the moment, it doesn’t feel like you have any control. 

But what’s happening when you snap is that you’re seeking control in some area of your life — usually work. 

The snapping is a sign from our primal brain that it’s telling you that you have zero control. And that feels scary.

Scary because you’re already afraid of dropping the ball somewhere, that you’re not going to get everything done, that you’re doing a bad job at work. 

Then to top it all off, when you notice yourself snapping, you feel like a bad wife/husband, you feel like a bad mom, and all the things keep piling up.

This creates a constant feedback loop of, “I am not in control,” feeling scared, then being reactive and snapping at people.

You’re not doing this because you’re a bad person. It simply feels like nothing is in your control in that moment.

Your primal brain thinks it needs control, but what you really want is:

• things to go smoothly in your practice, so you don’t need to constantly worry about problems popping up
• For understanding from your spouse
• For a little support around the house in any way you can get it

Here’s another problem we don’t even think about: wasted energy.

Everything is energy including time. So says Einstein.

Imagine yourself as a bucket filled with energy.

Every time you waste energy snapping at someone, becoming angry, annoyed, etc, you’re creating a hole in the bucket. The energy just spills out of it. We don’t want leaky buckets. We want to notice whenever we have an energy leak and plug it.

That means we need to pay attention to our primal brain’s reactions.

When we snap, the primal brain has its hands on the steering wheel. When it has its hands on the wheel, we are in survival mode.

This is what I mean by the primal brain having its hands on the wheel: Your brain is habitually thinking thoughts like:

• “I don’t have enough time.”
• “I’m busy, don’t bother me.”
• “You should know this by now, don’t bother me.”
• “I’m doing so much, don’t add anything to my plate.”

This mindset becomes a broken record on repeat.

This mindset creates fear and time scarcity.

We snap because we’re reacting to this fear and time scarcity.

What is it costing you to hold onto these fears? This mindset?

For me:

• It was costing me a lot of time ruminating on how bad I felt and self-flagellating.
• I know it was creating a situation where my loved ones felt like they were walking on egg shells around me, and no one likes that feeling.
• I felt horrible a lot, and it was chipping away at my self-concept. I didn’t feel good about myself. 

For you:

• It may be costing you an employee who’s actually good at their job but who’s overwhelmed and needs more than verbal direction.
• It may be costing you a loving relationship with your spouse where they feel comfortable sharing how they feel
• It may be costing you a loving relationship with your kids where they feel comfortable talking to you

The work we’re doing in Time Peace for Lawyers™ will break the cycle of fear and time scarcity that causes us to snap.

During our time together, you’re going to learn the skills to manage your mindset and your emotions, so you’re healing relationships instead of harming them.

Inside Time Peace for Lawyers you’ll get:

• 12 weekly calls where you’ll get coaching by me on anything causing stress, anxiety, overwhelm, you name it

• You’ll get bonuses like my Stellar SOPs training to help you communicate to employees exactly what you need to make your life easier

• you’ll also get my bonus training on Hiring Dream Employees if this is a particular sticking point for you

• Plus, you get so many more bonuses, I can’t name them all here.

You’ll have to go to dinacataldo.com/timepeace to see them all.

Let me give you a peek at how coaching helped one of my clients heal her relationship with her husband:

One of my clients noticed that she was incredibly annoyed she felt when her husband came home from work and started watching his computer instead of talking to her. She was cooking dinner, and she wanted to talk about her day and hear about his day. But she wasn’t communicating that to him. Instead, she’d snap at him for little things, make passive aggressive remarks and pick fights. This was causing a rift in the relationship.

Not only that, but it was wasting so much brain space for her. She couldn’t decompress from work because she was so focused on these interactions. These interactions took a lot of her time and energy. And when we notice energy flowing anywhere we don’t want it to go, we want to take a look at it and plug up the hole so to speak.

When we coached on what the annoyance really was — fear that he was disconnecting and not interested in her — she saw that her primal brain was reacting when she snapped. 

She learned how to not only become more understanding of how her brain was reacting but of how his brain worked. She realized that he often complained about his job and that this was time he needed to decompress. There was plenty of evidence that he loved her. And not too long ago, after implementing what we talked about in coaching, and she stopped snapping at him and starting talking to him, she noticed that he’s been doing more sweet things for her like he used to do when they first got together.

That’s the power of the work we’ll do together in Time Peace for Lawyers™.

If this episode resonated with you, I highly recommend you sign up for Time Peace. You can do that by going to dinacataldo.com/timepeace.

I’m taking up to 15 lawyers in this class, and several of those spots are already taken, so sign up soon if you want to save your spot. We start September 3rd.

Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Bye.