Member-only story
Why You’re Snapping About Small Things
Feelings like anger are often hiding something else
The other night at dinner, I triumphantly brought a steaming plate of killer baked ziti to the kitchen table. I plunked it down with flourish in front of my husband, who was engrossed in a magazine. It was the first time I made the recipe, and I was eager to hear what he thought.
Absently, Tom picked up a fork, dug in, and started chewing mechanically while I waited. And waited. Irritation started to build. Did he like it? Presumably yes, because he kept loading it into his mouth as he read.
At this point, the old, pre-therapy me would have said (or yelled) something like, “Um, wow. Did you not notice I’ve been cooking for the last hour? What the hell? God, you are so ungrateful!” I might have stormed out of the room, too, for good measure.
But the new me — the person who, with Tom, has gone through a fair amount of couples’ counseling — sat with my feelings for a second before saying anything. I was angry. But when I dug a little deeper, I found that lurking behind my anger were sadness and disappointment. And even a bit of shame that I expected praise for my culinary creation.
Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and associate professor of neuroscience at Baylor University, found in his…
