Temper, Temper...

Well, I haven't had any hot flashes in about three weeks, but other symptoms point to me going through hormonal changes -- namely, my temper.

Now, I'm a pretty even-keeled kinda gal, but for the last week or so, my temper has just been horrible. I snap at the slightest things -- not being able to fit a cap on a bottle... having trouble pulling my many winter layers off, when I get back inside the house... shoveling snow and having the shovel stick in a crack... My temper just goes off. Fortunately, a lot of my "episodes" happen when I'm working alone, so the rest of the world doesn't have to be burdened by my short fuse.

But sometimes others are around. When I'm shopping, and I'm having trouble wrestling a bag of cat litter into the cart... When I'm working, and I keep mistyping a word... When I'm trying to change the channel, and the numbers I press aren't the numbers I want... Instant curses spring to my lips, and I start to freak out. Or sometimes I'll be trying to make myself understood to my significant other, and I'm just not succeeding. I start to yell. I start to rant. I start to feel really, really foolish. Fortunately, my outbursts are most violent when I'm in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

Which is good for the rest of the world. But not so good for my significant other.

One thing I have discovered which helps -- not my temper, but my outbursts -- is a technique similar to that of Za-zen, the Zen discipline of sitting motionless for hours. In Za-zen, the idea is to just sit. Don't move. Don't scratch that itch. Don't stretch your cramped legs. Just sit. Observe. Get outside your body and reality and just watch what happens when you sit for hours without moving. It's not an easy discipline, and it's not widely known (at least, most people I know have never heard of it). But I know about it, and I find its principles very useful, when my temper flares for no apparent reason, and it's entirely inappropriate for me to vent.

What I do, basically, is watch my temper flare up. I detach from the situation and watch as my temperature goes up, my face gets flushed, and a wave of vitriolic rage wells up me (for example, when the trash bag tears while I'm tying it). I observe my internal emotional outburst and remind myself, this reaction has more to do with my hormonal fluctuations, than the reality of the situation, and if I can just keep it together to get the trash bag sealed and taken out to the curb, instead of blowing up and throwing something, this too shall pass, and I'll be able to function normally in a few minutes, without an emotional mess to clean up afterwards.

To some, the approach may seem cold and distant. And yes, it probably is. But that's only because the situation warrants a cold and distant approach, rather than a hot-headed explosion over minutiae. It's bad enough, that I want to blow up over every little thing that goes "wrong" (i.e., not as I expect/plan), but to have to deal with the aftermath of a full-blown temper tantrum that wasn't warranted in the first place