Losing my temper

[andyjevs]

Silly little things have been making me fly off the handle lately. I'm approaching 40 and i am happily married with a lovely 7 year old daughter and a 15 year old step daughter.
They are generally as good as gold although we have the standard cr@p from the older one which we can both handle ok.

But today, i went into our mess room at work and someone had messed around with a picture of my daughter. The photo was hanging out of the frame and it was all loose. A weird necklace had also been hung around the frame.

Now i work with 7 blokes aged from 28 to 55. When i asked who had been messing around with my photo, no one owned up. As a result, i got pretty angry that i could be working with a group of blokes who i obviously couldn't trust. Things got particularly heated when one of the group.....a particularly stubborn and lary bloke suggested i was making it up and it was nothing to get heated about. It got to the point where i nearly thumped him and i'm 19 stone....he's about 8 stone, He wouldn't have got up for a month.

I rarely lose my temper but when i do, it's usually a big thing. Was i right to have a pop at the blokes and lose my rag. Would you be upset about the incident and not being able to trust them ?

I feel pretty let down by it all. I did apologise to the bloke for losing my temper but he didn't seem too bothered so i just walked away.

Mid life crisis ?

[justforthis]

andyjevs, I'm no shrink but what stood out for me when reading your post was the bit about your step daughter. It had no relevance to the rest of the post or really. Are you sure there's not something bothering you deep down about that situation?

[andyjevs]

No....if anything, she's a pretty good cookie....just a bit prone to doing silly things like not telling us where she's going, forgetting her keys and waking us up when she's dropped home etc.
As i said...typical teenager stuff really....thinks the world evolves around them !!!!

[Loosehead]

I know what you mean, I absolutely hate it when someone leaves something of mine other than where/how they found it.

[dancealot13]

Often we are able to answer our own questions if we look deep within ourselves. But the difficult part is actually listeing to it. Isn't it funny that we will listen to complete strangers advice (whom don't even know all the elements to our situations), but we have such a difficult time listening and taking our very own advice. So, if you see that your temper is going off as often as a car alarm, then try to find ways to get it under-control, as well as finding a way to calm yourself. It's often about taking a step out of your environment for a minute and breathing. Choose your battles, and choose where you want to spend your energy,...and if you find that all your energy is building up inside you then look for other avenues of release. But don't worry about, its normal to go through times in your life where you're more edgy then others. xxxx

[hunter1969]

Aaaaaaabsolutely right to have a pop, although probably not the most effective thing to do, unless your remarks are calm, sharp, cutting and down right humiliating! They are probably tooo immature to feel guilty about messing with something that deserves a respect. Try continuing to be civil but dont rise to their childish pranks, or else they'll just thrive on your reaction. If all that advice fails.............. Thump him next time!!!

[plonker]

Sounds like you are stressed out. As you get older you put up with less and rightly so. It could be hormones or blood sugar levels? Get it checked out. Change of scenery - a real good holiday might calm your nerves.

[snook]

He sounds like he needed a slap, but you were right to restrain yourself. I wouldn't worry about it. If you'd smacked him, then you'd have something to think about, regret, mull over or whatever, but you held it in and just gave him a warning. He should think himself lucky. Really, I don't think you have anything to reproach yourself for, they (or at least one of them) sound like w@nkers. They need to learn to respect other people's property, specially personal items.

[JulieEve]

Andy, I too would be angry if anyone interfered with a personal picture of my child.

I would be livid in fact. Whoever did it is a cowardly cretin of the highest order who obviously knew how much it would upset you.

Nothing to do with mid-life crisis I dont think Dave - just a dad being protective.

[JulieEve]

ooops meant Andy - was just on the phone to a Dave!!

[OBonio]

You're not alone andy. I'm a real placid type bloke, but stupid things really rile me up sometimes. I punched the cr@p out of a pizza box last week. Why? It wouldn't get in the bin.

I think I need to get into some sport to expend some of this pent up anger! What am I angry about is the question I suppose...

Also, I lose it more when I'm tired (which is a lot at the moment due to little OBonio not quite getting the gist of sleeping at night).

So, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'd recommend something like a game of squash or badminton once a week.