Dear Emily:

It reads to me that after an 11 hour shift at work you were very tired. Feeling very tired, exhausted is distressing (unless you are in bed ready and able to fall asleep). When we are distressed we tend to lash out at anything or anyone.

It is something like this, I believe: you are in a room and you accidently hurt your toe walking. It hurts a lot. Automatically you get angry, correct? If there is someone in the room, you get angry at that person, don’t you? I do. There is no reason other than the person feeling distress needing to unload it. People sometimes hit objects- passing the distress to a thing, or fight with a person- passing the distress to a person.

It is the hallmark of abuse, by the way, to pass on distress to another person- it is distressed people that abuse others. With awareness you can detect your distress and pay attention to… not try to unload it on a person.. or anything breakable.

anita