"Aaarrrrgghh!!!"

What happens in your brain and body when you're aggravated

- BY Rosemary Counter

MY FRIEND, as usual, is late for brunch. Ten minutes pass (no biggie) and then 15.

“Where are you?” I text.

“2 mins!” she responds. Fine.

Ten more minutes pass, and she’s still nowhere in sight. Suffice it to say, I am not pleased. Not angry, yet, but irritated—the lowest rung on the rage scale, but one big step nearer to the ubiquitous human experience where annoyances, hassles and frustrations mount to the inevitable: an irrational explosion directed at whichever unfortunate soul—my friend who's running late, a slow cashier, your poor kid, the jerk who cut you off in rush hour—is closest.

Whether you call it losing your cool, blowing a gasket, flipping out or flying off the handle, if you’ve gotten to this point, irritation has won the battle. Luckily, with a little bit of introspection, you can still win the war.

The evolution of frustration

Though a slightly late meal is hardly a “threat,” millions of years of human evolution have the brain computing the situation the old-fashioned way.

"Different and overlapping parts of your brain are frequently communicating about expected rewards and perceived threats," says Melissa Brotman, PhD, chief of neuroscience at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Here, a basic human need (food because I'm hungry) is being blocked by an obstacle out of my control (my ever-tardy friend). Frustration in the form of irritability is only normal and natural. Never getting angry or irritated, Brotman says, would be a lousy coping mechanism for certain circumstances, or, as the good doctor puts it, “maladaptive.”