When we're irritable or otherwise feeling angry, it is because we are feeling threatened. It can be helpful to ask ourselves, "From where does my fear and anger really come? Is my life really in immediate danger?"

Anger always has beneath it frustration and fear.

This frustration and fear often have more to do with previous situations or with other people we have known than with our present circumstances.

Very intensely felt emotions usually are drawing their extreme intensity from past experiences.  We may fear (conscious or otherwise) that previous insecurities, hurts, or threats will be experienced again in the present or future.