There is going to be a day when you’ve just had enough and you’re going to get angry or frustrated. The big question is: How are you going to react to when you feel that way?

As we go about our days, we’re human: We make mistakes, get tired and hungry, and sometimes we’ll want to throw our hands up in the air and want to give up.

Learning new skills in dealing with dysfunctional behaviors is not easy. If we grew up in a household where we saw people fighting, yelling, drinking to excess, or repressing their feelings and never solving their problems, we’ve not seen healthy behavior modeled. Learning how to act in a healthy matter (rather than reacting) can be hard.

And that’s okay.

There are days when you might curse how you were raised and feel broken and confused. Why is it that it’s so hard to get through some of the simplest of things?

When you’re at work, how do you respond when a boss pushes you to get a job done earlier than was expected?

How do you react when there are money problems at home?

When a crisis pops up out of the blue, how do you handle it?

Do you get stressed out? Frustrated? Angry?

Over time you will notice that there are triggers that cause you to react and feel a certain way. There will be patterns that you notice in your life. You’ll see that when certain events happen that you respond to those in repeatable (and often unhealthy) ways.

Becoming aware of the patterns and coming to terms that you’ve had enough, will help you decide what’s next.

You can continue your life and be unhappy, or do the work to learn healthier behaviors.

When I say “work,” what exactly do I mean?

Let’s run through an example: Your boss throws a difficult project your way because she knows that you have a difficult time saying no. You are already stretched with work, but take on the project because you don’t want there to be conflict with your boss.

Weeks later you’re stressed out, can’t meet the deadline so you’re putting in extra time on the weekends, and then your kids are angry at you because you’re not really with them. You’re focusing on work.

Do you ask for help from your boss? Or do you stay quiet and get the work done, but your family suffers?

The work is learning to set healthy boundaries, work on self-love so that you know that saying “no” at work doesn’t make you a bad person, and that the feelings that come to the surface are memories from what you lived through as a kid. This is the work:

Admitting your problems, learning how to overcoming them, and going through the messy process of practicing boundary setting and self-love.

When you’ve had enough, there’s a reason why you feel this way.

Do some discovery work, admit what you’re feeling, and then take steps to get help.

If you’ve never talked to a therapist, now might be the time. Or maybe you want to start going to Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings?

The choice is your.

Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.