I'm sorry, blue, I know this is so hard and the out-of-control feeling it brings doesn't help things.

It sounds impossible to do, but I have found much relief in not trying to escape the feelings of irritability and rage. They are going to come, you can't stop them (not if you want to heal, anyway). They are a natural part of resolving trauma. What you can do is find ways to manage them.

I easily fell into a cycle of "I get triggered---> mad----> react and hurt someone---> feel ashamed and try to stuff everything-----> I get triggered. Instead of trying to break the cycle in the early phases, which stuffed the feelings, T and I worked on intervening at the point where I react. I work with kids and I got really good at saying, "You know what? This is making me really mad right now, so I need to take a break. I'm not mad at you, I'm frustrated with myself." So I would drop whatever we were doing for just a moment and acknowledged how mad I was. Just being able to speak to it (as Thich Nhat Hanh says, "Hello, my little anger!") helped it dissipate much more quickly than trying to control it or stuff it.

And the positive was, I was modeling for my kids how to manage really overwhelming feeling like they experience. It got so they were able to do the same thing when they were mad, instead of lashing out.

You are okay, bluemoon. You are angry and irritable and still entirely okay.