I'm really concerned about how easily I've been getting triggered into anger at people about very petty things. I'll feel that I need to make a stand and if a friend is with me ... well, here's an example:

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a restaurant which turned out to be unbearably hot. I asked if they would turn down the heat. The employee said she couldn't, so I asked to speak to the manager. The manager said she couldn't. Now, it was truly unbearable, and I told my poor friend and the manager that we weren't going to be able to eat there, so we left.

As we were just outside, I was venting to my friend, saying that the manager was simply lying and that of course she could adjust the climate system. My friend took the side of the manager, saying she probably could not. That really got under my skin but I realized I had put us in a jam since I had asked her out to eat at that particular restaurant and she wasn't as negatively affected by heat as I (very high heat triggers panic attacks in me), so I needed to eat crow and go on back to the restaurant and have dinner.

We went back in, only to find the manager had just turned on the air conditioner. We ordered and then the manager took my friend aside at the salad bar and they began talking together and glancing toward me. I'll have to say that really stunned me that my friend would do that. We aren't mean teenagers, after all!

As we began to eat, I asked my friend about what happened and told her I felt hurt by it and that I had hadn't understood why she "took the side" of the manager when we went outside and I said the manager clearly could have adjusted the climate controls (as she obviously did once we left). I also acknowledged that I was behaving terribly and I knew it was difficult to be my friend during the past several months.

She got very mad at me and went silent.

Of course, there's more, but the truth is the issue is me ... the behaviors are mine, and each day I try to be calm and love ... to practice loving kindness and mindfulness ... each day I see through the mirror darkly

and I'm very frightened by how easy it is to be triggered ... for my anger and irritability to be triggered, and I feel worse if a friend tries to reason it away

and I feel very alone. I push people away, but there really is no one who would stand with a person through this ... or who would/will stand with me through this,