What Irritates You About Others: Carl Jung, Addiction, and Coming Home to Yourself

By Dan Oakes, MEd, LPC, CSAT, Arizona Family Institute

Why do certain people irritate me so much? Why does my wife's need for closeness make me want to leave the room? Why do I keep going back to pornography when it goes against everything I value? Men in recovery ask me these questions in my Mesa office every week, often in the same session. Carl Jung gave us a way to hold all three together. Attachment science shows us why they belong together.

Some version of this conversation happens in my office every week. A man sits on the couch and tells me his wife is too needy. She wants to talk every night. She asks how his day went, and when he says fine, she asks again. He rolls his eyes as he tells me. Then he goes quiet. I wait. After a while, he says, "I don't know why it bugs me so much."

I think I know. Carl Jung knew it long before I did.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”  Carl Jung

Irritation and compulsion come from the same place. Both point back to a part of you that you stopped wanting to know.

What Jung meant

Jung spent much of his career on projection. The parts of ourselves we refuse to look at do not go away. We push them out of awareness, and then we meet them in other people. The coworker who talks about his feelings too much. The friend who asks for help too often. The wife who wants closeness every night. We react to them with a heat out of proportion to what they did.

Jung called the hidden material the shadow. I don't need you to adopt his whole system. I want you to take one piece of it seriously. When your reaction is bigger than the moment, the moment has touched something in you. The irritation is telling you about you.

Addiction is an attachment problem

I teach the men I work with that compulsive sexual behavior grows out of attachment. A baby cries, and someone comes. Over thousands of those moments, the nervous system learns a rule. When I hurt, I go to someone safe. You never outgrow the rule. The person changes, from parents to friends to a spouse, but the reach stays.

Some of us learned a different rule. We cried, and nobody came. Or someone came angry. Or someone came and needed comforting themselves. So we stopped reaching. We learned to handle distress alone. Then at eleven or twelve or fourteen, a screen showed up and offered relief with no risk of rejection. The attachment system latched on. Pornography became the place the body goes for comfort, because it never says no and never asks anything back.

So when I ask a man to stop, I am asking him to give up the one form of comfort his nervous system trusts. Willpower loses that fight most nights.

The need you sent away

This is where Jung and attachment meet.

A man who learned to need no one has to put his need somewhere. He disowns it. He calls it weakness. He decides he is the steady one, the provider, the guy who handles things. And then he marries a woman who reaches for him every night.

Her reach shows him exactly what he exiled. She does openly what he does in secret at midnight with a phone. She wants comfort. So does he. She asks a person for it. He gets it from a picture. Her need irritates him because his own need has lived in hiding for thirty years, and she keeps pointing at it.

I see the pattern in other forms too. The man who can't stand it when another guy in the group cries. The dad who snaps when his son wants attention after a long day. The husband who rolls his eyes at his wife's anxiety and then stands in front of the fridge at eleven at night, not hungry, looking for something. In each case, the contempt aims outward. The wound sits inside.

Shame runs this. If needing is shameful, anyone who needs in front of me becomes a threat, because they remind me what I'm hiding. Irritation keeps the shame at arm's length. It works for a while. It also keeps you lonely.

Knowing yourself is the recovery

I hold this stance firmly. You will not build lasting sobriety without self-connection. You cannot reach toward another person with a need you despise in yourself. Every reach will feel like failure, and the screen will feel safer.

So the work starts inside. I use the NOW practice with the men in our groups, and it works for irritation the same way it works for an urge.

N is notice. Name the moment. Thursday, dinner table, my wife asked how I'm doing, irritation about a six. Put it in time and give it a number.

O is observe. Bring your attention out of the story in your head and down into your body. Jaw tight. Heat in the chest. A pull to leave the room. Name what you feel without judging it. The sensation is safe. It will not make you do anything.

W is watch and wait. Stay with it and let it change. It will. Sometimes a memory shows up. A kitchen when you were nine. A parent's face going cold. Sometimes one sentence arrives: I want someone to ask me that and mean it.

Then ask Jung's question. What in me is this touching?

Afterward, write three sentences. What happened. What you felt in your body. What you think the irritation was guarding. Forty-five seconds. Writing turns a felt experience into something your mind learns from. Do it often. Do it when you are calm, using the memory of a time you were irritated. A hundred of these will change you more than a hundred clean days.

The reach that follows

Once you know what the irritation was guarding, you have something honest to bring to another person. That is the Reach.

It might sound like this. "When you asked about my day, I felt annoyed. I think I don't know how to let you in. I want to learn." Short. True. Two-way. Your wife does not need you to be fluent. She needs you to show up.

As a follower of Jesus, I believe God built us to need each other, and I don't think He is embarrassed by our need. Shame taught us to hide it. The irritation kept showing us where to look.

Turning toward the part of you that needs

Next time someone irritates you, pause before you decide what is wrong with them. Get curious. Notice where it lands in your body. Ask what it is touching.

Often you will find a younger version of yourself there. The boy who learned to stop asking. He has waited a long time for someone to turn toward him. You get to go first.

If you want company doing this work, our men's groups at Arizona Family Institute in Mesa practice it together every week. Come as you are. We will sit with you.

Dan Oakes, MEd, LPC, CSAT, is the founder of Arizona Family Institute in Mesa, Arizona. He specializes in attachment-based couples work, betrayal trauma, and recovery from compulsive sexual behavior. To schedule an appointment with Dan or another AFI clinician, visit [scheduling link].