Something like this has probably happened to you recently, maybe even today:

• You spilled your coffee while rushing out the door.
• You struggled to change a setting on your phone, only to give up in frustration.
• You got a bug bite, or sunburn, or stubbed your toe.
• You had to stand in a long line or wait in traffic.
• Someone spoke (or chewed gum, or slammed a door) too loudly.
• Someone interrupted or ignored you.

These are not the kind of events that disrupt the course of your life. But they are all annoying, and sometimes bothersome enough that they could set the tone for the rest of your day. Annoying experiences like these have also been dubbed ‘micro-stresses’ or ‘daily hassles’. They usually come your way unexpectedly, cause you some stress, and interrupt your flow. Though they are minor compared with, say, a personal attack, an injury or a significant loss, I’ve seen in my work as a psychologist how often people struggle to tolerate annoying things or underestimate their impact.

It’s quite likely that you’ve been told ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ and ‘focus on the bigger picture’. Despite our best efforts, though, many of us sometimes find it hard to shrug off the lingering emotional effect of an annoying experience. Making it worse, you might judge yourself for not being able to just let it go. Even if a particular stressor seems insignificant on its own, annoying experiences can have a cumulative effect. Like drops filling a bucket, they can eventually spill over until you’re suddenly snapping at someone, or tearing up.

Research suggests that accumulated stressors might take a toll in other ways too. For example, a study in the 1980s found that people who experience more daily hassles report greater fatigue, headaches, and gastrointestinal symptoms. More recently, researchers have shown that increased stress and hassles significantly predicted the consumption of high-fat and high-sugar snack foods, with implications for physical health. And clinical researchers found that people who reported high levels of daily hassles were significantly more likely to develop generalised anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder or panic disorder over a follow-up period of several years.

Annoying experiences are a normal, inevitable part of life. So, whether you’re concerned about their cumulative impact on your wellbeing or just want to reduce the frustration you feel in the moment, there is value in learning to handle annoying things better. This is where evidence-based psychological skills are handy.

In acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), there’s an important distinction between unavoidable pain and avoidable pain. Micro-stressors such as running late, spilling something on your shirt or receiving a curt text message represent the unavoidable pain that comes with being human. Daily hassles happen. But how you choose to respond to those moments determines whether you add to the stress. Skills grounded in ACT – which I’ll draw from in the rest of this Guide – can help you reduce the avoidable pain that often comes with aversive experiences, including common annoyances.

Studies have shown that ACT can be effective in managing various forms of psychological distress, including those stemming from daily hassles. I’ve seen this happen in my own therapy practice. One client, for example, used to become agitated by his neighbour’s dog barking at random hours of the day and night. Despite his attempt to address the problem by talking to his neighbour, the dog wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was his frustration. Over time and with practice, though, he began to approach the barking with a kind of detachment. The dog didn’t stop barking, but what changed was his ability to pause, notice his frustration, and apply coping skills of the sort I’ll be describing here. That made all the difference. With practice, you too can learn to relate to annoyances in a more skilful way, whatever your next ‘barking dog’ might be.

Embrace ‘radical acceptance’

It’s natural to want to fix or undo the annoyances you encounter. But insisting that a frustrating experience shouldn’t have happened doesn’t change that it did happen. What it does do is deepen your stress. It’s like tugging on a locked door: tiring and ineffective. That’s why you need radical acceptance.

When are you extra-sensitive to annoyance?

Although hassles can arise at any time, you might find that certain contexts leave you feeling especially vulnerable to irritation. Perhaps it’s during your morning routine, or when there is an unexpected change of plans, or while you are preparing meals. Some physiological states, such as fatigue, overstimulation or a lack of sleep, can also be precipitants of annoyance.

Becoming aware of your own ‘tender times’ or vulnerability factors can help you anticipate them so that you can respond more gently to annoying things when they pop up. This is why I often invite my therapy clients to get curious about these patterns as they happen. One client, for instance, realised that the middle of the day, when his energy was running low, tended to be his most reactive time. Another client noticed that his tender time was when he arrived home from work, emotionally exhausted after a long day of talking to people in distress.

See if you can recognise the contexts that seem most conducive to frustration for you. This is not about getting rid of frustration or irritability altogether during these times, or trying to control your daily hassles. It’s about entering these situations with an awareness of what makes them challenging – and remembering to practise the skills you’ve learned.

Meeting annoyance with self-compassion

If you want to be less easily rattled by annoyances going forward, practising self-compassion can also help. Self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness in difficult moments, staying present with what you’re feeling, and remembering that struggling is part of being human. It’s like talking to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend who’s having a rough day. People who practise self-compassion tend to be more emotionally steady, bounce back faster, and worry less. The psychologist Mark Leary and his team found that self-compassion acts like a shield, helping people handle little irritations without getting overwhelmed by them.

There are different ways to practise self-compassion, and you can choose the forms that feel right for you. There are longer, more formal exercises like loving-kindness meditations or journaling, for example. There are also brief and practical ways to bring self-compassion into your day; in my podcast, I refer to these practices as self-compassion on-the-go. To practise self-compassion anytime, anywhere – including when you’re dealing with everyday hassles – all you need to do is acknowledge how you feel and check what you need.

Picture this: you’re stuck in a slow-moving line, or you’re cooking dinner and your partner says something that rubs you the wrong way. After you first name what you feel, as I recommended earlier (eg, This is frustrating or That comment really bugs me), you then ask yourself: How can I respond to myself with kindness? You might also ask yourself what you need to hear at that moment, or what a kind friend would say to you. All it takes is a little willingness to be gentle with yourself, even if just for a moment.

If you’re a doer, a striver, or a person who deeply cares about doing things the right way, check out my book Acceptance and Commitment Skills for Perfectionism and High-Achieving Behaviors (2021). It will help you to compassionately and skilfully manage the frustration that arrives when things don’t go as planned, when people behave in ways they shouldn’t, or when you make mistakes despite your best efforts.

Are you someone who feels things intensely, and who sometimes acts too quickly? For you, annoyances might easily escalate into emotional storms. My book Escaping the Emotional Roller Coaster: ACT for the Emotionally Sensitive (2018) teaches evidence-based skills, drawn from acceptance and commitment therapy, to help you deal with overwhelming emotions without getting swept away by them.

To learn more about acceptance and commitment skills, particularly as they apply to anxiety-based struggles, you can read my newsletter, Playing-it-safe.

Reading Paul Gilbert’s book The Compassionate Mind (2009) will help you develop self-compassionate practices, improve your emotional wellbeing, and deepen your understanding of why compassion is essential for self-regulation and resilience in daily life.

If you live in an urban environment and you’d like practical tools to convert daily stress into opportunities for calm, fulfilment and mindful presence, I invite you to read the book Urban Mindfulness: Cultivating Peace, Presence, and Purpose in the Middle of It All (2010) by Jonathan Kaplan.

Finally, if managing annoyances leads you to self-criticism, I encourage you to check out Laura Silberstein-Tirch’s book How to Be Nice to Yourself (2019) for a series of exercises from mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches.