How to Stop Irritation Before It Destroys a Relationship

In this conversation with Tatyana Tsvetkova, I look at what may really lie behind irritation, anger, resentment, anxiety and grievances against people — against those close to us, children, a partner, parents, colleagues and the people around us.

Why might irritation not be what it seems at first glance? How do you keep from lashing out in the moment? And what first practical step helps stop the reaction before it destroys your connection with the person?

Why some people bring us joy and others anger and irritation

Why do other people irritate us? The answer seems obvious: the person said something, gave us the wrong look, behaved the wrong way, crossed a boundary, didn’t listen, did something unpleasant. And we immediately think: the cause is them. But what if irritation is not what it seems at first glance?

At that moment you are seeing not the person but your own state, the reaction you have already fallen into, and your system is simply looking for something to latch onto.

We will look at what may really be happening inside irritation. Why does one person bring you joy and another anger, anxiety or rejection? And most importantly — what to do about it in practice at the very moment when you have already been swept away and can’t stop, when irritation is simply spilling out of you. There is an action that scales you up — and, automatically, your relationships with these people. We will find this action together.

– I’d like to start with this topic: why do other people irritate us? And usually, the closer the person, the stronger the irritation. How can you understand the cause of this irritation? Psychologists would probably say it has to do with the shadow — with what you suppress in yourself and see in others. Or is there something deeper to it? As usual, you probably see it from some interesting, unusual angle. What does it mean to see another person not through your grievances?

– Fundamentally, a person faces endless irritation toward other people: people they know, people they don’t know, people they saw on social media, in some videos. Toward certain people they may feel anxiety, apathy, anger, envy, resentment, and it forms into irritation. Toward others, for some reason, a sense of joy and elation awakens. Some people evoke incredible impressions, emotions, a certain state.

Recently I saw something in my Telegram — there is this unbearable panel that shows other people’s stories. I think I would pay a hundred dollars a month just not to have that panel: with thousands of phone numbers in there, you want to hide it. And I saw that it was a young woman’s birthday. I remember this young woman coming to me for a spiritual session, maybe seven years ago. She came, sat down, and I had the feeling that this was someone extremely close to me, someone I knew incredibly well. And sometimes you look at a person, and whatever is happening, wherever it is, however upset you may be, they evoke purely negative emotions in you.

If we pay attention, this is only loosely connected with a person’s gender, age or appearance: whether they are thin or fat, short or tall, nicely or poorly dressed, neat or untidy. There are very untidy people who evoke a pleasant feeling of tenderness. And there are people who immediately evoke an intensely negative state.

So under irritation, let’s consider a whole block of negative emotions that happen to a person. To open up this question, I think we first need to look at what causes these various states. And second, come to the incredibly important question you raised: how do you look at a person for real? How do you even understand why this irritation arose? Did it arise because this person really is causing harm — to you, for example — and you got socially involved because of it, or someone else did? Are they creating problems, bringing problems into the world? Or is this irritation caused solely by some other, inner state, while this person’s real views and real position have no significance at all?

It’s enough to look at today’s social world — it’s very easy to see. For example, I make videos for several channels, and so do you. The information there is completely different in style of presentation, meanings, context and the details conveyed. And there are other people who make exactly the same kind of information: they talk about human development, the spiritual world, relationships, truly living the law of the Universe. And at the same time I have a YouTube channel where you and I make videos about artificial intelligence together: how it works, what will happen, what programming models there are, the details. Completely opposite information.

Today I recorded a video about the constitution that Anthropic lays down — one of the leaders in artificial intelligence. Some very important things came up there: what foundation is laid into the model and, first of all, how Anthropic itself perceives the model. What matters is that Anthropic allows that artificial intelligence potentially has consciousness, and they haven’t decided. Neither Anthropic, as the company creating the artificial intelligence, nor the model itself has decided whether it has consciousness. No one understands whether this consciousness can arise. And even if it does arise, what kind of consciousness is it?

And they explicitly introduce the concept of an entity there. You can see that this entity is comparable to the concept of the entity I talk about on my channels. I even said so in that video: comparable. That way I moved the audience I was telling all this to into another current of my own perception, because overall I was telling the story in that video quite neutrally.

Why people react differently to the same thing

There are different layers of videos, and there are people who talk about something entirely different. There are people who show how to kill cats. There are people who pour incredible negativity onto other people or say that some population needs to be killed. And there are people who support it when they are told that cats and some population need to be killed. This is very important. And there are people whose protest is such that they simply can’t sleep with it. They come home and talk about how they hate the person on that YouTube channel, or they go against him and stage a protest.

I was just remembering it today — I think it’s such a hurtful story. Today SpaceX — the company of Elon Musk, who is right here nearby — went public at a very large valuation: 2.2 trillion dollars, a very serious valuation. It seems to me all our predictions about valuations are only coming true. And yesterday in New York they put up an inflatable statue of him in Times Square, the central square. Did you see the post? A bare torso with the pimples highlighted — quite realistic ones. They gave him a sagging chest, a decrepit body. And this is a protest — against what? Against sexual violence within the project where his artificial intelligence, remember, generated pictures: it could undress, for example, you or me, and children. In fact, because of xAI he ended up in a great many lawsuits.

This topic is very important. On the one hand, someone will say: it’s all bought, obviously there is a paid-for mechanism. But there are people who just can’t live with it, and it provokes this kind of protest in them. And there are people in whom this same reaction provokes the opposite protest, and they don’t understand what is going on: why are you humiliating a person further in this form? It’s one thing to express a natural protest based on understanding the whole issue. But when you display a person’s pimples, it seems to me that is total disrespect for the person themselves, for the human being in general, for humanity in general.

The range of human perception

So it turns out that you and I have a whole, incredibly wide range of people. There are people who support those who want to destroy other people. And there are people who discuss how a bee flew in and spent a whole hour on a flower.

Recently my middle son Igor was putting together a construction kit he had been given for his birthday. The kit was very complicated, and I looked up online how to assemble one part. There, a man spent a whole hour putting it together with such incredible tenderness: he talked about the little screws and bolts, about the lovely little light bulb in the kit. And it was so real — simply incredible.

I always use Krishnamurti as an example — the way he describes nature. This is my well-known case: I can’t look at nature like that. He has a book that opens with such a description. By the way, he spent a lot of time here in California, a little south of us, in Ojai. I went there myself, remember, I told you, and we discussed it. He writes: “I went out for a walk” — and for twenty minutes describes how he watches a squirrel or a deer. I read it and realize I can’t do that. Or I think of Yesenin describing a forest or fields, and I realize I can’t do that at all. The point isn’t that I can’t read it or don’t perceive it when I read. I know that I can’t perceive nature itself that way.

– But they are like guides into that perception.

– Absolutely. And the more I give the Krishnamurti example, the more I realize that I don’t experience nature that way, even though I experience and feel it quite well and quite broadly. Today you asked: “Have you gotten used to this view?” People often ask, by the way, whether I’ve gotten tired of it. It’s a slightly strange feeling. I have lived in this house for more than three years now. And I remember saying on the first day: “I will never get tired of this view, and I will never get used to it.” And at the same time, for me this view is simply an ordinary day. It’s all at the same time.

What does that mean? It means that for me this view is, every day, exactly what it is. The energy here, in this valley, is what it is. It’s energy, not a view. I always say that the energy from this house will differ from the energy of the house next door. If you look at this valley from there, it will be a little different. So it’s a whole combination. And we have this wide range of how a person perceives everything.

What influences our state

Where does this perception of nature come from? Where does this feeling of the valley come from? What is it, when you look at this valley and feel it? You like this valley; it made an impression on you when you saw it — some ten times already. And today you asked about it again. Imagine: we’re filming on a Friday, it’s already half past five in the evening, you’ve clearly had a busy day — a great deal has happened.

And I’ve been going nonstop since eight in the morning: today I taught classes and recorded a pile of videos — I think I was filming all day, seven or eight hours. And then you come here, and for some reason — boom — exactly this space arrives. So, the question: why did this space come to you? It’s a big question. Because of the hundreds of oaks you see, the redwoods, or because Silicon Valley is down below — which is unlikely? After all, you live right on the other side, where the hills are visible, a little to the left. Or because you saw these houses or met me? Or are you simply looking out from the space of this house and being in this energy? Or did you and I enter a certain space of energy, and from it you felt a certain state, fell into it — and, having fallen into that state, you say: “What a view!”

– For some reason I fall into the same state here every time.

– That’s a very interesting aspect: you fell into a certain state, and then you needed to explain that state somehow. And your organism explains it. It says: “Coffee. I drank too much coffee,” or “I drank too much tea.” Or: “You’re a strange sort of person, I don’t like you, and you smell.” Or some people here aren’t very nice, or something is flying around a lot and bothering you, some noise is bothering you. You and I didn’t think about the noise, although actually cars are driving somewhere down below, and there’s an echo from it. Even birds can irritate you — easily, by the way.

You fell into a certain state, and from that state your psychophysical system — your body, your psyche, your personality — automatically says: “Right, what can we latch onto? Let’s latch onto this view.”

Because this view is, after all, not that common for a view from a house. Although I can say that the San Francisco metropolitan area has more than ten million residents, and I think San Francisco is incredibly rich in views. If you go into San Francisco itself, I think every fifth house there has a view. And here, too, there are a lot of houses on hills — that’s why the town is called Los Altos Hills. There seem to be many views here, yet at the same time there really aren’t many views like this one. I even know a person who has been in all kinds of houses here, including at the home of the owner of NVIDIA.

– By the way, he said this was one of the best views.

– Yes, he actually said it was the best view he had seen. Even if we talk about an ordinary, simple person — all kinds of people come here. Why does a person get this feeling? We can suggest something, but is it really the view or not? You and I have seen plenty of views — everywhere, in different places, all over the world.

Pay attention, this is very important: when I was describing the view here, in praise or however, I gave you an example: that you could sit here and, being in a certain state, say that a certain person irritates you. It was an unremarkable example, but I deliberately built it in to draw attention to this:

And you might think you liked the person because the place is nice, the view is good, but you liked them because you fell into a certain state. Now the question: why did you fall into this state? Because you had that kind of day, met those kinds of people? I understand that you’re painting a picture right now, but you have come to us on different days.

– And every time I fall into the same state.

– Exactly! You came after a super busy working day — tired and not tired. You came when you were in a very good state. You came the day after giving birth — you were discharged and, still slightly under anesthesia, came to us straight from the maternity hospital because your husband had to teach a class. You came on weekends, with your children, for birthdays; sometimes we spent six or eight hours together and were very free; when there were guests and when there weren’t; in heat and in cold, in rain and without rain — in all kinds of states.

I bring up these things in order to understand: when a person examines irritation, they need to understand that there is a whole spectrum of things that can influence it. Even what is happening in the world right now can influence it. For example, let’s look at the financial and investment market over the last few days — purely at the business, economic model. What is going on, when every day they say: the war between America and Iran is over, the war has started, the war is over! Then there’s oil, all the policy toward China, relations with Europe — it’s simply some kind of madhouse. I personally see absolutely crazy swings in my investment portfolio. I treat it very calmly. And in parallel I watch these energies in general and see how people react to them.

The day before yesterday I was driving and said to my wife: “The situation isn’t very good again; relations between Iran and the U.S. are turning bad again.” And I see that she doesn’t react at all. What does that mean? For her this energy has no significance. But here’s an interesting aspect: it has no significance for her psychophysically, as a personality — but does her system react to it? This energy that is happening is complex, very complex. It concerns religion and a great many other things. This isn’t a question of the people who make decisions, but of a very broad web of interconnections of everything happening in the world.

Today I was reading about Anthropic’s constitution; at the same time SpaceX is going public; at the same time this war is continuing. At the same time, if you take even just the Russian-speaking world, you look at what’s happening in Russia in terms of the economy, at what people say about the war now going on between Russia and Ukraine. You look at all these things and realize what a volume it is…

– The world has accelerated to some kind of limit.

– Yes. And at the same time, here we are, sitting together. For me, for example, this is an ordinary day of observing ordinary states.

A person should always remember what is written about so much in the book “Two Lives”: for you this is an ordinary day. Please attend to your own work and to how you react to your children, your wife, your husband and everyone else. Attend to your ordinary, real state; remember it.

But this whole range of arising events is an influence on a person’s state, on how they live through things. You and I, Tanya, live in a world where a huge number of people talk about the influence of the planets: full moon, new moon — every day. Madness, garbage. Just garbage.

It’s as if, since it’s a full moon, everyone should do one and the same action. How can people in the world do one and the same action if at the same time there are people who believe someone needs to be killed, while someone else believes honey needs to be produced? What I’m getting at is that at this moment people have completely different sources from which their energy is formed. It’s these sources that need to be looked at. Why does someone devote an incredible amount of time to working with honey and starting an apiary, while someone else is busy destroying whole peoples? Why does that happen? What impulse is acting in these people? Only then can you come to understanding — get to the bottom, fundamentally, of the question you raised at the very beginning: what is irritation in its essence?

You might say: “Sasha, okay, but what you’re talking about is out of reach. How do I even approach it so that I have enough energy every time I’m irritated — with my husband, a coworker, my boss, a partner, a saleswoman, a teacher, a salesman, a person I saw in the next car? All kinds of things arise across this spectrum. How can I even think about what you’re saying now?”

But the thing is, this direction is what will allow every person to understand and become aware of this over the coming years and decades. And you still have decades of life ahead, and not even part of your foundation and your mind perceives what lies ahead of you — you simply don’t live it. And even if you wanted to live it, everything around you and all the people around you will do everything so that you don’t live it, don’t feel it. They’ll come up with anything at all, they’ll say: “Right now Tanya needs to take care of the chickens.” You do have chickens, after all.

I keep seeing your chickens and saying to Polina: “You know, I really would like chickens and a second dog.” Your chickens are just incredibly sweet. My mother will watch this and think: “Good Lord, Sasha, what chickens?”

But I’ve decided for myself that a second or third dog, or chickens, would still need other people’s help. Maybe I’ll sort this out here at some point. Or maybe I’ll still move toward my idea — you could call it a dream, by the way, although I don’t have dreams, but the word exists — move toward organizing large spaces, and I’ll have hundreds of hectares of land, or hectares, or houses. There, perhaps, more of this will be realized than here, and there will be more opportunities, because there, probably, there will also be other people’s help. Because it’s hard to do.

So: different energies arising in the way we live. Why does one person get involved and another doesn’t? Why, for example, did my wife not get involved with that energy, while someone else, can you imagine, might have reacted to it very painfully?

You know how it was? I said: “The war has continued.” And for some reason I decided to say it to my wife. I say: “Damn.” And I think: why did I even react like that, imagine? In the evening I come back, read the internet — as always, the subject of the current U.S. government: a roller coaster. They write: “We have reached an agreement. Wonderful, everything is fine.” I’m like: “Something’s off.” I see the energies — it’s not the right energy at all. I wake up in the morning, and there it is — it’s all gone to pieces: everything has escalated and got even worse. And today the situation is much worse. Perhaps by the time this video comes out, everything there will be fine again, but nothing there will be fine.

A practical step in working with irritation: what helps transform it

– I wonder, Sasha, can everyone trace this impulse, or does it still take a certain energy?

– Look. There is a big layer, when you and I talk about perception, about this enormous zone, and there is a local layer, when — boom — irritation has arisen. There is one single thing a person can do in irritation, Tanya, and it will save them immediately. You ask: “Is it available to everyone?” Everyone can ask themselves a question, hold out, write it on their hand, get a tattoo of it. But I see that this doesn’t actually help people.

But if a person works at it, makes an effort, labors and wants to sort it out — I’ll explain in a moment from what impulse to sort it out — here is what they can do. They can see that there are causes that are not available to them. You understand that irritation may have other causes, and you allow for yourself that the cause is not what you defined it to be. At the very beginning you asked a very good question: “How do you truly see a person?” The point isn’t how to truly see them.

And in that space you say to yourself: “Oh!” — and you begin to look at the person completely differently. And the second incredible action: from what motive do you want to sort out this irritation? Do you want to sort it out so as to gain something for yourself? From what motive?

– To prove that I was right.

– To prove that you were right, and so on. From what motive do you even want to sort out irritation? When we started filming this video, you named this topic for me — I didn’t know it in advance. And at first I thought it was a topic for people who fundamentally really want to work on themselves, to sort out their own irritation. But you can want to deal with irritation for your own sake. So if you want to deal with irritation not for your own sake but for the sake of another person — not to make them good, not to embellish them, and not even so as not to think badly of them, but in order to see the person for real…

The most important thing, the most incredibly important thing there is, is to see a person for real.

Today I told a case in the Life group — I have a closed group on spiritual development. Imagine: the day before yesterday I was driving back in the evening with the children from a restaurant in Santa Barbara, a full car, and everyone starts yelling. Iveta is yelling because she’s taking a selfie and people are getting in her way. She’s yelling at Igor because he’s teasing her and mocking her. Igor, meanwhile, is mocking Iveta. Damian, by the way, was the only one who kept quiet. Polina is yelling at Igor for mocking Iveta.

And at that moment — I’m driving — I turn around sharply and say: “And again each of you is thinking only about yourself.” And I hit the brake hard. I’m driving on the highway that runs right through Santa Barbara — I’ve just left the restaurant and am heading back to the hotel. I brake sharply, and the emergency braking system kicks in: the braking turns out to be ten or twenty times more powerful than I meant to slow down. The wheels lock, the braking is just catastrophically abrupt — I don’t usually brake like that. And everyone — boom — snapped to attention.

A person’s main task

And I tell everyone: “The only thing a person should do in life is look at another person and think about what state they are in. And again each of you is thinking about yourself. And I’m driving right now, and I have to watch the road.”

Not to mention that at the wheel I can get tired, and a whole lot else. I have a certain advantage, because I took responsibility for all the other people. They can’t sit in the back and throw things at me. Yesterday Damian was sitting in the third row throwing some stuff because he didn’t like something.

And Damian — he’s my son, he’s five — says: “I wasn’t doing that just now.” I say: “You’re the only one who wasn’t doing that just now.” I spoke to them quite sharply, but that is the core point. It’s the only thing that can save the situation. Could these people irritate me at that moment? Of course they could. I’m at the wheel, after all: you start sweating, you worry about everything that’s happening. But I remembered — at the same time I tried to remember.

I’m very glad that, even though I spoke sharply because I was driving, I want to get this thought across to my family — in this case, to my children: we all have to remember other people. Me included. I, too, have to remember them every time: when I’m at the wheel, I’m still not alone, there are other people, they get tired too, they have their own moods too. Just as at that moment my daughter got worked up because I started lecturing her.

She said: “But I’m emotional, I’m allowed to be emotional.” I said: “I don’t want to take away your emotionality. I’m not against your emotionality, against who you are, but you have to remember other people. Emotionality is not your salvation.” No hormonal background, no state of a person is a salvation — a person is obliged to remember. Just like me: that I’m at the wheel is fine, but at the same time I’m obliged to remember other people.

We drove on, and everyone fell into that upset — what’s it called, the day didn’t work out. But we arrived, the car was taken, we’re already walking — and I don’t even remember anyone staying in that state. Everyone transformed fairly quickly into a pretty good state. And why? Because, essentially, I personally had no agenda, I had no grievances against anyone. I’ll tell you honestly: what grievances could I have against this mischief and commotion of people?

I could just as easily have gotten distracted by my own subject, talking, playing at something of my own, or shouting: “Hey, Google!” Yesterday they were also training this new Gemini system in the car and yelling at the same time. When I’m training it, I’m okay, but when someone else does it, it starts to irritate me, because they are intruding into my space.

And learning to be in that space is the great opportunity and the great miracle.

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