How to Stop Irritation Before It Destroys a Relationship

AVAlexander Volchek

Why do other people irritate us? The answer seems obvious: someone said something, gave us the wrong look, behaved the wrong way, crossed a boundary, failed to listen, or did something unpleasant. We immediately think they are the cause. But what if irritation is not what it appears to be? At that moment, you are seeing your own state and the reaction you have already fallen into, rather than the person themselves. Your system is simply looking for something to latch onto. In this episode, we will examine what may actually be happening when you feel irritated. Why does one person make you feel happy while another provokes anger, anxiety, or rejection? Most importantly, what can you do about it in practice, at the very moment when you have already been swept up in it and cannot stop, when irritation is pouring out of you? We will find the action that allows you to grow and automatically allows your relationships with those people to grow, too.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I would like to start with this: why do other people irritate us? Usually, the closer someone is to you, the stronger the irritation. How can you understand its cause? Psychologists would probably say it has to do with your shadow—what you suppress in yourself and see in others. Or is there something deeper? Perhaps, as usual, you see it from an interesting, unusual angle. What does it mean to see another person without looking through your grievances against them?

AVAlexander Volchek

Fundamentally, people encounter endless irritation toward others: people they know, people they do not know, people they have seen in social media posts or videos. Certain people may provoke anxiety, apathy, anger, envy, or resentment, which develops into irritation. For some reason, others awaken joy or elation. Some make an incredible impression and evoke powerful emotions and states. Recently I saw something in Telegram. There is that unbearable panel showing other people's stories; I think I would pay $100 a month just to get rid of it. With thousands of phone numbers in there, you really want to hide it. I saw that it was a young woman's birthday. I remember her coming to a spiritual session with me perhaps seven years ago. She arrived and sat down, and I felt she was incredibly close to me, as though I knew her so well. At other times, you look at someone and, whatever is happening, wherever you are, however upset you may be, they evoke nothing but negative emotions.

Notice that this has only a limited connection to someone's gender, age, or appearance: whether they are thin or fat, short or tall, nicely or poorly dressed, neat or unkempt. Some very untidy people evoke a pleasant feeling of affection. Others immediately provoke an intensely negative state. So let us look at irritation as a whole range of negative emotions. To explore your question, I think we should consider that range and first ask what causes these different states. Then we can come to the incredibly important question you raised: how can we truly see another person? How can we understand why the irritation arose? Did it arise because this person really is harming you, for example, and you or someone else reacted socially to that? Are they causing problems for the world? Or is the irritation caused solely by some other inner state, unrelated to the person's actual views or position?

It has nothing to do with that. Just look at today's social world; it is easy to see. For example, I make videos for several channels, and so do you. The information varies enormously in presentation, meaning, context, and the details we convey. Other people make videos with exactly the same kind of information: human development, the spiritual world, relationships, truly living by the law of the Universe. At the same time, I have a YouTube channel where you and I make videos about artificial intelligence: how it works, what will happen, programming models, and the details.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

The complete opposite.

AVAlexander Volchek

Absolutely the opposite. Today I recorded a video about the constitution that Anthropic builds into its work. It is one of the leaders in artificial intelligence. Some very important points came up about the foundation of the model. First, how does Anthropic itself view the model? What matters is that Anthropic considers the possibility that AI has consciousness, and they have not decided. The company creating the AI has not decided, and the model itself has not decided whether it has consciousness. Nobody understands whether that consciousness could emerge—or, if it did, what kind of consciousness it would be. They introduce the idea of an entity. That is a concept they explicitly use.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Really? What is the term in English for that?

AVAlexander Volchek

I do not remember.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That is so interesting—

AVAlexander Volchek

I cannot give you the exact word right now. But they explicitly introduce this concept of an entity, and you can see that it is comparable to the concept I discuss on my own channels. I even said so on that channel: comparable. I took the audience into another current of my own perception, because the rest of that video was fairly neutral. So there are different layers of videos, and other people discuss entirely different things. Some show how to kill cats. Others pour out incredible negativity toward other people or say that some population ought to be killed. Some people support those messages about killing cats or a population. That is very important. Others protest so strongly that they cannot sleep. They go home and talk about hating the person on that YouTube channel, or they organize a protest against them. I was remembering something today that I find hurtful.

Today SpaceX offered its shares. Elon Musk is right here nearby. They went public at a huge valuation: $2.2 trillion. That is a very serious figure. It seems all our predictions about valuations are coming true. Yesterday they put up an inflatable statue of him in New York's Times Square. Did you see the post? It had a bare torso, with pimples deliberately emphasized. The pimples on this inflatable figure looked quite realistic. They gave him a sagging chest and a decrepit body. What was the protest against? Sexual violence, in connection with the project where his AI generated pictures. Remember, it could undress you or me, or children, and so on. He ended up facing a great many lawsuits over xAI. This is an important subject. Some will say the whole mechanism is paid for: “It is all bought and paid for.” But some people truly cannot bear it, and they protest like that.

Others react against that protest and cannot understand what is happening. Why continue humiliating a person in that way? Expressing a natural protest based on your understanding of the issue is one thing. But displaying someone's pimples seems to me a complete lack of respect for the person, for human beings in general, for humanity itself. So we have an incredibly broad range of people: some support people who want to destroy others; some spend a whole hour discussing a bee that has arrived and is busy with a flower. Recently my son Igor—my middle son, not my youngest—was putting together a construction kit he had received for his birthday. It was very complicated, so I went online to see how to assemble one part. A man spent an hour putting it together with such incredible tenderness, talking about the little screws and bolts and the lovely lightbulb in the kit. It was so real, just incredible.

I always use Krishnamurti as an example. If you read how he describes nature—

The way Krishnamurti describes nature is an example I often give. I cannot look at nature like that. One of his books opens with a description. He spent a great deal of time here in California, a little south of us. I went there myself; remember I told you?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

To Ojai, right?

We discussed it. He spent a lot of time there. He says, “I went for a walk,” and then spends twenty minutes describing how he watches a squirrel or a deer. I read it and realize I cannot do that. Or I think of, say, Yesenin describing a forest or fields, and realize I cannot do that at all. I do not mean I cannot read it or perceive it while reading. I know I cannot perceive the actual thing in that way.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, but they act as guides into that perception.

AVAlexander Volchek

Absolutely. The more often I give the Krishnamurti example, the more I realize I do not 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 whether I have gotten tired of it. It is a slightly strange feeling. I have lived in this house for three years—more than three now. On the first day, I said, “I will never get tired of this view, and I will never get used to it.” At the same time, it is an ordinary day for me. All of that exists simultaneously. What does that mean? Every day, this view is exactly what it is. The energy here in this valley is what it is. It is energy, not a view. I always say that the energy you experience from this house will differ from the energy in the next house. Looking out over this valley from there, it will be a little different. It is a whole combination. So we have this broad range of human perception.

Where does that perception of nature come from? Where does this feeling of the valley come from? What is it that lets you look at it and feel it? You like this valley. It has made an impression on you the ten or so times you have seen it, and today you asked about it again. We are recording on Friday; it is already five thirty in the afternoon. You have clearly had a busy day.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

A very busy one.

AVAlexander Volchek

Very busy, with a lot happening. I have been going nonstop since eight this morning. I taught classes and recorded a bunch of videos. I think I spent eight hours, or seven, on camera. Then you arrive, and suddenly this particular space comes to you. Why? That is a big question. Is it the hundreds of oaks you see, the redwoods, or Silicon Valley down below? That last one seems unlikely. You live across on the other side, where those hills are visible, a little to the left, right? Is it because you saw these houses or met me? Or are you looking out from the space of this house and being in its energy? Perhaps you and I have entered a certain energetic space, felt a particular state within it, and then, from that state, you say, “What a view!”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

For some reason, I enter the same state here every time.

AVAlexander Volchek

That is very interesting: you entered a particular state and then needed some way to explain it. Your system explains: “Coffee. I drank too much coffee,” or “I drank too much tea,” or “You are a strange person; I do not like you, and you smell.” Or the people here are not very nice; too many things are flying around and bothering you; some noise is disturbing you. We were not thinking about noise, although cars are driving somewhere down below and the sound echoes. Birds can irritate you, too—easily. Or you enter a state, and your psychophysical system, your body, psyche, and personality automatically say, “What can we latch onto? Let us latch onto this view.” After all, it is not a particularly common view from a house. Although I could point out that the San Francisco metropolitan area, or whatever you call it, has more than ten million residents.

I think San Francisco is incredibly rich in views. If you go into the city itself, it is just—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

You really do feel like you are floating.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, I think every fifth house has a view. There are many houses in the hills here, too. That is why the town is called Los Altos Hills. There seem to be plenty of views, yet there really are not many like this one. I know someone who has visited all kinds of homes here, including that of the owner of NVIDIA, a tech executive—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That person said, by the way—

AVAlexander Volchek

Perhaps.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

He said it was one of the best views.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. As I remember it, he said it was the best view he had seen. Different people visit, ordinary people as well. Why does that feeling arise in someone? We can suggest explanations, but is it really the view? We have seen plenty of views in different places all over the world. Notice something important: while I was describing this view, praising it or whatever, I gave an example of you sitting here in a particular state and saying that a certain person irritated you. It was an unobtrusive example, but I deliberately slipped it in to draw attention to the possibility that someone irritates you because you have entered a particular state. You can also like someone because of the state you have entered. You might think you like the person because the place is nice and the view is good, when it is because of your state. The question is: why did you enter that state?

Was it because of the day you had or the people you met? I understand the picture you are describing, but you have visited us on all kinds of days. You have come—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

And I enter the same state every time.

AVAlexander Volchek

Exactly! You have come after a really busy working day, tired or not tired, and when you were feeling very good. You came the day after giving birth, when you had just been discharged—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Still slightly under the anesthetic.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, slightly under the anesthetic. You came straight from the maternity hospital because your husband needed to teach a class.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

After a C-section.

AVAlexander Volchek

From Stanford to Izmaylovo, with an antenna sticking out of Stanford, right?

You have come on weekends, with your children, for birthdays, and just to spend time together. Sometimes we spent six or eight hours together with plenty of free time, with guests or without them, in hot or cold weather, in rain or without rain, in all kinds of states. I give these examples because, when you examine irritation, you need to understand the whole range of things that may affect it. Even what is happening in the world at that moment may not affect it. Take the financial and investment markets over the last few days, just from a business and economic perspective. Every day they say the war between America and Iran is over, then it has started again, then it is over. Then there is oil, policy toward China, relations with Europe. It is a madhouse. In my own business and investment portfolio, I see absolutely wild swings. I take it very calmly. At the same time, I observe those energies themselves and how people react to them.

The day before yesterday, I was driving and told my wife, “Things are not looking good again. Relations between Iran and the U.S. are deteriorating again.” I saw no reaction from her. What does that mean? That energy means nothing to her. But here is the interesting part: it means nothing to her psychophysically, as a personality, yet does her system respond to it or not? What is happening is a complex energy—complex, very complex. It involves religion and a great many other things. It is not a question of the people making decisions; it concerns a very broad network of connections in the world. Today I was reading Anthropic's constitution. At the same time, SpaceX will go public, the war is continuing, and, even if you look only at the Russian-speaking world, there is what is happening in Russia's economy. Then you hear what people say about the war between Russia and Ukraine. You look at all this and realize the sheer volume—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

The world seems to have accelerated to some extreme.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, and meanwhile we are sitting here. For me, for example, it is an ordinary day of observing ordinary states. You always need to remember something emphasized repeatedly in the book Two Lives: this is an ordinary day for you. Please attend to your own work and to how you respond to your children, wife, husband, and everyone else. Attend to your ordinary, real state; remember it. But this range of events influences a person's state and lived experience. Tanya, you and I live in a world where vast numbers of people talk about the influence of planets: the full moon, the new moon—

UPUnidentified participant

All this lunar—

AVAlexander Volchek

Every day.

UPUnidentified participant

It is almost a full moon every day now—

AVAlexander Volchek

Madness. Rubbish.

It is rubbish. As though a full moon means everyone should do exactly the same thing. How can people across the world do the same thing when some believe someone should be killed and others think they should produce honey? I mean that people have completely different sources of energy at that moment. Those are the sources we need to look at. Why does one person devote an enormous amount of time to honey and starting an apiary while another works on destroying whole peoples? What impulse is acting in these people? Then we can come to understand. Only then can we begin to understand the question you raised at the start: what is irritation in its essence? What is irritation in its very essence? You might say, “Sasha, okay, but the approach you are talking about is out of reach. How could I even begin to approach it or find enough energy every time I am irritated with my husband, an employee, my boss, a partner, a saleswoman, a teacher, a salesman, or someone I see in the next car?

“All kinds of things arise across that range. How can I even think about what you are describing?” But this direction is what will allow every person to understand and become aware over the coming years and decades. You still have decades of life ahead of you, and some part of your basic makeup and mind does not even grasp what lies ahead. You do not live that awareness. Even if you wanted to, everything and everyone around you would do all they could to prevent you from living and feeling it. They would invent anything: “Now Tanya needs to take care of her chickens.” You do have chickens, right?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes, I do.

AVAlexander Volchek

Listen, I keep seeing—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That is the main complaint.

AVAlexander Volchek

Your chickens, and I tell Polina, “You know, I really would like chickens and a second dog.” When Polina hears me say that—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Polina suggested that you and I should live together.

AVAlexander Volchek

When she hears it, she is like, “I—”

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

We could switch: she goes to Steve, and I go to you.

AVAlexander Volchek

We do a lot of negotiating. We do a lot of negotiating. You know what I say? “Listen, they would be my chickens.” “Well, if you want them, go ahead and get them.” And she came in looking offended. Your chickens are incredibly sweet. Yes, incredibly sweet chickens. My mother will watch this and think, “Good Lord, Sasha, chickens?” But I have decided that a second or third dog, or chickens, would require other people's help. Perhaps I will work that out here at some point, or move toward my idea. You could call it a dream, although I do not have dreams; still, the word exists. I could start organizing larger spaces and have hundreds of hectares of land—or hectares, or houses. There, perhaps I could put more of this into practice than here and have more opportunities, probably with other people's help, because it is difficult to do. So, different energies arise in our lived experience. Why does one person become involved and another not? Why did my wife not respond to that energy, for example, when someone else might have reacted to it very painfully?

When I said the war had continued—let me tell you what happened. I said, “The war has continued.” For some reason, I decided to tell my wife. I said, “Damn.” Then I wondered why I had reacted that way at all. In the evening, I came home and read the internet. As always with the current U.S. government, it was a roller coaster. They wrote, “We have reached an agreement. Wonderful, everything is fine with the government.” I thought, “Something is not…” I could see the energies; it was entirely the wrong energy. I woke up the next morning and everything had gone wrong. It had escalated and become worse, and today it is much worse. Perhaps by the time this video comes out they will be saying everything is fine again, but nothing there will be fine.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Sasha, can anyone trace that impulse, or—

AVAlexander Volchek

Now, look—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

…does it require a certain amount of energy?

AVAlexander Volchek

When we talk about perception, there is this vast area, but there is also a local level: suddenly, irritation arises. There is one thing a person can do in that irritation, Tanya, that will save them immediately. You ask whether it is available to everyone. Everyone can ask themselves a question and stay with it. Write it on your hand; get it tattooed there, if you like. Although I see that this does not actually help people. Still, if someone works at it, makes an effort, and wants to understand—I will explain in a moment what motive they should approach it from—there is something they can do. They can recognize that there are causes they have no access to. You can realize that your irritation may have other causes and allow for the possibility that the cause is not what you decided it was. At the beginning, you asked a very good question: “How can we truly see another person?” The point is not how to see them truly. The point is to recognize immediately that you are mistaken. The moment you allow that possibility, an incredible amount of energy—a tremendous amount—enters that space.

In that space, you say, “Oh!” You begin to look at the person entirely differently—entirely differently. There is a second extraordinary step: what is your motive for wanting to understand this irritation? Do you want something for yourself, some personal gain? What is your motive—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

To prove I was right.

AVAlexander Volchek

To prove you were right, and so on. What is your motive even for wanting to understand irritation? When we began recording this video and you told me the topic, which I had not known beforehand, my first thought was that it was for people who really want to work on themselves, fundamentally, to understand their own irritation. Yet you can want to understand it for your own sake. What if you want to do it for the other person's sake? Not to make them good, embellish them, or even avoid thinking badly of them, but to see them as they truly are. The most important thing there is—extraordinarily important—is to see another person as they truly are. Today I described an incident in my private spiritual-development group, Life. The day before yesterday, I was driving back from a restaurant in Santa Barbara in the evening, with the children. The car was full, and everyone started yelling. Iveta was yelling because she was taking selfies and people were interfering. She was yelling at Igor because he was teasing and mocking her.

Igor was teasing Iveta. Damian was the only one who kept quiet, by the way. Polina was yelling at Igor for teasing Iveta. I suddenly turned and said, while driving, “Once again, each of you is thinking only about yourself.” I pressed the brake sharply. I was on the highway that goes through Santa Barbara; I do not know how familiar you are with it. We had just left the restaurant and I was heading back to the hotel. I braked sharply, and the system activated an emergency stop, making the braking ten or twenty times more powerful than the slowdown I had intended. The wheels locked, and it was an extremely abrupt stop—catastrophically abrupt. You do not usually brake like that; I mean, I do not. Everyone suddenly became alert. I told them, “The one thing a person should do in life is look at other people and think about the state they are in. Once again, each of you is thinking only about yourself.

“I am driving, and I have to watch the road.” Not to mention that I can get tired while driving, and all the rest. I do have a certain priority here, because I have taken responsibility for everyone else. They cannot sit behind me throwing things at me. Yesterday Damian was in the third row throwing things because he did not like something.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Children are the best spiritual teachers.

AVAlexander Volchek

He was throwing things. Now Damian, my five-year-old son, said, “I was not doing that just now.” I told him, “You are the only one who was not.” I spoke quite sharply, but this is the essential point. It is the only thing that can save the situation. It is the only thing that can save the situation. Could those people have irritated me at that moment? Of course. I was driving; you start sweating and worrying about everything that is happening. But at the same time, I remembered—or tried to remember. I am very glad that, despite speaking sharply because I was driving and so on, I wanted to get this thought across to my family, in this case my children: we all have to remember other people. That includes me. That includes me. Every time, I must remember them, too. When I am driving, I am not alone; other people are there, they get tired, and they have their own moods. My daughter became worked up because I began lecturing her.

She said, “But I am emotional. I am allowed to be emotional.” I said, “I do not want to take away your emotional nature. I am not against it.

“I do not want to take that away. I am not against your emotions or who you are, but you must remember other people. Being emotional does not save you from that. Neither hormone levels nor a person's state changes the obligation to remember others.” The same applies to me. Being the driver is one thing, but I must remember other people, too. That immediately saves the situation. You transform the energy right then; even if you are agitated, you neutralize it immediately. The problem between you and the other people disappears. We drove on, and everyone sank into that upset state, as though the day had been spoiled. But we arrived, the car was taken away, and we began walking. I do not even remember anyone staying in that state; everyone seemed to move quite quickly into a reasonably good one. Why? Because, personally, I had no agenda and no grievances against anyone. Honestly, what grievances could I have about people fooling around and making a commotion?

I could easily have become just as distracted myself, talking about my own subject, playing around, or shouting, “Hey, Google!” Yesterday they were also training the new Gemini system in the car, all yelling at the same time. When I am training it, I am fine with it. When someone else does it, I become irritated because they are intruding into my space. Learning to be in that space is a tremendous opportunity and a tremendous miracle.