Other-people-are-annoying tropes are all over the place: when your roommate (...spouse, kid, or whoever) leaves dirty underwear on the bathroom floor? Annoying. Your friends’ or partners’ little idiosyncrasies that were endearing at first? Annoying. The sounds of your lunch mate’s chewing, the kids crying, a restaurant roaring with so many voices that you can hardly hear yourself think? Annoying, an-NOY-ing, ANNOYING!

And this is part of the reason why we use mindfulness and slowing down in our Hakomi-informed counseling work: it gives us just that little extra bit of space to turn down left-hemisphere inhibition, sense our bodies, feel our emotions, and hear from those small, quiet voices inside that guide us toward deeper truths about ourselves and how we want to be in the world.