“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now as to your noise episode, here are some suggestions for future use in any episode where irritation is involved. Followed, these suggestions will help you answer the demands put upon you when you feel the need for certain responses. When you are annoyed, if possible state your annoyance to the person involved, reasonably, (underlined) but at the time of the annoyance. When you do not respond in this manner the annoyance builds up and you are then tempted to respond to one incident as if many were involved, because the others were not responded to adequately at the time.

In the particular case for example you should have called your neighbor while you were being annoyed. That would be a healthy and reasonable response. Had this happened in each such case the annoyance would not have continued. Even if it had, you would then be justified in taking more firm steps.

Now. To begin a program of reasonable adequate response, to annoying stimuli, is your best insurance against overreaction and repression.

Always ask yourself “Am I reacting to this present event only, as I should, or am I reacting to this event and five others in the past to which I did not react?” Soon you will find yourself with responses in proportion to present events, and will be free from old habits.

Now these are hardly your habits alone. I am using the present case but it has general implications. Your nervous system is prepared to act when you are annoyed. Left alone and operating naturally, you can trust its spontaneous response. It will be in proportion. It is only when you overload the nervous system by such repressed action that it then begins a cycle of overreaction to what seems to be one event.