Why Do Others Annoy Us?

And what “too much” might really mean

May 14, 2025

Modern Virtue with Dr. Selda Koydemir is a fully reader-supported publication on emotional wellbeing, relationships, and mental health – a blend of psychological research and my therapeutic work. If you find value in this work, consider liking or sharing this post. You can also support it by becoming a paid subscriber and get access to exclusive posts.

Last week, sitting on a train in London, I caught myself doing something I frequently do: people-watching. It’s an occupational hazard. I found myself observing a familiar, almost clichéd, scene. Nearly every passenger was glued to their phone.

I don’t know what they were doing. Maybe replying to a work email, watching a video on core strength, messaging a sibling, or scrolling Instagram to see what their favourite celebrity had for dinner.

On the surface, harmless enough. No one was being loud or rude. Still, I felt annoyed. Not at anyone in particular; just a frustration at the whole scene.

But why should it bother me what strangers are doing on the train, especially when no one’s causing trouble?

My frustration wasn’t really about them. It reflected something psychoanalysts have long discussed: when we’re disturbed by other people’s behaviour—especially when it feels “too much”—it often reveals something about our own fears, conflicts, and desires. You might be familiar with the famous Carl Jung quote: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” In other words, the things that get under our skin say a lot about us—sometimes even more than the people we’re annoyed by.

I realised my annoyance came from my own unspoken rules and fears. That kind of mindless scrolling felt like a waste of life. It always triggers something in me because it reminds me what I don’t want. Or even a part of myself I don’t particularly like—the part that could fall into distraction if I let it. I didn’t want to be like those people, as if there’s something inherently “bad” about it. I preferred to imagine myself as the one reading a book, observing others, or gazing out the window—choices that felt more present, more disciplined, maybe even more “intellectual.” In hindsight, I can see how that preference carried a hint of self-righteousness, a belief that my way of being was not just different, but better.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised how much of that reaction was built on assumptions, not facts. The line between “just enough” and “too much” is rarely objective. What I perceive as “too much” might be someone else’s normal. It’s shaped by personality, upbringing, culture, and personal values. We all carry our rules about what’s normal, appropriate, or acceptable, and what crosses the line. We react not only to what people do or say, but also to how they do it, how often, and in what quantity.

Take someone who criticises others for spending too much. Their irritation might not be about consumerism itself, but about their uneasy relationship with money, status, or indulgence. Or the protestor who seems “too angry” might reflect our discomfort with speaking up or being disliked.

I know plenty of parents who get visibly irritated when they see other people’s kids glued to screens—and these are families they don’t even know. Why should they be bothered? Are they genuinely concerned about that child’s wellbeing? I doubt it. More likely, their irritation is saying something about their own fears. Maybe seeing another parent “give in” to screens stirs up their own anxieties about setting limits, or about how hard it can be to say no in a world built to overwhelm both children and adults. It might be uncomfortable to witness behaviour that mirrors a choice they secretly make too, like handing over a tablet for the sake of a quiet meal. And irritation becomes a way of distancing themselves from their own compromises. Or perhaps it’s about preserving a sense of moral superiority: “I would never let my child do that” becomes a reassuring story about being a better, more disciplined, more attentive parent. And strange as it sounds, there might even be envy in it. Envy of the ease, the permission those other parents give themselves to relax the rules.

As writer Hermann Hesse put it: “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part yourself. What isn’t part ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

And sometimes, it’s not even about disapproval, it’s about fascination. We often fixate on people we label as “too much” because part of us is drawn to what they’re doing. The person who rants about influencers might secretly long for the freedom to be seen. The one who judges someone’s indulgence might wish they could let go in the same way. Someone who mocks people for being overly attached to their partners might be uneasy with their own need for closeness. The traits we criticise as “too much” in others might be the very ones we’ve denied or disowned in ourselves.

So when we find ourselves saying “that’s too much” or “you’re being too much”—whether it’s about someone’s ambition, grief, love, anger, attention-seeking, or something else—it’s worth asking, “Why do I care? What is this behaviour stirring up in me?” It might reflect a desire we don’t fully own, a fear we avoid, a conflict we haven’t resolved, or simply a value we hold close.

I’m sure you or someone you know has been called too much in some sense. Maybe you’ve called someone that. I’ve certainly been told I’m too opinionated, too stubborn. I remember wearing those labels like badges for a while when I was young. It took years to realise those labels revealed more about what made other people uneasy than about what was inherently wrong with me.

There’s no clear rulebook. How much ambition is acceptable? How much self-expression is too much? How much grief or cheerfulness is too much? How many selfies a week is acceptable? These aren’t measurable. They’re governed by our internal sense of what’s right, and that sense is shaped early in life.

Essayist, novelist, and diarist Anaïs Nin wrote: “Something is always born of excess. Great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” And yet, we’re so afraid of “too much.” Afraid of what it might reveal about us. Afraid of losing control. Afraid of how others might perceive us if we lean too hard into our love, our rage, our hunger, our ambition.

But perhaps we can only truly know and engage in what we call composed, grounded, or balanced behaviour once we’ve explored the edges. When we’ve been too angry, too sad, too loud, too indulgent, too needy, too independent—and discovered what lives there.

Our reactions, then, are more layered than they first appear. And I’m aware that I’ve made plenty of assumptions in this piece. I’ve said a lot of maybes. That’s because there isn’t much empirical research that neatly explains this. What I lean on instead are the ideas of theorists, especially from psychoanalysis, alongside my own observations and experiences as a therapist, and as a person in the world.

I’m not suggesting that every annoyance or irritation we feel is secretly about us. That way of thinking would be exhausting, and frankly, not very helpful. What I’m inviting is a little more curiosity. A willingness to notice our reactions and ask what they might be pointing to.

It’s also worth questioning this idea of “too much”. Who gets to decide what that means, and on what grounds? After all, when we say someone is too much, what we’re often really saying is: too much for me. And that’s fine. But it’s worth pausing to ask why. What part of me is being unsettled here? What rule, fear, or longing is being stirred up?

And if we can get better at facing what annoys us, what fascinates us, and what scares us, both in others and in ourselves, we might realise there’s nothing inherently shameful about being too much now and then.