When we face challenges, they hardly ever arise alone. We live multi-faceted lives with stress on all sides. How we handle one challenge, always affects how prepared we are for another.
Consider the chess game, if I block a bishop check with my knight, it becomes pinned to my king and is therefore not able to defend itself from an additional attack, nor is it available to ward off additional attacks or effect an attack of its own. Once another check is delivered and another, a barrage of attacks leaves many of my pieces unprotected, and the game has spiraled out of control.
In the same way, if I respond to a coworker in anger concerning a situation, my emotional well-being will be affected, and how I respond to my wife later will likely be adversely affected. On the chess board, a strong player can foresee the opponent's attacks. In life, we can't always be prepared for them.
There is a term for this in thermodynamics; it's called entropy. In a closed system, entropy is always increasing, order is decaying, the system tends toward chaos. I'm not certain the principle has been directly correlated to the study of psychology, but it is a simple observation in my own life. I wake up after a good night's rest rejuvenated, but an argument with my wife or perhaps a breakfast accident soils my pants, begins my day's progress to complete inner turmoil and chaos.
In a closed system, entropy only decreases when an outside force acts on the system. In my life, that may be a good night's rest, perhaps it's meditation on God's word, or a calming conversation with someone who helps me gain perspective.
When you find yourself growing agitated and increasingly so as the day goes by, remember that Christ is the rest you seek, and He will reset your entropy level.
