Have you been feeling irritable this week during the city's stifling heatwave? If so, I am here to tell you this is absolutely normal. Seeing as I’m from Malta, I can say it first-hand.
The kind of heat we had in Brussels over the past week or so is the kind of heat we usually have in August. In these temperatures, everyone is on edge and tempers fly.
I experienced a bit of a déjà vu here in Belgium this week: I saw drivers yelling at each other, commuters arguing at bus stops, shoppers huffing and puffing in queues. There are many reasons for it, the simplest being that in this kind of heat our body really has to work harder than usual. It is so physically demanding that it drains all the energy we usually reserve for patience.
Comparing Belgium and Malta
There is a crucial difference between my home country and Brussels, though. In Malta, there’s air conditioning everywhere – not great for the planet, I know – but it means that we get heat respite. It’s nice and cool as we hop from the car to the shop, to the office, to home, and we only spend few minutes at a time in the intense heat.
Here, it’s a completely different story. This is a city still a newbie to high temperatures and it’s not equipped. Therefore, like troopers, we have to face the discomfort.
This means that our bodies are busy regulating temperature, so there is less mental space for patience, empathy, and flexible thinking. Small things feel bigger because our brain is already busy enough with discomfort.
When we’re hot, thirsty, and sleeping badly, our tolerance window for the small frustrations of daily life shrinks disproportionately. Someone standing too close on the tram? The poubelles not being picked up? A car taking the parking space you had been eyeing? You feel like unleashing your inner Obelix and start smashing menhirs left, right and centre.
The perceived injustice effect
Heat, of course, brings with it other problems. It’s like a pressure valve that keeps rising: sticky skin, constant dryness in the mouth, irritating city noises because the windows are open, and so on - lots of small things, inside and out, are stacking up to a mound of irritation.
Add to that the fact that the usual breathers for our little frustrations melt away with the heat. There’s no restful sleep, no cool commute home, no quiet indoor moment. And so the tempers get shorter and shorter.
With it also comes a slightly surreal sense of unfairness. There’s a term for something close to this: the ‘perceived injustice’ effect. Why is my apartment still hot at 3am?! Why am I on tram number 8 but it feels like I’m in a veritable sauna?! Why is no one doing anything about this?!
It quickly spirals into that helpless feeling of having no real control over the situation, which leads to plotting and counter-plotting ways to cope. Yesterday evening, for example, I briefly considered that the solution might be to grab my sofa cushions and settle in the entrance hallway of my building, which is by far the coolest spot anywhere in the city.
Then there’s the physiological aspect. Our bodies are not always very good at distinguishing between physical discomfort and emotional stress. In heat, the signals start to blur. A faster heart rate, sweating, a sense of restlessness, fatigue: all of these are our organs trying to cope with temperature, but our brain reads it as irritability, and it’s hard to convince ourselves that it’s physiology in disguise.
Life marches on
I hope all this puts your mind at rest that your short temper is very understandable, and that you are not the only one with patience running low. What solutions might there be to manage it? Of course, follow all the advice being kindly shared with us in the media: hydrate, eat lightly, stay in the shade, go for very, very early morning walks, and preferably turn your apartment into Batman’s cave. All good advice.
But also accept that the realities of life keep marching on: work needs to get done, cars still need to be parked, commutes still need to be taken. Some people might suggest, “Oh, let’s be positive,” or “Let’s be grateful.” In which case, you have permission to unleash a visualisation of Obelix and his menhirs again. How can you be ‘positive’ when you feel like a giant chocolate Manneken Pis melting into a puddle?
The thing you can actually do is be kind to yourself. When you feel the fuse running too short, say to yourself (out loud works too): “I’m overheated and tired, I need ten minutes.” Take a pause and, if needed, explain it to the people around you. Then ask yourself: what can I control, what can I influence, and what can I simply accept?
It sounds almost too simple, but it helps to sort the noise in your head into something more manageable. And in moments like this, small physical actions can come in handy.
Try humming softly, for example, or gently tapping on your collarbone. Doing this calms the nervous system, takes the edge off the fretting, and reminds your body that it is safe enough, that it is just heat, that this too shall pass, and tempers will be restored.
Kristina Chetcuti is a Brussels-based registered health coach (UKIHCA) specialising in behaviour change and lifestyle medicine (ELMO).
