Help for someone who might have communication issues
Hello,
I'm a bit at a loss right now. I have had a few recent issues arise in interpersonal relationships I have with people in my life. In all instances I have been the one that was "in the wrong". And I will admit, I was. At least in how I reacted. I have a tendency to lose my temper, and have a short fuse. It's been something I've been working on, but not to as much success as I like, in my personal life.
However, the issue I want to ask about is what tends to come before, in a manner of speaking. According to the people who've actually talked to me about this, I have a tendency to criticize, or pick at issues, or belittle. My issue is that I don't quite see it. And when asked, the people who discussed this with me didn't have very solid answers, due to not remember specifics. Which is fine, but sadly not terribly helpful.
The most recent instance though (happened today) was over how I started a conversation. I apparently, in how I started, was "tee-ing them up for an argument" or otherwise "starting a conversation as if I was a parent talking to a child", like asking an obvious question of "how did this happening? Well obviously I caused it so don't treat me like an idiot". The conversation was basically me asking "Hey X, do you know how \[Y thing\] happened?" and they basically responded with "Please don't give me attitude". This led to me... not handling the rest of the conversation well as my frustration boiled over.
Later, when I apologized for my poor reaction, I managed to have a somewhat productive conversation and they told me how they felt I was "looking to pick a fight/argument". That was apparently the perspective they came at with this conversation. From MY perspective, that was *not* how I was planning on approaching it.
How I planned on approaching it was to not immediately assuming the person I was talking to caused the Y thing to happen. Because maybe I could've been wrong and then I made a mistake for assuming. So I wanted to get some confirmation and then I was planning on asking them to "Do Z thing in the future so Y thing doesn't happen, that'd be really great and nice". Unfortunately that's not how the conversation went at all, as I mentioned. And this apparently is not an isolated incident.
So I'm here asking: How can I get better and prevent it from happening in the future? Are there any resources I should look into about unintended critical/belittling language use? Strategies to use or turn to? Should I go talk to a therapist, counselor, or some other professional that could maybe help me?