Is there anything sadder than spending a lot of time planning or even waiting for something to happen, and when it finally does, it's not quite how we imagined it—or does it not even happen at all? This is what we call frustration: seeing desires and expectations frustrated and contradicted.
Dealing with frustration can be very challenging because it is life denying a desire, a dream, a plan or whatever. It can be extremely painful, even crippling… To help you deal with frustration, we've prepared some tips. Check out!
Understand it's a process
It's no use getting frustrated today and wanting to be with a light heart and without regrets or resentments tomorrow. Overcoming (or managing) a frustration is a process—sometimes a long one. So give it time and deal with it in homeopathic doses.
Also, don't practice "overthinking" (the famous "overthinking"). Instead of constantly dealing with feelings like disappointment, guilt, fear, and sadness, try to distract yourself and avoid thinking too much about the reason for your frustration. When we direct our focus elsewhere, we can be surprised.
Seek emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage and deal with your emotions without being ruled by them. It is, for example, feeling very angry with someone, but instead of offending or attacking that person, taking a deep breath and controlling that bad and distressing feeling that is the hurt.
Going through frustration is a great “school” of emotional intelligence, because it allows you to get in touch with many negative and painful emotions and need to find a way to deal with them in a peaceful and harmonious way, without succumbing to them.
Develop your resilience
Resilience is a term borrowed from physics that refers to an object's ability to take an impact, but return to its original shape after that process. Iron, for example, is not very resilient, because if crushed, it stays that way. The foam, on the other hand, is quite resilient, because it resumes its original position after impact (a mattress, for example).
No one is ever the same after going through a traumatic, frustrating and painful situation, but we need to keep in mind what our essence and our “home” are, so that we can return to them after a negative experience, which helps us to develop that ability to go back to being who we are after a bad impact.
change point of view
You know that saying that the glass can be half full or half empty? You know that saying that good or bad is a matter of point of view? Well, this is all true! Often, we spend hours and hours seeing the negative side of an experience, so we fail to see the positive (or even neutral) there.
When you get a negative or go through something frustrating, you tend to see only the desire you had and that was frustrated, so you fail to recognize the opportunities that going through it can bring. It's like regretting a relationship that didn't work out and ignoring that it was just because it didn't work out that it will be possible to meet someone special soon.
Is this frustration recurring?
Have you seen your heart broken over and over in the same way? Have you ever been hurt when you do or say something specific? Have you been frustrated repeatedly with a goal? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, it may be time to question your plans and goals.
Throughout life, we often realize, not without sadness, that much of what we want will not be fulfilled. So, from there, we have two options: live in eternal frustration at not fulfilling our desires, or recalculate the route and redefine what we want, based on what's available.
Learn to cultivate realistic expectations
And this is a complementary tip to the previous advice. When we cultivate expectations that are too high or too unrealistic, we end up on a path that will almost certainly lead to frustration. Believing that a relationship will last forever, that you will be a millionaire in a short time, that you have the ability to do whatever you want…
You may also like
- Find out how resilience can help you live better
- Enlightenment or frustration?
- 5 tips for not feeding expectations
- An analysis of stress
- Why can perfectionism make you a frustrated person?
All these radical and exaggerated ideas can cause very great frustrations, because they are almost certain to be contradicted by the way life works. So "holding back" expectations can be essential to avoid ending up running into the wall.
get rid of blame
Guilt is something that turns frustration into an eternal battle with sadness. You've probably seen, even if in a movie or series, someone whose life was ruined for not being able to deal with the guilt of a mistake they made, right?
Understand the following: we all make mistakes! And even if we didn't make mistakes, life is unpredictable and even then it would cause frustrations. An example: does running 20 kilometers every day guarantee that you will win such a competition? Not. You will be more prepared. But what if a storm hits that day and disrupts your test? It's your fault? No! So get rid of blame, respect your faults and mistakes and mature.
Seek help
Sometimes, a frustration you struggle to deal with can last so long that it ends up becoming—or helping to develop—a problem, like depression and generalized anxiety disorder.
If you realize that it's been too many weeks or months since you started experiencing emotional and psychological difficulties to deal with a frustration, seeking the help of Psychology can be essential. Seek therapy to have a lighter and more harmonious relationship with yourself!
Now that you've received some tips to deal with your frustration in a lighter and harmonic way, take it easy on yourself to get through this difficult period. But keep in mind that everything passes and soon you will feel happiness again! Life is cyclical, so everything will be in order in a little while!
