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All infants, kids, and adults experience reflexive feelings of frustration when they can't reduce one or more discomforts (fill current needs). Many survivors of low-nurturance childhoods are taught to mask or repress this emotion, or to express it intellectually at most. They're also not taught to distinguish between frustration and anger, which usually follows feeling threatened or hurt. Anger and frustration feel similar, and have different causes and solutions. When your true Self is guiding your other personality subselves, s/he can calmly identify feelings of frustration as a useful signal to (a) objectively identify what primary need/s are not being met, and then (b) do creative problem-solving to meet them well enough. If a false self dominates your other subselves, it may (a) mistakenly label frustration as "negative," and (b) miss the chance to fill current needs by reacting impulsively - e.g. ignoring, repressing, numbing, blaming, defocusing, avoiding, yelling, swearing, intellectualizing, over-analyzing, attacking, etc. Behaviors like these usually add new needs, increase frustrations, and may corrode your self esteem ("Argh! I let my frustration take me over!") Keys to using frustration productively are (a) keeping your true Self in charge (Project 1 here), (b) intentionally developing personal awareness of your inner and outer environments, and (c) choosing to see frustration as a normal, useful human reaction. Lesson-2 basics and skills can help you evolve effective ways to express frustration and to use it productively. |
About the Helpful Emotion of