How to Manage Feelings of Frustration

By Dr. Joti Samra, CEO & Founder of the Psychological Health & Safety (PH&S) Clinic and MyWorkplaceHealth

How to Manage Feelings of Frustration

With all of the busyness of life, frustration can be a frequently occurring emotion, particularly when we are dealing with competing life and work demands. Here, we’ll address what causes us to feel frustration, how to manage feelings of frustration to decrease our frustration levels.

What is frustration?

Frustration is the feeling of being upset or annoyed, particularly because of our inability to change or achieve something. When we experience frustration, we often forget the cause of these feelings are often completely out of our control – and the ‘out of our control’ contributors to frustration often can even further amplify the feelings of frustration! (Isn’t that just frustrating?)

How can we all better manage frustration?

1. Think about control. Recognize frustration is an emotion that often revolves around circumstances that we cannot control. Understanding that frustration comes from events that occur – which do not match our expectations of what we thought would occur – is the first step in managing these feelings. It’s amazing how powerful simply being aware can be!
2. Don’t judge yourself for these feelings! Frustration, just like any other emotion is a part of the natural human state. The reality is that negative emotions play an important role in our lives and we don’t want to get rid of them!
3. Recognize the function of your frustrated state. Do you need to change something or do something different? Eliminate or remove something or someone from your life? Or do you need to deal with other unrelated stressors that are exacerbating the responses you are having? Once we recognize the function of a particular emotion, it can help us know what to do differently.
4. Identify and make small changes in the things that are within your domain of control.
   

Final Thoughts

Personally, I find when my frustration levels increase, it’s usually because I’m feeling disorganized in life. So, what I do is intentionally reduce ‘extra’ demands in my life – which usually relates to non-essential or non-energizing social commitments – and use that time to catch up on housework, do laundry, get caught up and organized with paperwork that clutters my office, and do some meal planning so that I have one less To Do during the week. I also then commit no-alarms on Saturdays and Sundays so that I can catch up on much-needed sleep debt! 

We are only in charge of what we can control, so do what you can, and don’t sweat the small things!