Lately I have been frustrated by others more than usual. Their behavior has not changed. Somehow I have come up with a set of
expectations or sense of entitlements that are not being met to my own weird always
escalating internal standards. When I
take the time to be mindful while evaluating my cognitive dissonance between
wanting to be serene and happy while wanting others do things as I think I would
have them done it is a clear case of insanity run amuck in my head. The solution is to work with others.
The following is a cut-n-paste from happinessinthisworld.com
about how to manage frustration.
Reading about frustration management helped put my insane thinking and
ego in check for right now.
It’s an
uncomfortable paradox that the people closest to us often frustrate us the
most. My theory about this is that we
all have a certain level of tolerance for frustration that diminishes with
repeated exposure to a situation or a person we find frustrating. Thus we more easily manage our frustration at
the beginning of a frustrating experience and with people we’ve only just met,
but as time passes and our frustration continues, our ability to manage it
steadily decreases. Certainly becoming
more comfortable with someone who frustrates us also plays an important role in
our feeling less constrained about expressing our feelings (in both positive
and negative ways). And further our
closest family members populate the most intimate areas of our lives and often
limit our ability to find privacy or refuge in which to rest and thereby
temporarily regain an ability to tolerate things that (and people who)
frustrate us.
Yet poorly managed
frustration is toxic to relationships.
It causes a build-up of resentment that—even when over only small
things—can ultimately overwhelm any desire to relate in a positive fashion. And no one likes living in a perpetual state
of annoyance or anger (no matter how much it may seem like they do).
But frustration
often takes on a life of its own in relationships. We all possess triggers that outside
influences (i.e., people) can pull without our being able to stop them,
bringing to life parts of ourselves from whom we’d rather not hear, but who we
often have no apparent power to silence.
At least, not with a
direct application of willpower. Trying
to suppress or ignore frustration seems only to make it worse, often causing us
to magnify the import of whatever complaint we have against whoever frustrated
us. We then often find ourselves
typecasting the offending person into a black-and-white caricature of
themselves: they become entirely
self-centered, entirely insensitive, and entirely over-entitled. In one fell swoop we lose sight of everything
good within them. And from this
perspective arises a significantly increased risk for voicing hurtful words or
taking dramatic action which we later bitterly regret.
Instead of
willpower, then, the best antidote upon which I’ve stumbled involves the use of
gratitude. Now when I become frustrated,
I strive to immediately remind myself of all the things I appreciate about the
person who’s frustrated me. Undoubtedly,
appreciating people we see in our day-to-day lives is the most difficult, as
they’re the very people not only most likely to frustrate us but also with whom
we’re most likely unable to control our frustration—but such people wouldn’t
likely be in our lives so consistently in the first place if they didn’t have
important qualities that we valued.
Reminding ourselves of those qualities shouldn’t, therefore, be too
difficult.
Feeling grateful in
response to such self-prompting while in the midst of feeling frustration,
however, often is. Yet it’s precisely at
those times that gratitude becomes most valuable—as a distraction. For just as distracting ourselves from a
tempting piece of pie will more likely enable us to avoid eating it than trying
to suppress our urge to do so, so too distracting ourselves from our
frustration by focusing our attention instead on something we appreciate about
the person who’s frustrated us will work better than trying to outright
suppress or ignore it.
How to best summon
up a feeling of gratitude for someone?
By vividly imagining the ultimate consequence of expressing our greatest
frustration in the most negative way:
having the person vacate our lives entirely. If we can really wrap our minds around this
possibility, fully imagining then freeing ourselves not just from the “bad” but
from the “good” as well, we just may be able to generate a strong enough
feeling of appreciation to override our feelings of frustration.
Of course, getting
control over our frustrated outbursts is often far harder than the above would
imply. Yet if we can cultivate an
attitude of gratitude in general, reminding ourselves on a daily basis of
different things for which we’re grateful about the people who populate the
most intimate parts of our lives, we may find ourselves better prepared to call
upon that gratitude to help us control our frustration at crucial moments. And even more importantly, enjoy not just our
relationships more, but also ourselves.
I am grateful for my friends, getting better at relationships, more
functional self-evaluation, my sobriety, my freshly cleaned carpet, my loving
cats, a warm dry weather forecast for the next week, plenty of food to eat, a
convenient place to swim in a warm pool, a car that runs great, new tires for
my wheelchair, fast PCs, a good DSL connection and a big screen TV.
I am also grateful to be feeling better now that I focused myself on
being more grateful for what I have instead of obsessing on unmet insane
expectations. (By definition, pretty
much any expectation I have of others is insane.)
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