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Frustration can become a driver for new achievements, or it can lead to depression. We understand what this condition is, why it occurs and how to respond to it.
What is frustration
Frustration (from lat. frustratio – deceit, vain expectation) – a mental state caused by failure to satisfy needs, desires. This state occurs in situations where the satisfaction of a need encounters insurmountable or difficult to overcome obstacles. Usually, the state of frustration is accompanied by negative experiences: disappointment, irritation, anxiety, despair. The term was introduced by psychologists in the second half of the XNUMXth century to study stress caused by frustrating conditions – conditions in which a person cannot satisfy his needs, tasks assigned to him.
“We were supposed to send a report on work in the evening, and the Internet was turned off in the whole house – you are in a state of frustration. They planned to get a promotion at work, but they didn’t give it to you – this is also frustration, ”Miroslav Yasin, a psychotherapist of the online psychotherapy service Zigmund.Online, gives examples. According to him, a person in the course of life is inevitably in a state of frustration from time to time; and for the first time this happens in childhood – for example, when the child does not receive the expected praise from the parents or counts on buying something, but he is not given it.
Difficulties and obstacles in getting what you want cannot be avoided, but a person can control the reaction to frustration conditions. How we react to failures determines the consequences of frustration – they harden someone and lead to new discoveries, and someone suffers all his life, feeling inferior. Let’s take a closer look at what influences our reaction and what it can lead to.
Types of frustration
Frustration can manifest itself in many different ways. Some of them are described by psychologist Dan Brennan:
- loss of self-control;
- nervous movements of the body, such as constant tapping of the fingers, etc.;
- refusal to continue the work begun;
- feelings of sadness or anxiety;
- diffidence;
- problems with sleep;
- switching to drugs or alcohol;
- bodily abuse, such as starvation or malnutrition.
Frustrating situations can cause different emotions, notes Irina Makarova, director of the HSE Center for Psychological Counseling: “We can feel all variations of anger, from mild irritation to rage and hatred, it can be feelings of powerlessness, depression, disappointment, resentment and severe frustration.” According to her, situations of restrictions, failures and obstacles can cause severe stress, apathy and a sense of meaninglessness, but at the same time they can become powerful motivators for finding a way out, transformation.
However, it can be quite difficult for a person to realize this state, says Vladimir Shlyapnikov, head of the Department of Personality Psychology and Differential Psychology at the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis: “Frustration is often experienced as a vague and unclear discomfort: something is wrong with me, something is missing, but what Exactly, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how to deal with it. As a result, this condition negatively affects a person’s life, interferes with living, working effectively, and enjoying communication with loved ones.”
Causes of frustration
External and internal sources
Frustration can come from within as well as from without.
Under internal frustration we understand the state when a person himself is a frustrator (one who provokes such a state). That is, he becomes unhappy because he himself reacted to the situation with negative emotions.
External frustration suggests that there is another person or thing that is preventing you from meeting your needs. For example, in a situation where a person is late for an important meeting due to being stuck in a traffic jam.
The reasons for frustration are individual for each person. Among the most common frustrators, psychologist Dan Brennan lists:
- stress at work
- setting an unattainable goal;
- difficulties in finding a solution to the problem.
Social frustrators
Nowadays, a significant source of frustration is our social environment, which gives rise to, as they call it in psychology, social frustration. Vladimir Shlyapnikov explains: it is important for a person to be no worse than other people. But since the concepts of “worse – better” are relative, this comparison often causes a feeling of frustration. “Sometimes we experience a feeling of dissatisfaction even when objectively the need is satisfied. For example, I choose a popular expensive dish in a restaurant, but when it is brought, it seems to me that something tastier and more interesting was ordered at the next table. Such is the nature of man, ”the psychologist gives an example.
Consequences of frustration
What are the reactions
Scientists over the past century have conducted a number of experiments to find out how a person can respond to frustrating conditions. One of them, says Miroslav Yasin, is Dembo’s experiment, in which people were given obviously impossible tasks. For example, the researchers placed a chair 2–3 m from a person, then drew a white line in front of it, which should not be crossed, and asked the person to remove objects from the chair with their hands. It was physically impossible to do so.
In the course of such experiments, it turned out that a person copes with frustration in different ways. “Several types of reactions to frustrating conditions have been identified. Someone, faced with an obstacle, immediately gets upset and cannot overcome it; someone is looking for a way out and finds it; and someone can devalue their defeat: they didn’t manage to solve the problem – well, okay, I’ll do something else, ”says Yasin.
What do reactions depend on?
A person’s response to frustrating conditions determines how frustration generally affects the quality of his life. How strong our experiences will be, how long we will feel them and how quickly we can cope with it, depends on many factors: on the strength of desire and the significance of the goal, on the expectation and predictability of the result, says Irina Makarova. But the biggest impact is how a person handled situations of dissatisfaction and rejection in early childhood. “We are talking about the earliest years of a child’s life, when the first contact with the outside world takes place, it is then that things are formed that will help us cope with what we call frustration in later life,” the expert believes.
Frustration and aggression
In a normal situation, frustration gives our life the “drive” necessary to achieve the desired goal. But if time passes, and the goal is still far away, frustration can cause negative states: exhaustion, depression, increased aggressiveness. According to Vladimir Shlyapnikov, in such situations, a person directs his aggression towards people who are not the cause of frustration, but simply “got on hand”. “Often parents, dissatisfied with life, break down on their children. Then these children, in a situation where it is necessary to solve a difficult problem, use the same non-constructive behavior model – they begin to offend weaker classmates or treat animals rudely, ”the expert notes. According to him, sometimes frustration leads to the fact that a person directs aggression towards himself. In a state of auto-aggression, he risks his life, does not think about health and consequences, and his behavior becomes self-destructive. This can sometimes lead to heavy drinking and drug addiction.
Positive effect
As we mentioned, being frustrated can have a positive effect. Psychologists note that the feeling of dissatisfaction encourages us to move on, to do something and create. It can serve not only as a powerful source of development – both for an individual and for society. Experts interviewed by Trends argue that humanity is making progress thanks to situations where at the moment it was impossible to solve the problem facing a person, for which new ways of solving it were invented. Therefore, the inevitable states of frustration during constructive behavior do not interfere, but even help to build a career. “For example, a person worked hard for a promotion, but the boss explained to him that there would be no promotion. Of course, the employee will be upset, but this feeling can quickly develop into a desire to open your own business and organize a new workplace for yourself. There are many people around us with positive experience in adapting frustrating circumstances,” says Miroslav Yasin.
How to help yourself
However, a prolonged state of frustration eventually leads to exhaustion. As the Associate Professor of the Department of Psychotherapy, Medical Psychology and Sexology of the North-Western State Medical University named after M. II Mechnikov Dmitry Kovpak, if there are clear deadlines for meeting physiological needs, how long a person cannot live without food, water, sleep; then in the satisfaction of social needs, the terms depend on many factors and, first of all, on the subjective significance for the person of the unmet need. According to him, when frustration causes physical or moral discomfort, a person should take up the solution of this problem.
The scheme for getting out of the state of frustration at first glance looks clear: you need to figure out what need was not realized, and understand how it can be realized. “Another question is whether a person is able to consciously, consistently and efficiently do this work. There is no template for solving the problem that has arisen; the route to satisfying the need is built in a personalized way. The advantage is that every person is an expert on himself, and everyone has a resource to look into himself, into his experience, into his past. They can suggest how such problems were solved in the past,” says Kovpak. At the same time, he reminds: if a person cannot solve a life problem himself, this is also a normal situation; in this case, he needs to seek help from a psychologist or psychotherapist.
There are various tests and techniques on the Web that help determine what kind of reaction to frustrating conditions a person is prone to. One of the most common is Saul Rosenzweig’s pictorial frustration test. It determines how the subject responds to frustration and frustrating situations, and what type of aggression his reaction belongs to.