Frustration

For the term frustration as used in contract law, see Frustration of purpose. For the board game, see Trouble (board game).

Frustration is a human emotion which occurs in situations where one's goal or goals are being blocked. These goals are usually of high importance to the frustrated person and they hold on to the desire despite that elusiveness.

Passive-aggressive behaviour is a method often used when dealing with frustration. Albert Ellis Rational-emotive therapy analysed: A condition they call low frustration tolerance, or "short-term hedonism" in order to explain why people procrastinate why some are quick to anger and other apparently paradoxical or self-defeating behaviours and actions. It is defined as seeking immediate pleasure or avoidance of pain at the cost of long-term stress. (The opposite condition is said to be "high frustration tolerance")

The original hypothesis was formulated by Dollard et Al (1939), who argued that the occurrences of aggression presupposes frustration [...] Frustration produces instigations to a number of different types of responses, one of which is an instigation to some form of aggression. At the first moments of frustration feelings of anger are produced, which can also result in aggression or aggressive behaviour.

When somebody is intentionally hurt, insulted, cheated, deceived, or made fun of (teased) all these things could lead up to anger and aggression and generally distrustful people have more of these experiences occurring. Using this example, people would have hoped for more consideration, more fairness, and more understanding. We become frustrated, because this prevents us from achieving our desired goal. As research shows psychologist believe that anger just naturally results from frustration. This is called the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Our frustration may become more intense if our goal is highly desirable, if we were to be in reach of our goal and the expectation is to achieve it, and if a barrier were to appear and the goal is intercepted, a slight feeling of unfairness and unjustification may occur. This may result in becoming frustrated. Frustration has many physical reactions, including higher blood pressure, sweating, and greater energy.

Some may explode, others swallow their feelings. Our blood pressure sometimes goes up more when we explode, at other times it goes up more when we swallow the feelings, depending on the situation. Psychosomatic symptoms, such as heart disease, occur more often in people who are cynics and distrustful but hold in their anger.

Physiologically damaging anger reactions seem to occur under two extreme conditions, namely, when we feel utterly helpless, or, the opposite, when we have overly optimistic expectations of reaching unreachable goals.

There are many situations for any person to become frustrated, such as for some students learning disabilities at schools. Friends can also cause us frustration as well, especially when they betray us or a promise is broken. Broken promises are always frustrating and painful. Apart there are lots of situations or surroundings factors that could bring frustration in our life. The intensity of frustration phase may vary from each individual person and it depends on the actual situation. Frustration is an outcome of many different Negative Emotions. Frustration is a result or a compliment of other behavioral negativities. The basics are:

• envy
• guilt
• fear
• phobia
• jealousy
• distrust
• failure
• loneliness
• betrayal
• shame

Our own emotions can make us frustrated, like misunderstandings, misinterpreting the situation, suspicion, pride and also arrogance can cause the upcoming of frustration. For example, during work a number of task and our performance/efficiency is required to get the work done. To avoid the frustrations, we need to accept reality instead of putting hopes on unreachable imaginations in which situations would have been different. When we observe ourselves carefully, we can actually realise our limitations and can work towards exploring our available resources unless it would cause even more frustration.

Our surrounding can make us frustrated as well; assisting team play is a major role on our working ability. If our working ability gets troubled by external factors like non-cooperation of workers, that will bring frustration. We cannot expect any improvement against the other person if one is unwilling to put in the effort. If we waste our energy on such futile team that in fact is not interested in co-operating, we get frustrated, we waste precious energy and attention and we will find ourselves stuck in a downward spiral of performance.

In Summary Frustration is the feeling that comes when you are being stopped from reaching your goals. It is feeling annoyed at being obstructed or criticized. Frustration always leads to downfall and deviation, because it wastes precious thinking ability and attention, which otherwise would have used else in constructive and/or creative work. Frustration-aggression hypothesis was put forward by Dollar et Al in 1939 where he stated the hypothesis held, in its strongest form, that frustration always led to aggression, and that aggression was always the result of frustration.

By Quang Nguyen

See also

• Low frustration tolerance