Low Tolerance For Frustration: How It Appears And What To Do About It
We can’t get everything we want. This simple phrase expresses a fact that can be extremely hard depending on how much we want it. Sometimes circumstances do not help, sometimes we create excessively demanding goals or even sometimes we are required to reach a level that at least for the moment we cannot reach.
This occurs throughout the life cycle, from birth to the grave, and is the cause of different levels of frustration that we must face. And frustration can be difficult to deal with.
Each of us has a specific capacity to tolerate it, there are people who have a high tolerance for being frustrated and for whom it does not generate an impediment but rather a simple annoyance and other people with low tolerance for frustration who, at the slightest difficulty, become paralyzed and give up the action. It is about the last case that we are going to talk about throughout this article.
Before assessing what low frustration tolerance is, it is necessary to take into account what this concept implies. Frustration is an aversive feeling or sensation in which a mixture of sadness, anger, and disappointment appears when faced with not achieving an objective or the impossibility of achieving a goal or desire. It is not really necessary that it be one’s own desire, but also that It can appear when there is a break with expectations and demands placed on us.
It is a natural sensation that has nothing pathological (although depending on how it can become pathological), and that, as we have said before, is present continuously throughout life whenever situations of denial and impossibility occur. At the beginning and throughout childhood we usually have a very low tolerance for frustration, but throughout development we gradually learn to control it, manage it and generate alternative responses. But what does a low tolerance for frustration mean?
Low tolerance for frustration
Low frustration tolerance or frustration intolerance is understood as the absence or low level of ability to withstand that set of events or circumstances that may frustrate us. Low tolerance for frustration means that when it appears we are not able to react, we abandon our actions and become unable to persevere and fight against difficulties. In other words, those who have a low tolerance for frustration have great difficulty managing negative feelings such as stress, discomfort or not achieving their own desires.
Generally, this inability to self-manage causes behavioral manifestations in the form of sullen, irritable and hostile behavior. Failures are usually seen as caused by others or by circumstances, generally showing a tendency to feel like a victim and projecting blame onto others. They tend to be people who tend to give up quickly by perceiving possible obstacles, focusing on how difficult things are and not seeing or believing in the possibility of solving the problem and being able to overcome the difficulties on their own.
They focus on emotion, suffering and pain and their avoidance. This can lead to the subject becoming impatient, dependent, demanding and even extremely passive. In some cases it can trigger impulse control disorders, such as kleptomania, or aggressive and violent behavior towards those who do not fulfill or hinder one’s desires.
A low tolerance for frustration also affects the ability to wait to delay gratification, something that could be essential to achieve greater rewards than the immediate ones. It is therefore associated with the need to achieve the satisfaction of one’s needs at the same moment they appear. This makes it difficult, for example, to start doing a necessary task in pursuit of the gratification that comes from resting or having fun. In turn, both the difficulty in completing tasks and the perception of this lack of ability can be perceived as frustrating, worsening the situation and increasing the person’s discomfort.
Low tolerance for frustration also has great consequences for the subject in multiple areas of life: at the family and social level, personal relationships suffer, sometimes generating alienation on the part of others and dynamiting their relationship with their environment. At work level It is linked to a lack of flexibility and a lack of response to unforeseen events, something that makes hiring and productivity difficult. With regard to self-actualization, a low tolerance for frustration tends to generate severe difficulties in achieving great long-term goals and this can also generate a decrease in self-esteem and self-concept or the appearance of utilitarian, narcissistic or histrionic behaviors.
We have mentioned previously that frustration tolerance is something that is acquired throughout development, with almost all children having very low capacity for it. Whether or not this tolerance develops correctly can depend on a large number of variables.
Firstly, and although it develops throughout life, there are differences at the biological level that facilitate this fact. This is observable at a temperamental level, there are young children who are able to endure frustration and hope for a better future or even generate strategies to achieve their final goal. Others become frustrated and give up at the slightest difficulty, and many others even generate disruptive behaviors such as childhood tantrums as a result of their inability to control their displeasure.
Experience is one of the main factors that explain the differences in frustration tolerance. To have a high tolerance it will be necessary that throughout life we have seen that our goals and desires are achievable but that this requires effort, having seen an association between effort and goal achievement both in the short and long term. Also the awareness that waiting and not seeking immediate pleasure can lead to greater rewards over time.
Linked to the previous one, one of the reasons that can lead a person to be less tolerant of getting frustrated, even in adulthood, are the educational models that we have had. Parents who are excessively permissive and respond quickly to any request from the child encourage the child not to have to make an effort and learn that the things we want are achieved quickly. Once this pattern is established, the subject will not be able to react to the presence of difficulties and what could be a mere discomfort or obstacle becomes an impenetrable wall that contradicts them and that arouses their anger.
Another reason for low tolerance for frustration is the existence on the part of the subject of expectations that are too high to have the real possibility of meeting them, so that their efforts never reach the required or desired level and they learn that it is not possible to achieve them. own goals. A continuous fear of failure appears, and over time the ability to tolerate it becomes extinct. This can derive from learning, either from hyper-demanding parental models or from excessive social demands.
How to improve the ability to tolerate frustration
As we have mentioned, low tolerance for frustration can be enormously limiting. Fortunately, we can train our endurance capacity and our abilities to make ourselves more resilient and tolerant of aversive and frustrating situations.
Probably the first aspect to work on is to analyze the frustration in isolation, recognizing its origin and why it is so unbearable. Once this is done, we can start using different methods to resolve the situation.
One of the strategies is to restructure personal beliefs regarding the levels of demand and what we can achieve. It will be important to train ourselves in setting realistic goals, whether ambitious or not, and appreciate that in all cases it will be easy for unforeseen events to appear. It is also useful that if we have very high goals, we try to break them down in such a way that we make intermediate objectives that lead us to the final goal, without trying to achieve our objective immediately from the beginning. The generation of alternative strategies to the original is also essential.
Likewise, we must also work on the relationship with failure and frustration, not seeing them as synonymous with defeat but as learning that will lead us to achieve our goals.
Another element to train could be to undergo exposure to frustrating situations with prevention of responses. Stress and anger management training and problem-solving training become essential. If the problems are linked to the social sphere, it may also be necessary to work on social skills.
