ABC to dealing with Frustration

 In my recent survey ‘Communication Obstacles’ I asked respondents about the feelings they find hard to deal with while communicating with other people. The question was twofold: first I asked which feelings the respondents experienced themselves they found hardest to cope with, then I asked which feelings in other people they found most difficult.

The answers to these two questions were quite different. 53.8% of respondents found their own frustration the number one most difficult feeling to cope with. In other people, aggression/hostility was the most difficult feeling to deal with, and scored 65.1%.

 There is a lot to say about these figures, but I would like to focus on what you can do when feeling frustrated while talking with other people and here is my

 ABC to dealing with Frustration:

A – Accept

B – Breathe

C – Check reality

 Accept

Whatever happened, happened – nothing you can do anymore to change that, but now you feel frustrated. What is under your control now is how you respond to this situation and what you do with your frustration.

Please be nice to yourself. It is perfectly okay to not get it right. There is no point in feeling frustrated about feeling frustrated – it only creates a downwards spiral and it will not get you to a place where you can actually deal with the situation properly. Accept the frustration, feel it (without acting on it) and....

 Breathe

.... take a deep breath. Just for a second, step away emotionally from the situation and consciously take a deep and slow breath (you can also read more about this in my blog ‘And Breathe...’ ). Sometimes there is only time for one breath, in which case just take that one breath. It helps you in creating a little distance between the emotion you feel (frustration in this case, but it could be any other ‘negative’ emotion) and the impulse to react. (I will write more about the difference between reactions and responses soon).

And when slightly distancing yourself from the feeling of frustration, that is when you give yourself a chance to...

 Check reality

... have a moment to think about what just happened and why you feel frustrated. It is time to check reality. Usually, in any given situation, there are likely to be three realities:

1. Your own reality

2. The other person’s reality

3. What really happened

 Checking your own reality

Ask yourself if you ever felt like this before, and when... there might be an interesting answer to this question! Did I feel like this frustration with the same person or with someone else? Is this frustration I feel really about this current situation, or do I remember something else (e.g. a situation like this one) that made me feel frustrated in the past?

 It is most likely that negative feelings that you experience at present are the result of unresolved situations from your past – feelings that just got triggered by the current situation, but that don’t have their origin in this current situation.

 Without checking reality with myself, I am very likely to respond in ways that are not actually appropriate to the situation I am in now, as my responses might be based on my perceptions and past experiences. If I discover that my frustration is actually not just related to the current situation, then I need to be careful not to let this influence my actual responses.

 Checking the other person’s reality

Without checking in with the other person, I might go too much on my assumptions. I cannot possibly know for sure how the other person experiences the situation we are in together – it is often hard enough to figure out what I feel and think myself, let alone to assume correctly that I understand the other person’s feelings and thoughts! So I can only share how I experience it, and check in with them to ask what their experience is. It is good practice to check in on what they said: ‘From what you said just now, I understand that you mean ‘x’. Is that indeed what you mean?’

 What really happened...

Often, the truth of what really happened lies somewhere in the middle – in between my experience and the other person’s experience of the same situation.

We all have our own filters that act like a ‘pair of glasses’; the ‘glasses’ you wear will distort how you experience a situation in a different way from the ‘glasses’ the other person is wearing. It is important to keep this in mind and to accept the idea that both you and the other person might not be completely ‘unbiased’ when it comes to understanding what happened. I will talk about filters and perceptions in another blog.

 Taking a step forward

Communication flows best when there is willingness to open up to the idea that you can choose to respond differently from how you are used to respond, and using this ABC to dealing with frustration is a step in that making that change happen. Don’t beat yourself up about how you feel. Instead, take a deep breath and then check what’s real... That is a first step to feeling more in control.

I am happy to talk to you if you have any questions or comments, so drop me a line if you do! Happy checking, everyone!

Renny