FRUSTRATION AND HOW TO HANDLE IT
Frustration has been defined among others as a sense of insecurity or disaffection rising from unresolved problems or unfulfilled needs. It is an attitude or behaviour of people within your surrounding that you may find it despicable or repugnant and for that matter you may nurse a feeling of exploding or worststill pulling a trigger. However, if you deal with your frustration before it ignites into resentment and anger, you preclude yourself from becoming a timing bomb of hurtful words or engaging in tirades and even violence. Admittedly,you may not be able to always prevent the irritation from occuring but can assuage the truculent reaction that often results in a regrettable and uncalled for expression. There are some repurcusions to bear in mind as anger is one of the major riples of frustation.
From psychologists perspective, first and foremost, frustration is a normal response but you have a choice as to how far your frustration could go and how you will deal with it.
Secondly, anger is also a normal response and God created us with a capacity to experience anger but how you handle your anger in the face of provocation demonstrate a magnitude of maturity and level-headedness, especially when it comes to communication.
Thirdly, its a commonality and an evocation of human frailities that you become irritated, disappointed and frustrarted when people you expect to deliver unquestionable tend to fail to fulfill your expections.
furthermore, accepting and recognizing your frustration and anger is healthy, but denying and repressing them can be disastrous. For example, if somebody is doing something that bothers you, you may experience frustration but its expedient to realise you can make a conscious effort to control both your inner and outward response. In this vein, it is worthnoting of any individual to build a tremendous inner strength and maturity to neutralise and outwit any emotional upset, embarrassment and other tenterhooks of frustration since we are always besieged with people of hetrogenous characters,defunct upbringing, emotional imbalances and therefore being touched and prickled on the wrong side is as possible as inevitable
Human dynamics and other personality traits perspectives delineates that there are what we call culprits that feed our frustration and among others are expectaion, the attitude of Iam entitiled to, the notion that life must be fair.
The first culprit of frustration is our high expectaion. The higher our needs are, the more our expectations and the greater we invite frustrations into our lives. It is exigent to bear in mind that our resources should determine our expectations, else there is the tendency of creating unrealistic and unreasonable expectations and if they are not forthcoming at the particular time or period as expected, this ends us in strangulating frustration.
Another culprit of frustration is the attitude of " I am entitled to ". the principles of entitlement posites that the degree of your demand justifies as the demand that others supply that need. Its a disturbing perception that sometimes entitlement is confused with desire with obligation. There an erronneous impression of some people that others around them have no right to say no to what they need, but unfortunately this belief could also be a wrongly and mistakenly possession of what one is not entitled to. It must be borne in mind that it could blatantly deny other person's right and freedom to choose if in the eyes of equity you are not the one entitled to. Its noteworthy, that strong but a misplaced feeling and craving for something disasterouly overshadow care and concern for other deserved person, hence frustration inevitably meanders in since entitilement is doomed to fail, and therefore one gets irreparably disappointed.
Again, there is the belief that life must be fair and this is cancerworm and palmerworm that seriously eats into us and frustrates us. Ironically, we believe that relationships, at work, school and entire life must be fair. It is our common and entrenched belief that when we do certain things there should be the corresponding reward, as well as irrespective of who failed and faulted conspicously in the face of the law, he or she has to face the concomittant punishment, since in the eyes of natural justice and competent court of law there should be equity of treament to all and sundry. However, fairness is subjective and more often than not in some circles what we expect is not what other people intend for us. It behoves us to come to the stark realisation that life is not a democracy and even the much trumpeted democracy that most countries claim to be the champion and frontliners in practice is sometimes nothing than a hoax, sham and hyper-hypocrisy. Its a common scenario that most past and present world leaders who on the threshold of their leadership claimed to be the messiah of fairness and justice are the very those who unleash the most barbaric, inhuman and despicably dastard treatment against their fellow humans. Let me tell you the naked truth that life is never a level play ground, so be circumspect in your dealings and what you are fighting for. May God be with us
EKOW WILSON-BAIDOO
Development / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com