Low frustration tolerance: how it appears and what to do about it.

A problem of motivation and expectations that can destroy many of our projects.

We cannot achieve 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 demanded a level that at least for the moment we cannot reach.

This happens throughout the life cycle, from birth to the grave, and it is a source of different levels of frustration that we must deal with. And frustration can be difficult to deal with.

Each of us has a specific capacity to tolerate it, with some people having a high tolerance for frustration, for whom it is not a hindrance but a simple annoyance, and for others it is a source of frustration. other people with low frustration tolerance who at the slightest difficulty become paralyzed and abandon the action. action. It is about the last of these cases that we are going to talk about in this article.

A natural emotion

Before evaluating what is a low tolerance to the frustration it is necessary to have in account what implies this concept. The frustration is a feeling or sensation of aversive character in which appears a mixture of sadness, rage, and disappointment before the nonattainment of an objective or the impossibility of reaching a goal or desire. It is not really necessary that it is an own desire, but it can also appear before the rupture with the expectations. can also appear in the face of a rupture with the expectations and demands placed on us. placed on us.

It is a natural feeling that has nothing pathological (although depending on how it can become pathological), and as we have said before, it 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 to frustration, but throughout development we gradually learn to control it, to manage it and to generate alternative responses. But what does low frustration tolerance imply?

Low frustration tolerance

Low tolerance to frustration or intolerance to frustration is understood as the absence or low level of ability to withstand that set of events or circumstances that can frustrate us. Low frustration tolerance makes us unable to react to the appearance of frustration, we abandon our actions and we are unable to persevere and fight against difficulties. and incapable of persevering and fighting against difficulties.. In other words, those who have a low tolerance to frustration have great difficulty in managing negative feelings such as stress, discomfort or the non-achievement of their own desires.

Generally this inability to self-manage causes behavioral manifestations in the form of sullen, irritable and hostile behavior. They tend to see their failures as caused by others or by circumstances, generally with a tendency to feel victimized and to project 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 overcoming the difficulties on their own.

They focus on the emotion, on suffering and pain and on 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.

Low frustration tolerance also affects the ability to wait to delay gratification, something that may be essential to achieve greater than immediate rewards. It is thus associated with the need to achieve the satisfaction of their needs at the very moment they appear. This makes it difficult, for example, to do a necessary task in pursuit of the gratification generated by resting or having fun. In turn, both the difficulty in completing tasks and the perception of this lack of capacity can be perceived as frustrating, worsening the situation and increasing the person's discomfort..

Low tolerance to frustration also has great consequences for the subject in multiple vital areas: at the family and social level, personal relationships suffer, sometimes generating a distancing from others and dynamiting their relationship with their environment. At the work level it is linked to a lack of flexibility and a lack of ability to respond to unforeseen events, which makes it difficult to hire a new employee.This makes hiring and productivity difficult. Regarding self-fulfillment, a low tolerance to frustration tends to generate severe difficulties to achieve 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.

Causes of this low tolerance

We have previously mentioned that frustration tolerance is something that is acquired throughout development, with almost all children having a very low capacity for it. Whether or not this tolerance develops correctly may depend on a large number of variables.

In the first place, and although it develops throughout life, there are Biological differences that facilitate this fact. This is observable at the temperamental levelThere are young children who are able to endure frustration and wait for a better future or even generate strategies to reach their final goal. Others become frustrated and give up at the slightest difficulty, and many others even generate disruptive behaviors such as childish tantrums as a consequence of their inability to control their displeasure.

Experience is one of the main factors that explain the differences in frustration tolerance. In order to have a high tolerance it will be necessary that throughout life we have seen that our goals and desires are achievable but that it requires effort, having seen an association between effort and the achievement of both short and long term goals. 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 little tolerant to the fact of being frustrated, even in adulthood, are the educational models we have had. Excessively permissive parents who respond quickly to any demand of the child encourage the child not to make an effort and learn that the things we want are achieved quickly. Once this pattern is fixed, 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 awakens them to that contradicts them and arouses their anger.

Another reason for low frustration tolerance is the existence on the part of the subject of expectations that are too high to have the real possibility of fulfilling them, so that their efforts never reach the required or desired level and they learn that it is not possible to achieve their own goals. A continuous fear of failure appears, and with time the capacity to tolerate it is extinguished. This may result from learning, either from overly demanding parental models or from excessive social demands.

How to improve the ability to tolerate frustration

As we have mentioned, low frustration tolerance can be extremely limiting. Fortunately, we can train our resilience and our abilities to become more resilient and tolerant of aversive and frustrating situations.

Probably the first aspect to work on is to analyze frustration in isolation, recognizing its origin and why we find it so unbearable. Once this is done, we will be able to use different methods to solve 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 to set realistic goals, whether they are ambitious or not.It is also useful that if we have very high goals, we try to break them down in such a way that we set intermediate goals that will lead us to the final goal, without trying to achieve our goal. 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 will lead us to the final goal, without pretending to achieve our objective immediately from the beginning. The generation of alternative strategies to the original one is also essential.

We must also work on the relationship with failure and frustration, not seeing them as a synonym of expiration but as a learning process that will lead us to achieve our goals.

Another element to be trained could be to submit oneself to exposure to frustrating situations with response prevention.. Stress and anger management training and problem-solving training are essential. If the problems are linked to the social sphere it may also be necessary to work on social skills.

Bibliographic references:

• Jeronimus et al. (2017). "Frustration." Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, Edition: 1. Springer, New York, Editors: Virgil Zeigler-Hill and Todd K. Shackelford, pp. 1 - 8.
• Miller, NE (July 1941), "frustration-aggression hypothesis", Psychological Review, 48 (4): pp. 337 - 42.