HOW TO DEAL WITH DISCOMFORT[1]

Underlying the emotion of frustration is the irrational belief ” I should not have to suffer discomfort.” This is often backed up by similar demands, such as ” the world must change to suit me” or ” Everybody else must change , not me”. As I often good-humouredly say to patients,’ Good luck with those demands!’ It is useful to redefine frustration as disturbance/discomfort anxiety’ in order to distinguish it from ‘ ego anxiety’.

In the latter, we are making some demands on the situations. When frustrated about something , we are usually demanding that other people or situations change so that we don’t have to suffer discomfort. This relieves us of the burden of having to change something in ourselves , or of accepting that it is not always possible to change circumstances , and that we must learn to adapt.

LOW FRUSTRATION TOLERANCE

To develop this skill , we must introduce another term:’ frustration tolerance’. This defines our capacity to suffer discomfort . None of us likes discomfort but we all have different endurance or tolerance levels. Those with high frustration tolerance levels can accept short-term pain for long term gain.

I will complete in article 2 soon .